Dear friends, mission partners, brothers and sisters in Christ. First and foremost we want to express our extreme thankfulness to the Lord for His faithfulness in providing for our family’s needs. But we also want to thank each and every person who prays for and financially supports this ministry. Thank you for responding to the call to missions. We understand everyone cannot pack up and leave their country to serve the Lord and preach the Gospel overseas, but all believers are certainly called to be involved in the Great Commission with equal passion both at home and overseas. Some go, some send. And those that pray for and give to missions play a role just as important as those on the mission field. Brothers and sisters, the Lord has used your prayers and sacrificial giving to keep us here as we just celebrated four years on the mission field just last week! We have seen the Lord do many things. We have learned so much and grown in so many ways. Thank you for your partnership in the Gospel. I pray that God has been, and will continue to be glorified!
I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. – Philippians 1:3-5
The Lord never ceases to amaze us. We have seen Him blessing the work in Hato Mayor in a special way. We are seeing more and more people coming to the church. We are have been consistently full Sunday mornings and even have around 30 people coming to Wednesday night prayer and Bible study meetings! I am not one to get too excited about numbers, I understand the reality of the state of many souls and that there is SO much work still to do. But the fact that the Lord is bringing many more to be exposed to the Gospel and the teaching of His Word IS exciting! Here are a few of the beautiful and humbling things we have been up to as of late:
We are consistently going to the orphanage every Thursday for the children’s Bible study. Most recently we have been helping to get the lice there under control.
We are currently expositorily preaching and teaching through the Gospel of Mark and the book of James.
We have men and women’s Bible studies every Saturday and have been concentrating on working through the church member’s families and neighbors and friends in our evangelism efforts. We see the Lord using this moreso than some some of our past evangelism strategies. This is also where many of the new faces in church are coming from lately.
We recently reached out to some prostitutes in the city through the sisters in church and a sister that was visiting who has experience working in this type of ministry. We had six women and some of their children come for a special meal we prepared for them as a group of christian women served them and loved them before they received a message from sister Stephanie who was visiting from New York.
We had the privilege of baptizing two people this month and have two weddings planned.
We had the opportunity to go to Barahona to join in the work of a group we know and back to Cotuí to do evangelism and preach the Gospel during outdoor services that we held there.
We have been bringing the handicapped girl from the neighborhood (who for a long time has professed to be an atheist) to church for a few weeks now. She recently lost her grandfather and we have been there with her and the family during that difficult process and had the opportunity to minister to him as well during that time. This encounter with death so close to home has brought her to a place of rethinking things. She is coming to church…and she is liking it! We pick her up and take her home. It is very possible she has been converted, praise the Lord!! Pray as we will be paying her a vist at her home tomorrow as we are out following up with some and visiting others for the first time. There ares so many things going on, it is challenging. Pray for me, pray for our family, pray for the church.
The Lord is certainly working and we have the great privilege and honor of serving Him. In all we do, the verse that continually comes to mind is Luke 17:10.
So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.'” – Luke 17:10
Pray.