— Jason Skipper 2008/09/02 11:11 America/La_Paz

Good Morning Everyone,

So much has been going on here in Bolivia, I really can't seem to find the time to sit down and write it all out! Right now we're in the airport in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, waiting for our connecting flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina. We're heading to Buenos Aires with Norah to attend a Leadership Conference there, with Gustavo and Susana Rossi, their pastors and several others. There is a group of about 12 leaders from our church who are traveling now, most of them by land. Norah and I decided to fly, because that trip by land is a minimum of 48 hours, sometimes longer.

Since our last letter, so many things have been going on here. The church is just booming. Really, since the beginning of this year quite a few things have come together to get things back in order in the church, and now we are beginning to see the fruits. In February we had a large leadership retreat. In that retreat, God literally challenged us to stop talking about and to get back to doing the work that he has called us to do. In March, we did a huge reorganization in the leadership in the church. We moved up quite a few of the most fruitful leaders so that they would form part of our main leadership group. In April we had our annual cell church conference, which was great for all of us. In June we began what we called the “Prodigal Month”, where we went out and found so many of those who had been with us before, but had later fallen away. That continued up through the most part of July. We had many people return to the Lord, and at the same time we hay many more come to the Lord during all of those activities.

This past month, we have freed our group of leaders to start doing their own Encounter Retreats. Since, things have been so active in the church that it's hard to keep up, trying to figure out all that is going on! Over the past 4 weeks, we have had 9 Encounter Retreats! It's been quite exciting.

Our family is doing very well. Derrick is now crawling all over the place, he runs around in a walker well, and can even walk some on his own holding on to things. He seems to be developing very well. Jordan's speech continues to improve. He speaks better Spanish than English right now, but we're working on teaching him both. He understands both just fine.

Norah and I are traveling alone now. Norah's sister, Rosemary, along with a girl who we trust from the church in Sucre are taking care of the kids. It's hard leaving the kids… especially Derrick, but I think that it's good for all of us. It's good for me and Norah, just so we can get a few days to be away from them, and have some quality time together. I also think that it's good for the kids. They (at least Erynn & Jordan) seem to adapt to change quite well. It helps them not be so attached to us all of the time.

Please keep us in your prayers. We appreciate your prayers so much. We also thank all of those who have been so faithful to God and good to us in sending gifts to help us continue forward. We're doing much better now, although we still regularly have more expenditures than monthly income. We just ask that you would pray for us, and if God puts it on your heart, please support us financially in any way that you can.

May God bless you richly. We thank God for your lives, and pray for you always. Write us if you can!

Love,

Jason, Norah, Erynn, Jordan & Derrick Skipper

— Jason Skipper 2008/06/05 12:59 America/La_Paz

I forgot to mention on Saturday that on Sunday we had a wedding in the local jail here in Sucre. A few months ago, one of my disciples met a girl who had just arrived from Peru. She came to visit the father of her son that is in the jail. He led her to Christ and later went to the jail and led him to Christ also. He has been discipling them over the past several months, and on Sunday morning I married this couple there in the jail. It was quite an experience. Mario (my disciple) organized the entire thing, worked with his disciples to get everything ready, etc. About 50 people from outside of the jail went to the wedding along with all of the inmates. I, of course, took advantage of the moment to share the gospel. Afterwords we had a reception in the patio inside of the jail, and we ate and played games, and just enjoyed the time to talk to the inmates.

Tonight we have a baptism in the church. We have a portable pool that we fill up for these events. I'll take some pictures and post them here soon. I'll post some from the wedding too. We have about 30 people signed up for the baptism.

Blessings!

Jason

— Jason Skipper 2008/05/31 20:06 America/La_Paz

Hello Everyone!

I'll tell you, I really need to figure out WHY I get so far behind on these updates! I'm developing a theory, but I'm not 100% sure… I think that we have so many BIG things going on, that I want to give those BIG things justice by writing a lot about them, but since I want to do it well, and I never have enough time to do a good article on them, I just put it off until I do have time. Of course there NEVER is enough time. I decided this evening to just make some time. I have so many things to do, but hey… this is very important too!

This will be pretty long, so I'll try to divide it up into sections and add quite a few pictures, that way it should be a little bit easier to read.

