— Jason Skipper 2009/06/30 22:21

— Printable Version: letter.usa.june.29.2009.finally.2.pdf

Greetings from Santa Cruz, Bolivia! We pray that God blesses your life and family in an amazing way during this time. I can say that God has been so good to us!

We finally moved to Santa Cruz on June 11th. Moving from one city to another is not my idea of fun. It's a lot of work and stress. We are now probably 80% unpacked and can live normal lives again. We've had quite a few people over to the house in the past week for a meal, and that's been nice. Our house is very nice, although the yard is currently unusable. The last people who lived there had a large dog that dug up the yard, so they pulled out all of the grass and replanted before they left. It will be very nice about 2 months from now, but right now the kids haven't been able to take advantage of a yard… something we haven't had for years in Sucre. Rent is twice as expensive as in Sucre. We are paying $500 dollars a month for the place. The location is very good for us, which is very important. Santa Cruz is a city of 1.5 million people and is quite large. We are happy to be living only 5 minutes from the kid’s school and about 10 minutes (in our car) from the place we’ve chosen for the church. We feel that God has blessed us tremendously with this place!

The kids have taken the whole move great. They love it. In Santa Cruz there is a much larger English speaking community. In Sucre we had more or less 12 English speaking friends. In Santa Cruz there are probably several hundred. There's even an English speaking church. Erynn and Jordan went to their Bible School last week. They absolutely loved it.

Jordan's language skills have just blossomed lately. He still suffers a lot in pronunciation, but I think that he will be OK going into Pre-K this year at the English school. We have decided to start him in school a year later than normal, and feel that he will be better that way. He is now five… entering Pre-K this year and next year he'll start Kindergarten. Derrick is just jabbering away all day. We bought a bunk bed for the boys now that we've moved. Jordan's excited about sleeping on the top bunk, and Derrick likes not being stuck in the crib anymore! We live next to several soccer fields. I (Jason) have been jogging pretty well every day, and Erynn has been accompanying me on most of those runs. It’s nice to get out and move around a lot more (In Sucre, I always felt closed in). I’ve been feeling so much better. Since our trip to the states in December/January, I’ve lost 46 lbs. It’s amazing what that can do for your health.

Norah and I continue to pastor both churches in Sucre and Santa Cruz. The leadership team is mostly in charge of daily activities in Sucre. We fly to Sucre every other week to minister to the congregation on Sundays and to our leadership team on Mondays.

The contract for the place that we’ve been using for services over the past 4 years in Sucre has ended. The owner has asked us to start looking for another place, which is tough because there are VERY FEW places that are the size we need. We’ve been looking for months, but haven’t found anything suitable yet.

The church is Sucre is doing very well. Our leadership team seems to be growing without us being there. The fact that we are not there most of the time, but we continue to supervise and guide works very well. They are maturing quickly, without losing focus. We’re 100% sure that we’ve done the right thing in moving to Santa Cruz.

Over the past few months we have become increasingly frustrated with the work in Santa Cruz. We’ve been traveling there since February, and have opened several small groups. We had the large evangelistic campaign in April where around 55 people received the Lord. Those two things have gone very well. Our main frustration has been that we haven’t been able to really START as a church. We’ve been looking for a place desperately since April but hadn’t found anything. Any place that was suitable cost $1,500 dollars a month rent or more. A new church in Bolivia just can’t do that. Additionally, we need to buy chairs, a sound system, projector, and other things. It looked impossible. We had hoped that maybe something would happen so that we could do it, but no miracles occurred. Several weeks ago Norah and I decided, after talking to our mentor in Argentina, that the best thing to do would be for me to travel home to the states for 4 or 5 weeks and to try to raise the money. I didn’t feel good about it, but it seemed like the only possible solution. We would raise the money needed to start and to rent a worthwhile place, planning to cover 5 or 6 months rent. During that time we would work hard with the church, trying to grow enough for it to be able to pay the rent on its own.

We had pretty well given up on finding a place before the trip, but two days before I planned to buy my ticket, we got a call from a couple in the church. They had just seen a place and wanted us to go see it. We did, and after a little brainstorming session we realized that the place would be perfect. The rent was $600 a month, but this couple really wanted to rent the back part for themselves. It’s quite a large place, with several large rooms in the front, a 3000 sq/ft middle part, and a small apartment in the back. It was decided that we would pay $400 and they would pay $200 a month. The middle part is the perfect size for the church. We need to put in a portable roof over the center part, take out the plants, and place flooring in the center. We have permission from the owner to do that. $400 a month in a strategic place is so much cheaper than anything else we’ve seen, and is probably reachable for the church from the beginning! Glory to God!

