Dear Praying Friends,
We have been in Mexico a month and are enjoying being with so many old friends once again. We are filling in for Bill and Jennifer Green with whom we worked to help get the deaf church in Mérida established. They are out of the country for three months and asked if I could preach for them while they were gone. It was an opportunity we did not want to pass up.

It is a blessing to see the church people growing physically and spiritually. Many of the core people in the church were teenagers when we left. Now most of them are grown and some have children!

Another exciting thing to see is the way the church has expanded far beyond our original contacts. Bro. Bill Green has done a great job of reaching out to parts of the deaf community that we had never contacted before. I believe the ministry is much stronger now that the circle of contacts has reached beyond the one small segment of the deaf with which we started.

We will be in Mérida until the middle of June. Please continue to pray for our safety and that God would use us to be a blessing to the work here in Mexico.

Recent Prayer Requests
I want to thank you for praying for the prayer requests that I mentioned from my recent trips. The camp in Costa Rica was wonderfully used by the Lord. There were many Deaf at the camp with various countries represented. There was even a news crew that came out to film some of the camp. The story aired on the national level. This was positive exposure for the ministry of Bro. Ramirez.

The ministry in Ethiopia is continuing to thrive. Bro. Bizuayehu wrote me this week and asked that we pray for their Resurrection Sunday celebrations. Ethiopia is on a very different calendar than the rest of the world. They celebrate the resurrection of Christ on May 5. They will have a special day of prayer and Easter programs in a few of the deaf churches. Pray that God continues to use the deaf works in Ethiopia for His honor and glory.

If you would like to support either of these ministries, or any BIO missionary to the Deaf, please contact me or the BIO office for information on how you can be involved.

PDF version of the May 2013 Prayer Letter

Tags: Costa Rica,Ethiopia,Mexico,prayer letter,update
Categories: Ministry Update, Prayer Letter
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Dear Praying Friends,

Deaf pastor Bizuayehu Assefa walked in the door and God instantly knitted our hearts together. It took less than 10 seconds in his presence to know that I would grow to deeply love this pastor whom I have previously known only through email. Because of your prayers and financial help I was able to meet this dear man of God as well as many other godly servants of our Lord in Ethiopia.

Faithful Pastor

Bro. Bizuayehu has faithfully served the Lord in deaf ministry as a pastor for more than 20 years. He is Deaf and has a passion to reach his own people. Though he has struggled with health challenges, he continues to ask the Lord for strength to continue in ministry. He was deafened many years ago by illness and recently lost an eye due to disease. Even with these obstacles I consistently heard from American missionaries and national pastors that Pastor Bizuayehu is the hardest working and best pastor in the country. He holds a yearly conference where he is able to minister to Deaf in 16 cities and villages in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia Report

Pastor Bizuayehu and two pastors who work with him.

While I was there I spoke 10 times in churches and Bible classes. Three precious souls accepted the Lord as Savior! One is a hearing man and two are deaf teens. All of them have been prayed for and witnessed to by Christian friends. I thank God that He allowed me to see the results of their evangelistic efforts.

As far as I know, I did not eat anything too rare. I drank too much coffee. I had great fellowship. Even as busy as I was, I had time to read and pray in a way that I often don’t do here in the US. Stepping out of my daily routine helped me to see ways that I can spend more time with the Lord even back home.

Thank you for your prayers and support for this important trip. There were many things I had hoped to accomplish while I was in Ethiopia. I believe I accomplished my goals. The sweetest thing is that I got to connect with people that I had never met or spent much time with before. I have many new friends for whom I can pray and know they are praying for my family and our ministry.

If you are interested in helping Bro. Bizuayehu financially in his ministry, please contact BIO or me for information. He is the kind of man of integrity who will use any support he gets to further the Gospel. If he had $5 or $500 more in support each month, he could do so much more ministry. I am confident that every dollar you invest with him will be used wisely and effectively.

Costa Rica Trip

I am planning a similar trip to Costa Rica from January 25 to February 4. I would appreciate your prayers that I can effectively minister to the missionaries there. More information about the trip will be at our website.

PDF version of the letter

Tags: Ethiopia
Categories: Prayer Letter
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A few of the attendees

Recently one of the missionaries with whom I work as Director of Deaf Ministries for Baptist International Outreach had a wonderful conference. While I did little more than help make a couple of minor decisions going into this conference and bathed the weekend in prayer, I am very excited that God used my small part to accomplish His task.

Pastor Bizuayehu and recent converts

Bizuayehu Assefa is an Ethiopian deaf man who works with BIO in Addis Ababa. Each year one of the ministries he pastors hosts a conference for the Deaf in Addis Ababa and the surrounding region. This is an evangelistic time as well as a time of fellowship. Even though it is just 3 days, I imagine it is every bit as packed as a week of Deaf camp.

Bro. Bizuayehu (we call him Biz for short) organized the weekend in which they had about 250 Deaf attend from 11 different cities or villages. There were 15 saved over the weekend.

Bro. Biz has asked for continued prayer as they are now involved in discipleship of these new believers. Already they have baptized 6 of the recent converts.

This conference took place about three weeks ago and when Bro. Biz wrote me to tell me the results, I became very emotional with the thought that though I could not be there in person to work in the conference, I am able to be on a team that accomplished this great work for the Lord. It struck me at that time that pastors and individuals who support missionaries doing their work around the world get to have the same involvement as I did in a project such as this. You may not be able to directly help a conference like this by cooking a meal or preaching a sermon in Addis Ababa, but through your prayers and financial support of our family you are involved in a real way in the work that the Lord uses us to do.

Tags: Addis Ababa,Bizuayehu,conference,Deaf,Ethiopia
Categories: Spotlight
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