Archive for 2008

Update – February 10

February 10, 2008 8:41 pm

Today was the day that we were having a big event at church. We had been inviting the neighbors from near the church as well as friends and family of our Deaf who regularly attend. The reason we were making a big push today is that we had done quite a few improvements to the church building and wanted to show them off. Of course it was just an excuse to really push our people to invite their friends.

Normally on a Sunday morning we will have between 10 and 17 at church. Today we were pleased to see 36 people in church with us. 13 of them were first time visitors. It was an exciting day.

We split up the duties between Bill, our co-worker, and myself for the speaking this morning. Bill told about the history and planned future of the ministry. I gave a Gospel message. We had 2 ladies (hearing) accept the Lord today!

After the service we had a meal and sat around and talked for a while. It was just a generally exciting day.

Thank you for praying for our ministry.

January 2008 Prayer Letter

January 21, 2008 12:34 pm

Dear Praying Friends,
Thank you so much for praying during the year of 2007. It was a great year in ministry. We saw several Deaf and hearing saved. We have particularly been blessed to have some of those who were saved this year become faithful in church and excited about spiritual growth.

We had our first baptismal service in December for our church. Two were baptized. One was Eduardo who was saved in September. The other was our son James. It was great to be a part of these two peoples’ spiritual growth.

God has opened new doors of ministry already for 2008. We have one Christian family who is burdened for a Deaf girl who attends school with their son. Gisel is 14 years old and knows some sign language, but not enough to carry on a normal conversation. She came to church with us this weekend for the first time and we are looking forward to working with her and bringing her to a knowledge of the Savior. She lives in a village in a very rough home situation. Just having regular contact with her is going to be a challenge. Pray with us as we work with her over the coming weeks and months.

Another opportunity came this last week concerning a 14 year old boy, Imer. While working at the church another pastor came and asked for my help in a situation. Their church has a school in which Imer attends. Imer is Deaf and was involved in a situation that the school needed help in handling. The pastor came and asked me to interpret to make sure that everything was clear to him. As a result the parents were called in to discuss the problem with the school administrator. The parents began asking for personal spiritual guidance as well as parental guidance to help with their son. Our pastor friend came to me later and asked that I take over the situation since I am able to minister not only to the parents, but Imer as well.

Along with the other wonderful growth we have been seeing in those who have been saved this last year, God continues to bring new people to us to whom we can minister. We pray that we will be able to contact many new Deaf throughout 2008.

As we are preparing for furlough later this year, we have needed to turn over more and more responsibility to the other missionary couple who will be taking the ministry completely when we leave. For the missionaries involved the transition of power has already taken place. We have laid out steps so that the church can start to depend more on Bill and Jennifer and less on us. Everything is going very well with that.

On a personal note, we had a wonderful time with the holidays this year. For Thanksgiving we gathered with almost 50 friends for a great feast. It seemed that the Christmas activities never ended. I think our first Christmas party was December 9 and we did not slow down until just after the new year. God has truly blessed us with a great group of friends here on the field.