Third International Cell-Church Conference… Sucre, Bolivia 2008

Way back in April, from April 24-26th, we held our 3rd annual Cell-Church Conference. Pastors Gustavo and Susana Rossi and Sebastian Carnival, all from the mega-church “Catedral de la Fe” (Faith Cathedral) in Buenos Aires, Argentina came in for the conference. We had pastors and congregations from over half of Bolivia, plus the assistance of missionaries from Brazil, Venezuela and the United States (I'm NOT counting myself). This year we held the conference in our own church building, which holds about 350 people well seated.

The conference went very well. The theme was “From The Inside Out”. The classes and sermons were geared towards pastors and cell leaders, helping us all understand that success in the conquest of our city and country is for everyone who believes, not just for a select few. God will and does use those who believe and are willing to give their all towards that cause.

We've had several churches from other parts of Bolivia come to our conference over the past several years. One church, from Santa Cruz, who has taken us as their model church, began with the cell vision last year after our conference. We've been monitoring them, and one of our disciples, Luis Fernando Negrón has traveled there to help them several times over the past year. They came this year with an amazing testimony. In 1 year of work with cells, they now have 30 small groups! Wow.

One of the most important aspects of the conference was that God moved in an awesome way. His presence was so evident, and we feel that God did something supernatural during the conference. The leaders from our church came out of the conference with such a different way of looking at the ministry, and we are beginning to experience once again the enthusiasm, power and revival that has characterized our growth over the past several years.

Here are some very small pictures from the conference. To see them in a much higher resolution, just click on the picture itself.

Travels - Trips to Cochabamba and La Paz(2x)

The day after our conference, we drove to Cochabamba for “Carachipampa Christian School's Field Days”. Erynn's school is an extension of an English school in Cochabamba, and they require that all students attend the Cochabamba school for a week each year. The group in Sucre have the custom of going for what they call “Field Days”. They have all types of running, jumping, ball throw and more sports, and each student competes with other their age and sex. Erynn was in the 7 & 8 year old girls group with about 20 other students. She participated in 6 events. The 100 meter dash, the 200, 400 & 800 meter runs, the standing long jump and the ball throw. She is quite a runner! She won the 200, 400 & 800 meter races. The longer the race, the easier she won. She's not the fastest girl out there, but she just keeps going, and everyone else just falls behind. She won the 1st place prize for her age group, winning the most amount of points for her team from her group. Needless to say, she was VERY happy. Here's a few pictures of Erynn there in Cochabamba… (Actually, the last one is in Potosí a few days ago… but it's a nice picture so I added it in there too. )

La Paz

After 5 days in Cochabamba, we traveled to La Paz for two main things. One, to fill out papers and apply for Derrick's U.S. Birth Certificate and Passport, which wasn't too hard to do. We should be getting them in the mail within a few days. We also had to do some medical tests on Jordan.

Jordan's Tests

Jordan is now 4 1/2 years old, and he is not talking well at all. For quite awhile we hoped that he was just a late talker, but it has become obvious that he has some sort of problem in that area. We've checked some things out in Sucre, but honestly there is very little knowledge or help from doctors here.

So we did quite a lot of tests on him… a tomography and a EEG. We also took him to a phonologist, and had him checked out with several different types of pediatricians. After several weeks of studies and traveling back and forth from La Paz twice , we've come to the conclusion that Jordan has an expressive speech disorder… basically in the articulation side of it. He understands English and Spanish very well, and he is now speaking 4 and 5 word sentences. The problem isn't his knowledge of language, it is his pronunciation of it.

We had him tested for several other disorders… apraxia, autism, etc., but the doctors have pretty well ruled out any type of sickness or other disorders. From my understanding, there really is no known medical reason for these articulation disorders in about 90% of children who have them. The good thing is that they are treatable. We were given quite a few exercises to teach Jordan to move his tongue and lips in certain ways. These seem to be helping him a lot. We need to go back to La Paz every 3 months or so to get him checked out and to get some more exercises for him.

