June 2023 Update
We are still very busy with many “irons in the fire” as they say. We have a lot to report on this month – some good and encouraging, some seemingly bad, but can we really label anything that God has His hand in as bad? We wish it were so that we only had progress and new opportunities to talk about, but life is real in Bolivia, just as it in the states. We have ministry challenges to face as well.
I can tell you about two main setbacks in our ministry right now. One is that our first church is losing their pastor. He is stepping away with good intentions of helping his family through some problems they are facing. This has burdened us for the pastor’s family and the future of the church. It isn't mature enough yet to continue without help with finding a new pastor. Please help us pray as we look for someone to lead this congregation.
We have also had some costly issues come up since our last letter. The main one is that our new church building was broken into. We had $1,200 saved to put in the front door and the final windows. This was the last main project our family had planned to assist with in finishing the construction of this building. We had to spend this money to repair the damage, replace stolen items, and make the building more secure. Though I don't know them, the actions of these thieves show me that they must be lost. Would you help us pray for an opportunity to share the gospel with them?
Sometimes in ministry, it is easy to focus on the things that set you back. We often focus on the negative so much that we miss the blessings. Our blessings start with a "Friends Day" we had a couple weeks ago. It was a huge success! This was our first big day at our new building. We specifically pushed the members to invite their friends and the family that brought the most visitors would receive a prize. We had over 50 first time visitors that weekend! I was encouraged to see the effort they put into it because that is almost the number of regular attenders. What made it even more valuable was that we saw 3-4 people saved that day! We have had some of those visitors return and a couple more new visitors since our Friends Day.
Our Guaraní pastor reading John 3:16 in their language.
I previously mentioned 3 churches we are wanting to help that were started by a missionary who passed away last year. One of these churches is in an indigenous Guaraní community called Ivitipora. We are intrigued by this church in particular because we have never specifically worked with an indigenous group here. There are only 200 people in the entire community. Their church building is not complete, but the people seem to have hope of continuing as a church. They speak a specific Bolivian dialect of Guaraní, and I was excited to find that there is a Bible translation in their own dialect! We are praying about doing a Bible project to reach every individual with the gospel. The local Bible society only has 60 available and has indicated that they may not order any more of this translation. If they do, it would be over a year before we could receive them. So, we have started asking about getting the rights to print these Bibles ourselves. As we have been investigating this, we have learned that another national pastor has also been working with 2 other Guaraní communities. If we can figure out how to get more Bibles, I would love to help put God’s word into all their homes too.
Lastly, we have a good update on Jessica's health. We have done many tests and analyses, and both stateside doctors we spoke to do not believe she needs surgery now. We had discussed going stateside if needed, but the treatment they recommended is a specific series of shots which we found here locally. To take our family stateside would have cost us about $5,000 but we can do the same shots here for half of that, even without our insurance. This is a blessing for us regarding the ministry as well. We have so much happening right now, being away would make everything much harder. We have already started the shots which she receives once a week for 4 weeks. The first day or two after the shot she is very sore, but they do seem to be helping the overall problem.
Even when God blesses, our minds can quickly turn back to focus on the trials in our lives. Over the last few weeks, we have had to be careful about this because even though there have been discouraging events, God has blessed in many ways too. It is best to just dwell on how good God is to us and to remember that He can be glorified through both the blessings and the trials. Thank you for your continued prayers for our family and our ministry. They are appreciated and needed.