Ok, here’s the deal. We need some help. We finally have a place, but we have a lot of work to do before we can begin and we don’t have the money to do it. We know that God will provide, but we need to let the need be known. We MUST put in a roof that we can take out when we leave. It will need to be a metal structure with some type of outdoor material as a roof. That will cost about $3,500. We need to take out the garden in the middle and put down a simple floor. We estimate that will cost about $1,500. We have reduced our start-up costs by bringing 200 chairs and 2 large speakers from Sucre. We also decided not to buy instruments in the beginning. We will use backing tracks instead. We still need to buy a projector, a computer, decorations, and a stage. We also need about $2000 to print evangelistic material and advertisement for the long evangelistic campaign that we HOPE to begin on July 24th. Below, you can see a complete list of our estimated startup costs.

We have been somewhat frustrated over the past few months, but we believe that God knows EXACTLY what He is doing. We have received so many promises from Him for the work that has started here. We will work hard and believe in Him until the end. God is good, and we know that He will abundantly provide! If you can give, remember that all gifts are tax deductible. You can give online on our website or you can send a check to: The Hand of Hur, Inc., 293 Bray Hill Lane, Oakland, MD 21550.

We thank you so much. May God bless your life immensely, in all you do! Please continue to pray for us daily. We need it so much.

Love,

— Jason Skipper 2009/05/10 10:35

I put a few more pictures in the Photo Gallery too… from our family trip to Cochabamba. Check them out. You'll LOVE the pictures of the kids.

— Jason Skipper 2009/05/09 10:23

Greetings from… Sucre, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Buenos Aires… and everywhere else that we've been or will be during this time! What a year this has been for us so far! I never would have dreamed living the life that we are living currently. Let me explain a little bit more about all that is happening here in our lives and ministry!

Santa Cruz

Since February, we have been traveling weekly back and forth between Sucre and Santa Cruz. We have several small groups in Santa Cruz, and on April 10, 11 and 12 we held an evangelistic event in a small coliseum close to the center of the city. We've had quite a bit of success. In the event we held on Easter weekend, 55 people received the Lord. We've been working hard trying to visit all of those people and, in some cases, start new small groups in their homes.

Our GOAL is to begin having weekly celebrations (services) on June 14th, although we have 2 small problems. 1) We don't have a place to meet yet… and 2) We don't have any chairs or sound equipment, etc.

In our letters, many times I stress the importance of the small groups, but I believe that a small group can't prosper on its own. It needs to be part of a larger family. We put a lot of emphasis on our weekly celebrations in Sucre, and in our short time with our work in Santa Cruz, I've found this to be so true. It's been very hard for us to really “Take off” and “fly”. The small groups are reaching more and more people, but without the worship that can only be reproduced in the services, the move of God's Spirit through the word, and the feeling of being part of something important together with many other people, we haven't been able to reach and do what we hoped to do up to this point.

We're not really sure how we are going to do it… but we are praying HARD that God would provide the place AND the finances, and we are looking at ALL of our options, so that we can start on that day just over month away. In any case, the start has been very successful, as we have close to 40 people in our small groups and meetings… hoping to add on to that in the coming weeks.

Sucre

Something very interesting happened last December when we announced to the church in Sucre that we were opening a new church in Santa Cruz. I'm not sure what it is about expansion, but people love it. Since then, the church in Sucre has caught on fire. Over the years we have had several growth spurts, and we are in the middle of one right now, and it is exciting.

It's quite interesting pastoring churches in different cities, different cultures, almost like different worlds at the same time. We travel to Santa Cruz on Thursdays for a meeting that night, hold several different cell groups and meetings on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday afternoon we fly back to Sucre for the weekly celebration. We have meetings with our leadership teams on Monday and Tuesday, and we rest on Wednesday, and then we do it all over again on Thursdays.

Norah and I have slowly been delegating more and more responsibility to our leadership team. They are now planning and organizing almost everything that happens in the church in Sucre. They organize the services, the cell groups, the retreats, fund raisers, events, etc. Norah and I arrive in Sucre basically to preach and minister to our team personally… then they do all of the work. Of course, they present their plans and activities to us for approval before they actually do them, but they are doing most things. We were worried that all of this change could cause problems in the church, but have seen something totally different. It's obvious that God has His hand in all of this, because we can see His work in every aspect of our work in Sucre and in our work here in Santa Cruz. God is great!