All in all, we feel pretty good about him getting over this. I think within a few years he will be just fine. For more information, you can read these articles in Wikipedia…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_sound_disorder#Articulation_Disorders (Also read Residual Errors and Causes)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech-Language_Pathology_in_School_Settings#Articulation_Disorders

Upcoming Activities in the Church

After so many weeks of traveling, we're happy to be back in Sucre, continuing with our work here. One thing that God put on our hearts after the conference was the amount of people who have slipped away from us and God over the past several years. We've taken about 1500 people to the Encounter retreat, but many, if not a majority of those people are not with us now. All though the month of May, we began praying for these people, and we have now named June as the “Month of the Prodigal”, of course I'm talking about those who resemble the prodigal son in Luke 15. We will be going out and looking for these people throughout the month, doing activities weekly, and we will be finishing up the month with an Encounter Retreat for these people, and a huge celebration for them on Sunday June 29th. We may do that celebration service in a coliseum/arena here in the city. We'll see how everything goes.

We have a baptism planned for this coming Thursday, June 5th. We also are starting a new school in the church… for those who have finished our “School of Life”. This school is called the “School of Vision” and is focused intensely on cell group leadership and multiplication. We will be starting that on Thursday, June 8th.

In August, we will be uniting with several other cell churches in the southern region of Bolivia… Sucre, Potosí, and Taríja, and will be doing a combined conference for all of the cell leaders of our churches. There is a lot of expectation for this. I'll let you know more about that as we come closer to the date.

Conclusion

I could probably sit here and write for 8 more hours about all that is going on, but I'm sure no one would read it, so I'll stop after ONE MORE THING!…

HELP

I'd like to finish with a cry for HELP! I know that sounds awful, but it's true. We didn't do much fund-raising last year while we were home, thinking that we would be coming back very soon. Now things have changed and we remain here. We don't know how much longer, but we can't leave yet. (You can read earlier posts if you'd like more information on that.) The problem is that we are literally out of money, and we owe money on our credit-card. We used that to buy the plane tickets for the Pastors from Argentina (+/- $2000), and the inscription money did not cover the amount. The Hand of Hur is now 2 months behind on paying us our salary, and we owe two months rent ($500) and have to pay Erynn's school bill by the end of next week ($750). I also had to do something that I think is terrible… I had to withdraw cash from my credit card to be able to buy groceries and pay several of the bills in the house. We haven't wanted to say anything about this to you all, but we are in dire need right now, and that doesn't count all that we need to do here to accommodate the growth that we are experiencing in our ministry.

I really hate asking for your help, but that's what we live and work with down here, and we are doing it for God's glory. I know that he will provide (he always does), but it's important for me and you to understand that many times that provision is through you. So… if it is possible, PLEASE help. You can do it online securely with Paypal or you can send checks made out to “The Hand of Hur, Inc., 293 Bray Hill Lane, Oakland, MD 21550”. All gifts are tax deductible. Thank you so much, and may the Lord bless you richly!

As always, sooner or later, I'll continue updating the site! Check in often! Lot's of love…

Jason, Norah, Erynn, Jordan & Derrick Skipper

— Jason Skipper 2008/04/24 10:00 America/La_Paz

Hi everyone! I really wish I could keep up a little better than I do with this… but we have been SO busy. I'm not going to preach today about the title… but God gave me a little push yesterday, and I wanted to share that with you.

Today, we are beginning our 3rd Annual Cell Church Convention. As always, these events are time consuming, and MONEY consuming too. I have been pretty tired with all of the events going on, and yesterday about 1:00 I was kind of thinking… “I don't like to do these events… it sure is a lot easier to just continue with the normal routine… this is too much work!” I finally had about 10 minutes to sit down and relax at about 2:15 yesterday, so I turned on a Cristian TV station. The pastor who was preaching said… “Do you know why small churches remain small? Because Expansion hurts… it's difficult. Pastors who don't grow, don't grow because they like the commodity of being small…. they don't like the pain of growth!” Well… Sorry God… Ok, I won't complain any more!

Anyway… just a little news here to let you know what's going on. We held our campaign of Healing and Miracles from April 3rd through the 6th. God did an amazing work there. At least 1 person was healed of cancer, many people were healed of broken bones and arthritis, Gastritis, Hepatitis A, and quite a few others. We wanted to wait awhile before I announced all of those things… because we wanted medical proof. Now we have it. God did an amazing work that weekend. We had close to 100 people receive the Lord during those 4 days.

