March 2020 Prayer Letter
Hello From Bolivia,
We write you once again from Bolivia. We are excited to be back! We enjoyed our time in the states, but we were ready to return to the ministry. The trip was hard on Ellie but overall it was fine. Thank you to those who reached out and let us know you were praying for us as we made our preparations to return. The adjustment back has been much easier this time than normal and we are thankful for this.
On our first Sunday in Bolivia, we visited Iglesia Bautista Monte Carmelo (our first church plant). Pastor Francisco had asked for us to come visit and for me to preach. It was a joy to see those faithful ones still continuing and to see a few new faces. There were about 45 people in attendance which is a little more than their average when we left in August. They are preparing to start Faith Promise Missions. It has been taught and they understand what it is. Now they just need to put their faith into action. I will be excited to see how they do with this. Pastor Francisco is doing a good work in this church. We were pleased to see the progress being made amongst the people.
Now that we are back, we plan to focus on the new church. We are pleased to report to you that all the finances have been given towards the purchase of the land! Thank you very much to all of those who had a part in this. We believe we can not only purchase the land but also build our security wall and the structure we have in mind for the auditorium. Rogelio (the man that will be pastor) is ready to move forward and get to work. He and his wife have labored hard during our absence and I can’t wait to see what lies ahead for this work.
We will not be alone in starting this new church. A new missionary family will be helping us. They arrive at the end of March. Their mission board recommended that they work with another missionary family for their first year as they get settled. We are honored that they have decided to work with us. Please pray for this family as they say their goodbyes to family and friends and make their way to Bolivia. Even though they have worked hard and are excited to come, it will be a very difficult and emotional time for them. It will be a pleasure for us to be able to help them.
We do have a prayer request for our ministry. As many of you may remember, we have been helping get scripture portions into Bolivia and to other parts of South America. During our furlough, we and several others worked on getting enough scripture to fill a container. We have never sent a container to Bolivia due to the legal hassles involved. However, we have found a local Christian man that is going to help us. He owns a bookstore and already has the legal requirements to be able to work this out. Would you help us pray over the logistics? We plan to start working on all of this in the next week or two. It is all new to us and we are relying on others to help us figure this out and get it done. The day before we left the states, we found out that we have over 250,000 scripture portions that are ready. We have also been promised 1 million tracts for our container. This is on top of 10 other pallets we had already received. We have more than what we can fit into our container. With the shipment of this one container, we will more than triple the amount of scripture we have been able to get into Bolivia! That is amazing!
We thank each and every one of you who has made the ministry here in Bolivia possible. Without those that pray for us and support us, there is no way we could be here. Thank you for your help in the past but also for your continued help. There is still a lot to be done and we are thrilled at the opportunity to be able to have a small part in what the Lord wants to do here.