As a family, we are all doing very well. Derrick is getting bigger and ornerier, Jordan seems to be getting better and better with his speech, and Erynn… well I'm not sure how to explain it… but she seems like an adolescent already, although she's only 9! We brought the kids down to Santa Cruz for a week back in April, and they all just LOVED it here. We also used that week to get Erynn and Jordan signed up for their new school. Erynn went to classes for half a day, and afterwards Erynn said to me… “DAD, I don't like my new school… I LOVE IT”. So that was a great sign.

Our plan is to move permanently to Santa Cruz on June 8th, less than a month away. We are currently looking for a house, and have been for several months. Until now, we haven't found the “perfect” place. Sooner or later we'll have to make a decision.

Please continue to pray with us and for us during this time. We have SO many things going on, it's almost impossible to keep everyone up to date on it all. We love AND appreciate everyone so much for helping us to do God's work here in Bolivia. Help us pray for the move, both churches, and for a financial MIRACLE that God knows we need so much.

Blessings,

— Jason Skipper 2009/02/18 09:24

Good morning everyone!

I really wish that I was better at updating the website… but I guess that wishing doesn't make me any better at it. Since we last updated here, we have been back to the USA for a month, we returned to Bolivia and have now inaugurated the new church in Santa Cruz!

As most of you know, we were home in Garrett County from mid December through mid January. We had a great time, and really enjoyed seeing everyone… and also most enjoyed meeting Derrick for the first time too!

Our Goal in the States

Our main goal was to raise much more monthly support, and to be honest, although we received quite a few new pledges, we didn't even come close to our goal.

As we have mentioned before… we have really had a tough time of it over the past year or so. This is because of the rising costs of living and ministry here in Bolivia PLUS the fact that over the years we have slowly lost support, mainly because of lack of contact. That, and the fact that we have felt VERY CLEARLY from God that we are supposed to extend our ministry to the city of Santa Cruz, put us in a tight spot. How? With what?

After analyzing these questions… we basically said that the only way that we're going to be able to pull it off is to raise a whole lot of monthly support, in the middle of the worst economic crisis that most of us have ever experienced, in only one month! Our monthly income wasn't reaching; we weren't able to pay our bills on time. We were WAY behind on Erynn's school fees, etc. That's here in Sucre, in Santa Cruz the cost of living is about 30% to 40% higher. Our original budget just to start the church in Santa Cruz was $32,000 to $36,000, depending on what we could raise. Our estimates for Rent and Bills and Salaries there were close to $4000.

Results?

Needless to say, we didn't even reach our goal for the personal income that we felt that we would need to live in Santa Cruz, let alone raise enough one time gifts and monthly support to begin the church in Santa Cruz.

That's where the bad news ends… THANK GOODNESS!!! (To make this clear, we have received quite a few new pledges since we have returned… but they still don't reach… YET) .

Something that we have learned over the years is that God doesn't usually work how we expect him to work. Knowing this and knowing CLEARLY that God had called us to do this; we decided to go ahead and do it anyway, even though we don't have any money to do it. We didn't know how, but we just decided to charge forward. Boy I'm glad that we did.

We had originally set the date of February 5th as the day that we would have our first meeting with all of those who wanted to work in Santa Cruz. We decided to continue forward with that date. We didn't know WHO would be there or WHERE we would meet, but we decided to do it anyway.

I flew down to Santa Cruz on Saturday January 31st, and stayed in a cheap hotel there. After several days of looking around, I had decided to just have that first meeting in a medium sized room at the hotel. So on Tuesday the 3rd, I began calling a few people that we knew were going to be there. To my surprise, the first guy who I talked to said… Pastor, we have a place to meet now! He had talked to someone that he knew… whose relatives own a house in the center of the city. After talking to them, they decided to allow us to use their patio as a place to meet for FREE as long as we needed it. WOW… A MIRACLE! We went to see the place on Wednesday with Norah who flew down a few hours before… and it was perfect. The place can fit around 80 people in it pretty easily, they had chairs and even a small platform area to speak from for services. The owner, who is a Christian, told us that we are welcome to use everything that she has for as long as it is useful to us!

So we called everyone that we knew, gave them the address to the house, and began preparing for our meeting the next evening.

Our First Meeting

We really didn't expect many people on the first evening. Three of our leaders from the church in Sucre had decided to move to Santa Cruz to work with us there. We knew 2 more couples and one other from Santa Cruz who would be there. Other than that, we didn't expect much.