Two weeks ago we finished what was the 40 days of prayer and fasting in all of Sucre. We finished it with a huge march. Our church was in charge of advertising the event and getting the media (TV, Radios, etc.) involved. During the week of the 7th through the 13th, we visited something like 6 TV stations and more than 15 radio stations for interviews. On Sunday there was a huge march from the 4 points of the city, which all met in the Central Plaza, and there we had a service with several thousand people. Then every single one of those people kneeled in the plaza and we prayed together for Sucre and for Bolivia. It was amazing. Several TV stations covered the event.

As I said before… starting today we are starting our 3rd Annual International Cell Church Conference… Pastors Gustavo and Susana Rossi and Sebastian Carnival are coming in from Buenos Aires for the event. We have people who are coming from all around the country to participate… We've been preparing for this for months now… and also have spent A LOT of money. About $5,000 dollars so far. We hope to recuperate most of that with the inscriptions and offerings… That's our PRAYER anyway! Here's the Poster that we sent out for the conference…

On Sunday, after the conference… we will be traveling to Cochabamba for the school event that Erynn has to attend annually. After that we will be going to La Paz to get Derrick's US Birth Certificate and Passport. Please pray for us! We have a lot going on here. We need your prayers!

Just a reminder… We REALLY need finances… We have so many things going on here, and we want to EXPAND, as that pastor preached. If God puts it on your heart, please listen to him! I know with your seed God will bless you many times more. Thank you!

I hope that this post if at least half understandable… I've answered the phone 10 times and had 4 people come to the door since I started writing it, and I don't have time to read over it again… so HOPEFULLY it's a little understandable at least! May God bless you in all you do, and we hope to hear from you soon!

Love,

Jason, Norah, Erynn, Jordan & Derrick

— Jason Skipper 2008/03/24 08:36 America/La_Paz

Good morning! This really has been an exciting time for us here in Sucre. Sometimes it seems so hard to “Keep Up”, sharing with you all the things that are going on here in our lives and ministry! Mom wrote yesterday wanting to know if we were still alive… That's a sign, showing me that I need to do a little bit better in keeping in touch!

There's so much to write about, but I'll try to keep it short and to the point so that this post doesn't get TOO long!

DERRICK

Well, Derrick is now 4 1/2 months old, and is great. He's pretty well “great” in every way! He's been healthy; he's such a happy baby. He just smiles and laughs all of the time. He's a lot of fun. He just talks up a storm, plays with his voice, the things around him, etc.

We need to take him to the pediatrician soon, he's also due for some more vaccinations, so we'll probably have to do that this week some time. He's put on quite a bit of weight. He's weighing about 16 lbs now (16 1/2 lbs with his clothes on). We haven't measured him in quite awhile, but he has grown a lot!

THE REST OF US

When you are a baby, you get all of the attention. Since the rest of us aren't babies anymore, phenomenal things have to occur to hear much about it! In any case, Erynn and Jordan are doing very well. Erynn will be finishing 2nd grade in a few months, and Jordan is doing a lot better in his pre-kindergarten. He enjoys it a lot, and is learning quite a lot there. He is talking a little better, although he is still not understandable to most everyone except Erynn! He does seem to be putting sentences together now, sometimes of quite a few words… BUT he just doesn't pronounce things well at all. We realize that he has some sort of speech delay, but we're praying that it's just temporary and that it won't affect him his entire life! One thing we are certain of is that God has everything under his control… so we aren't too worried. He knows what he's doing. Norah's been great. A few weeks ago she got a few of those dizzy spells again, so she took more of those iron pills, and she immediately got better. I guess her body needs more iron than what she is taking in naturally at this time. I figure it has a lot to do with her breastfeeding Derrick.

MINISTRY

The ministry, of course, is what is keeping us so busy. We've been working hard on starting up quite a few new cell groups, along with consolidating the small groups that have recently opened and reopened. We continue with the 40 days of prayer in the church. Every morning, from 6 to 7 AM we have prayer there. Norah and I are leading this time, so we have to be there early. So we get up about 5:25 am every day, get ourselves and Derrick ready, and then we go and open up. We have about a 20 minute devotional at about 6:30 and usually get back home by about 7:25 in time to get Erynn ready and to school by 8:00 and Jordan to his school by 9:00.

