November 2023 Prayer Letter
Good Day from Bolivia,
We are amazed at all the Lord allows us to be a part of. Sometimes we wonder what our small family can do amongst so many souls. Then as we write these letters we look back and remember all He has allowed us to see and do for Him.
In October, we had the privilege of preaching at our 1st church, Mount Carmel. We had services both Saturday night and Sunday morning to celebrate their anniversary. It was good to see a few faithful faces that have been there since their first service. Please continue praying for this church as they press forward for the cause of Christ.
This month we are excited to be able to turn our 3rd church over to Pastor Arturo. We have been with them for about 3 years, and we believe they are ready to be autonomous. When we first met these believers, they were struggling to recover from the pandemic. Their meeting place was under a small, rented tin covering and a tree where we battled the wind, the sun, and the rain. This young church has seen a lot of hard times with the pandemic and a lot of political unrest. Now we own property and have our own building. You have played a great part in making this possible. We are excited about the future of Eternal Life Baptist Church and what we believe God will do through Pastor Arturo and his family.
As we step out of Eternal Life Baptist, there are multiple other projects we are involved in. We are helping two church plants that were left by a missionary who passed away last year. One is a new church in an indigenous Guaraní community and the other is a replant of a church that shut down a few years ago. These churches are 2-3 hours from our home so we are somewhat limited in how we can be involved on a regular basis due to the distance. We are also still working to print the Guaraní Bible because no more copies are available for the 233,000+ Bolivian Guaraní people. We hope to have permission for this by December.
I would ask that you help us pray about some other projects we have going. There is a man of God here that we have come to respect. He is working in a town called Villa Montes plus 2 indigenous communities located about 7 hours from us. Due to his faithfulness, I consider him a modern-day Apostle Paul. He has been beaten and left for dead multiple times only to go back to these villages over and over. The other denominational churches and the witch doctors do not like him and have done their best to get rid of him, but he preaches anyway. He has won the trust of these communities because the people see him as the only preacher who really cares for them. As a result, they are allowing him to obtain property within the communities which is something an outsider, like him, is not normally allowed to do. These are communities that foreigners would never be able to reach but we can certainly help those who do have access in very tangible ways such as with property and a simple building. Bolivia is experiencing an extreme drought, and in these communities, it has not rained in over a year. The locals have resorted to selling livestock to bring in tanks of water to sustain the rest of their animals. We are making plans to connect to the city water main of a neighboring community and lay pipe to bring in water twice a week for half a day. We plan to put in large storage tanks on the new church property to keep a reserve supply. In the other community we have been told there is ground water. Due to the cost of digging a well we are working to do more studies to make sure before investing in this.
These projects are enough to keep us busy, but we are still looking for a place to plant a new church closer to home in our city of Santa Cruz. As we have mentioned previously, there are some outreaches that we know of asking for help. One of them keeps coming to the front of our minds more than the others but we are still waiting for God’s direction. We greatly appreciate your continued prayer for our family and the ministry here. We need your prayers more each day as we seek to do more for our Savior.