To our surprise 24 people showed up in that meeting! We had several who had before been part of our church in Sucre show up, as well as several people who had been part of a large church that had broken up several years earlier after big time pastoral problems. Many of them had never found another church where they had felt comfortable, and when they heard that we were coming, they decided right away that they wanted to be a part of this new work. (God has been so good in allowing us to gain a really good reputation around the entire country).

The meeting went wonderfully. Norah and I shared the vision that we have for Santa Cruz, and the entire country. We shared that we have the minimum goal of having 300 members in one years’ time, and that if God was going to do this work that it would need to involve every single one of them. We shared that we didn't have ANY money, and that anything and everything that we do will have to come from giving and fund raising. In few words, they were ecstatic.

Expectations and Reality

We had originally expected to travel to Santa Cruz every TWO weeks and not begin having services until April, but everyone wanted to get started right away. After much discussion, we decided to have our first evangelistic service on Saturday the 14th. We flew home on Saturday the 7th, and both of us returned to Santa Cruz last Friday. We had a meeting with those same people again, and on Saturday we had our first Service, which was amazing. At least 15 new cell groups will open over the next two weeks. We flew back to Sucre on Sunday, and had our service here in the evening. We plan on doing this continually up until we permanently move to Santa Cruz in June of this year.

God IS With Us

We still don't know how it's all going to happen, but we do know that God is with us! That's the most important! We are seeing his hand in everything we do.

Partners Needed!

To put it bluntly, we still don't have enough money to travel to Santa Cruz and back every week. To fly down (by bus it would take us at least 17 hours each way, through rivers and on terrible roads… this would kill us quickly if we do it every week), and to stay in a CHEAP hotel, it's going to cost us around $1000 a month. Where will this come from? I don't know. But I'm sure that God will move earth and sky for it to happen.

We PRAY that God will move people to understand the need, and to be sensitive to his voice. If you don't support us yet, we ask that you would… this is an awesome adventure that we want EVERYONE to be a part of!

Yesterday God gave us a pleasant surprise. A dentist who was once part of our church who now currently lives in Argentina is here in Sucre for a few weeks. She came to our house yesterday with a message that she felt that God had given her a month ago for us. (She had no idea about what has been going on in our lives or ministry as of late).

She told us that God had instructed her to tell us several things. 1st, that He has not forgotten about the promise that He gave to us many years ago. He has been preparing everything, and that we WILL see that promise fulfilled in our lives shortly. She gave us this verse from Genesis 28:15… “And, behold, I am with you, and will keep you in every place where you go, and will bring you again into this land. For I will not leave you until I have done that which I have spoken of to you.”.

That promise that God gave us many years ago was that he was going to give us multitudes throughout all of Bolivia, and that he was going to use our lives to bring complete change and blessing to this country.

She also told us that God showed her that economically he was going to raise up our lives and the church like he never has before. During the worst economic crisis that the world has seen in a long time, he was going to bless us like never before, and that those who are part of what we are doing will be immune to the problems that the world is facing. We will be a testimony to thousands of his faithfulness.

Glory to God!!! May his word be true! We will put our trust in HIM.

As always, this is VERY long. I really hope you made it through!!! May God bless you richly and if you have ANY questions or just want to write… PLEASE DO!!!

Local Phone Number

Don't forget that we have an Oakland phone number through VONAGE. It works great and we can call and answer the phone here just like we were there… Call us! Our number is…

301-859-4401 (EDIT: We are GMT -4 Hours… 1 Hour Ahead of Eastern Standard Time - EST)

Facebook

Both Norah and I are on facebook too, and we try to keep that very up to date. It's a very good way of keeping in touch. Just look for JASON SKIPPER and NORAH SKIPPER there on facebook, or you can click on these links…

• Jason http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1582834311
• Norah http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1452346714

Hope to hear from you soon!

Love,

— Jason Skipper 2008/11/11 15:56

Greetings from one of the most interesting places to live on earth… Sucre, Bolivia! I’m not sure if that’s an overstatement or not, but life is definitely never boring here.

True Growth in the Church:

This has been a wonderful year for our church and for our ministry as a whole. One of our main concerns this year was that we had many people in the cell groups, but the majority of those people were not growing spiritually as we would have liked. Our leaders, in their desire to open more small groups, worried more about reaching new people than helping the ones they had already reached to grow in the Lord. We decided to put more emphasis on the quality of the cell groups, and in the personal growth of each member than on the number of cell groups. The result has been very good. We are seeing much more growth and maturity in our people.