During the past few weeks we've had quite a bit of movement in our main team of workers. A couple who has been with us for several years left last week to go live and work in Santa Cruz. We really don't like for those who work with us to leave us (Of Course), but since we don't pay most of them for the work they do, we can't FORCE them to stay. This couple was having some financial problems, and they were offered a job in an orphanage in Santa Cruz, so they ended up taking the job, with our blessing. We took in most of their disciples, and have also promoted several of our disciples' leaders. We now have 27 people on our main team of leadership between the two of us. I have 12 men, and Norah has 15 women.

We now have two MAJOR events coming up in the next month. From April 3rd to April 6th, we will be holding an evangelistic campaign in our church. I'm kind of jumping in head-first here. We are promoting it as an “Evangelistic Crusade of Healings and Miracles”. We believe that God wants to heal the sick, and as was prophesied in Isaiah 53, “By His stripes, we were healed”. We believe that he died on the cross so that we can have eternal life with him, and a blessed life here on Earth. During the past several months, quite a few people have been healed, and we believe that God wants to do even more. Several of our team of leaders are visiting the main hospital here in Sucre daily. On Friday, 16 people received the Lord while they were there, and on Saturday I was told that 14 received him as their savior also. God is doing a great work during this, time… and we give God all the glory!

We are also preparing for our 3rd annual International Cell-Church Conference that's coming up from April 24 to the 27th. Pastors Gustavo and Susanna Rossi will be coming again this year from Buenos Aires, Argentina. They now have close to 2000 cell groups under their ministry! It's exciting to have them come and share their experiences and God's word with us. We hope, as in years past, to have participants from all around Bolivia.

It's kind of hard to explain ALL of the things that we do daily here. We have several cell meetings a week, we meet individually with each of our team members monthly, and we have weekly meetings with other pastors in the city. In another meeting, Norah has prayer every Tuesday afternoon with other pastors and leaders from around the city. We have prayer every morning; we seem to be invited to preach in different churches and events almost weekly. We visit and minister to our team's disciples often. We prepare to teach for each of the events that we have, we are visited about 15 times a week by different people (that's a rough estimate), we make sure things are running smoothly in the administration of the church. We read and read and prepare and prepare, and visit those who are having babies (which we have many in the church during this time), we take the kids to school and piano lessons (Erynn is taking piano lessons), we take them to visit other kids, and others come here… That's not counting all of the work it takes to take care of Derrick, and cooking, etc. Man, when I write these things down, I get tired just typing it all out! Anyway, if you wonder what we really do here… there's a few of the things that I can remember right now!

We ask that you would ALWAYS pray for us. NEVER FORGET! We need God's help, his blessing and his power daily. I think I'll end this here. May God bless you in all you do.

Love,

Jason, Norah, Erynn, Jordan & Derrick

— Jason Skipper 2008/03/13 08:36 America/La_Paz

Hi Everyone, I promised in my last post that I would try to publish some videos here… So here they are. 2 BIG problems. They are HUGE, and they are in Spanish. Basically, if you have dial-up, forget about it… For the rest of you, enjoy! Everything is in Spanish, but they have good videos and pictures… etc. UPDATE… BY THE WAY, THESE VIDEOS ARE COMPRESSED SIGNIFICANTLY FROM THEIR ORIGINAL FORM, BUT THEY CONTINUE TO BE VERY LARGE!

We showed these videos to the church after each of the encounters, as an evangelistic tool. I will get more pictures up here SOMETIME soon!

Love, Jason

Men's Encounter… March 1 and 2

Women's Encounter… February 23 and 24

— Jason Skipper 2008/03/04 09:44 America/La_Paz

Good morning!

I realize it's been quite awhile since I've posted here! We've been incredibly busy over the past month. Things get so hectic sometimes that it's easy to let the “urgent” things dominate the “important” thing in our lives. In any case, We realize how important it is to keep everyone updated on what is happening here! So let me get started.

We've been working hard on developing the leadership in the church. As I've stated several times here, we realized last year that we have quite a lot of followers, who do very well when being led by someone else, but we have very few self initiators. We've been working hard on preparing our team of leaders for continual growth in the future, and that's not an easy task!

On February 8-10th we had a Leadership Encounter Retreat. Although not all leaders had arrived from summer vacation, we still had 59 leaders in this retreat. It was an important time where we were doing vision casting, and the main focus of the retreat was on Discipleship.

Two weeks ago, the 23rd and 24th of February we had a Women's Encounter retreat, which was tremendous. 75% of those who attend our Encounter Retreats have never set foot in the church before. It's amazing to see how God works in each of their lives, and literally gives them new lives in just two days.

In our Encounter Retreats we touch several important themes. We begin the retreats with Salvation in a class called “Returning to the Father”, based on the prodigal son in Luke 15. Later we have a class called “Peniel” which was the place of Jacob's Encounter with God. It is a class that we talk about repentance before God, and accepting his forgiveness. After lunch on Saturday we have another class called “Inner Healing” that talks about the importance of forgiveness to others, and then allowing God to come in and begin to heal our hearts, and fill us with his love. In the evening of Saturday we have two more classes… One where we touch the subject of bondages in our lives, generational and others, and how God has given us freedom from those bondages. The last class in the evening is a class where we show the people how important Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was for us.

On Sunday, we have 5 classes altogether before we head back to the church service at 6:00 pm. The first class is called… “From Saul to Paul”, and it talks about Saul's encounter with Jesus and how his life was changed forever after that moment. Later we have a class called “By His Grace”. Then we have a class about the work of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament Church, and what he wants to do in our lives today. The next class talks about the importance of being led by God's Spirit in all moments of our walk with him. This class is based on Romans 8 and Galatians 3-5. After lunch we finish the retreat with a class called “Our Calling” which focuses on what I believe is every Christian's general calling in God… 1) Be Disciples and 2) Make Disciples.

As you can see, the Encounter retreat is incredibly intense, but it's worth it. So many people who never even knew Christ before go, and later come out loving God with all of their hearts, and are willing to give their time and their lives for his cause. It's awesome. Of course, that isn't the end. The Encounter retreat is just the beginning of their walk with God. After that they climb what we call “The Ladder of Success”, which is Win, Consolidate, Disciple and Send. In some other occasion I'll explain the process in more detail!

Last weekend, March 1 & 2 we had our men's Encounter Retreat also. It was great. Altogether we had about 75 new Christians go to both the men's and women's retreats of the past two weekends. That's Awesome! We do these retreats about every two months or so.

Yesterday, we, along with the evangelical church in Sucre began 40 days of prayer and fasting. Every day a different church prays for 24 continuous hours, and this goes on for 40 days. Our church will be doing this three times during this time; March 13th, March 27th and April 10th. We are also meeting in our church every morning from 6 to 7 am for prayer with the leaders of the church for these 40 days.

On March 15th we will be extending to a 2nd weekend service. Except for a few months 3 years ago, we have only had 1 weekly service. Now our church is totally full, and we people standing anywhere they can during our services. So we have decided to extend to a second weekend service. Half of the people will come on Saturday evening at 7pm, and the other half will come on Sunday evening at 6pm. We are also preparing for our 3rd International Cell Church Conference that will be held from April 25th through the 27th.

So, we have been busy… but it's definitely worth it. I'll TRY to write more often so these posts don't have to be so long when I do write! Please pray for us continually, and write us. Let us know what's going on there!

Check back soon, because I'll be uploading quite a few pictures and maybe even a video or two that I made of the two Encounters! We'll see if I can get that to work or not. Hope so! Blessings,

Jason

— Jason Skipper 2008/01/27 15:49 America/La_Paz

(We wrote this letter and sent it out on Jan. 18th. I wanted to post it here also)

Hello and Greetings from the FIVE of us!

Once again a New Year has come, and three weeks have flown by in seemingly a few minutes! We pray that this New Year has and will continue to bring you and your family God’s richest love, hope, grace and His most wonderful blessings.

Derrick Asher Skipper

These past few months have been full of activity, new life, health problems and changed plans! Derrick Asher Skipper was born on the morning of November 10th, here in Sucre. He had a normal birth, and at least in that aspect all went very well. He weighed 7 lbs 1 oz, and measured 20.1 inches long. In the past two months, he has almost doubled in weight, and he is a happy camper. At first, we thought that he was going to be pretty demanding, but lately he has turned into a smiling factory. He is a happy baby, is completely healthy, and is pretty cute too!