We currently have nearly 900 people in our cell groups. We have two separate Schools of Leaders, with around 70 enrolled in each one. A few months ago we started our second weekend service. Half of our leaders have their weekend service on Saturday evening at 7:00 PM, and the other half have their services on Sunday at 6:30 PM. Both services are filling up well. We can still add more chairs, so we’re not full; but hopefully we will be soon!

We are also concentrating on becoming more complete as a church, emphasizing several areas; the children’s ministry, our worship arts ministry (drama, poetry), and the Dance (choreography) ministry. We’ll be holding our first Children’s Encounter Retreat at the end of this month.

Loving the Unloved:

We are working more in the social area. Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in all of Latin America. With the financial policies of the government, high inflation, and the worldwide financial slowdown, people are truly suffering. Many of our members, people who are apparently middle class, have shared with me that they are literally suffering to feed their family each day. It’s amazing, but some university students in our church are actually living alone on $20 a month.

We’d like to begin a ministry where people can give gifts, clothes, money, and talents to those in need. Over the past few months we have been very successful in collecting used clothing and other things for the needy. We have quite a few doctors, lawyers and others who are interested in donating their time and talents to help those who need it. We have all the equipment necessary to open a small medical center, if we can find a good place, and complete the necessary paperwork.

Expansion:

We have talked about this for several years now, but we feel the time is right. If all goes well, and we are able to raise the monthly support necessary, we want to expand our church to another city of Bolivia (In other words, plant a new church). We are currently looking at Santa Cruz. The plan is to take a team of leaders from our Sucre church, and begin cell groups and celebrations possibly as early as next April. This has been on our hearts for years, and several months ago, we felt a direct word from God about this. Since then we have been praying about it incessantly. We continue to feel God’s confirmation, and have asked that He will open the doors financially. Please help us pray about this.

We are doing very well. Norah’s been terribly busy over the past three months. She is directing the prayer group, and working very closely with the administration work in the office. She is also teaching in both Schools’ of Leaders. Yesterday, (November 10th) was Derrick’s first birthday. He’s fun! You can tell that he is going to be ornery. I think he will walk any day now. He can walk holding on to something, but he’s scared to let go. Jordan’s language skills have developed much over this past year. He speaks long sentences (mostly in Spanish), and he REALLY tries to make himself understood. He does not pronounce sounds well yet, but he is improving He goes to a pre-kindergarten type school, and gets along very well with the other kids. There doesn’t seem to be a language barrier with him and other kids, for which we are very relieved. Erynn is in third grade. This week her teacher began sending extra work home with her, and will continue to do so up until we travel home. She will miss several weeks of school, and has to have all of her schoolwork done before we travel.

The political situation in Bolivia is a mess. Right now, things are calm, but things can get nasty in seconds. President Evo does pretty well whatever he pleases, then there's a big fight about it… people die, they go into negotiations with the opposition for two or three weeks… nothing comes of the negotiations, but the people have calmed down by then. Then it all happens again a few weeks later. So far, he hasn’t kicked all of us Americans out of the country, and I hope that it never comes down to that. One thing we have learned, though, is that we can expect anything from this government. Thank God, we have never felt or been in danger, but it’s important that we always stay away from all demonstrations… and those occur quite often. Today, most of the city of Sucre is blocked off because some merchants are not happy with the mayor. That’s what we live with daily in this country that God loves so much.

We’ll be home for Christmas!

We’ll be home for Christmas! We won’t be home for long, but we will travel home on December 15th for a five week visit. It’s the perfect time to leave Sucre, because most university students travel during summer vacations. We will put the church on autopilot for almost the entire time that we are home. My kids are dying to see snow! I’m not… but oh well .

Our Plans of Returning to the USA?

I haven’t mentioned anything about returning home for good, as we planned to do over a year and a half ago. I really want to… but God won’t let us yet. When will it happen? I don’t know, although I’m pretty sure that it will happen. I promise to explain this in more detail when we are back in the states with you.

With You:

We won’t be home long enough to visit every church. We’ll do our best on that. We would LOVE to visit you while we are home. I don’t want to be too forward on this, but if anyone would like to have us over to their houses to eat or play games or whatever, we’d LOVE THAT.

ATTENTION:

WE NOW HAVE A GARRETT COUNTY BASED PHONE NUMBER, SO WE CAN MAKE AND RECEIVE LOCAL PHONE CALLS HERE IN SUCRE. Believe me! We have an Oakland number… 301-859-4401, which rings here. There are no international phone costs for you. I promise. It works through the Internet using VONAGE. Call us, and we can set something up for our time in the states. May God Bless you in all you do! We hope to see you soon… Love,