Norah’s Health and Jordan’s Pre-School

Norah hasn’t been so lucky. She has suffered from a number of health problems since Derrick’s birth. After his birth, she had a tubal ligation, and during that small surgery, her bladder was ruptured. Because of the birth, the ruptured bladder and an infection in her uterus, she lost a lot of blood. She passed out a few times, and we didn’t know what was wrong. Last week the doctor diagnosed her as having Iron-Deficiency Anemia. Thankfully, she is now being treated with iron supplements and has been feeling much better. The last few days, she’s turned into the happy, fun-loving girl that I met many years ago… and boy it is nice to have her back! I say “many years ago”, because we suspect that she has been unknowingly fighting this problem since her first miscarriage in 2001. She lost a lot of blood then, and was diagnosed and treated for anemia during that time, but she has never been tested or treated for the loss of iron in her blood. From my investigations, Iron-Deficiency Anemia can continue for years until it is treated, and she has had many of the symptoms that come with this type of Anemia. Our HOPE is that this diagnosis will fix a lot of problems that she’s had over the past seven years.

The rest of our family is doing very well. Erynn is in 2nd grade and is doing well there. Jordan turned 4 on January 15th, and he started pre-school that same day. I’m not big on putting kids into school too early, but I think that it will be really good for him. He still is not talking well at all, and one of his problems is that he isn’t FORCED to talk here at home. He can communicate pretty well to us without speaking clearly, and Erynn has turned into his official translator. We feel that getting him into an environment where he will be with other kids, with no one translating for him, should help him a lot.

Turbulent Plans

As most of you who read our last letter know, we SHOULD have been back in the states by now. We planned to return home by the end of 2007, but God has His ways of slowing us down sometimes and making us follow His schedule, not ours. Let me explain.

For years, I have felt a strong calling and burden for the United States, and especially for the younger generations who are truly post-modern and post-Christian. During our trip home last year, many doors were opened, and we felt that the time was right for our exit from Bolivia and for the beginning of our ministry in the US. One of our main motivations was the feeling that our church here in Sucre was ready for us to leave. We were seeing spontaneous growth, sometimes over a hundred people a month coming to the Lord, and most of that had nothing to do with the work that Norah and I do through special events or direct evangelism. Most of those people and most of our growth have come through the small groups in our church, and our member’s personal evangelism to others. During our trip to the states, we decided to do a small test. We left the church and all decisions totally in the hands of one of our most dedicated couples, Joel and Veronica Cuellar. While we were there, we received almost daily reports of how things were going, and all that we heard was that people were on fire for God, and that God was moving in an awesome and powerful way in the church. Needless to say, that and all of the doors that were being opened in the states brought us to the conclusion that the time was right and if we’re going to be working there for the rest of our lives, we may as well get at it.

The State of Our Church in Sucre

Upon our return to Sucre, we found that the church was exactly like Joel and Veronica had told us, BUT the leaders had lost the focus on the small groups and on the vision that God has given us. They were doing great things… meeting daily in the church for prayer, holding week-long fasts and many other good and Godly activities. Many leaders substituted meeting with their groups with those “good” things, and soon the growth slowed down and discouragement was the obvious result. Since our return to Sucre, we have been working hard to get the church back on track. Finally this month we feel that we are back to where we were before our trip to the US. All of this made us question a few things… If we left for only two months and the church lost so much momentum during that time, is it REALLY ready for us to leave it for good?

Entropy Is Real

After talking to the Director of ELI, the organization that we plan to work with once we return to the states, we realized an undisputable truth. True leadership does basically two things. 1) It prepares and guides those under their care to do the work that needs to be done in an efficient and excellent way, and 2) it guides the church in the direction that it needs to go and it defines the battle plan (goals and plans) for the future. They have a simple saying “Entropy is Real,” meaning that if a church or organization (or anything) does not have a visionary leader guiding its way and constantly motivating the people, chaos WILL follow shortly after. With chaos comes the problems that cause stagnancy and division.

His point was this. This church has grown and the leaders have excelled BECAUSE we have done the job a leader has to do. (It’s not backwards where the church excels so much that it doesn’t need its leaders anymore) If we leave this church with someone who does not have the gift of leadership, or who isn’t a visionary leader, the church will NOT continue to grow and chaos will follow.

What Are We Going To Do?

Since we started planning our return to the states, we stated clearly that our number one priority is to make sure that our church here in Sucre continues forward without skipping a beat, and that’s what we intend to do. We are working hard to prepare the church for our departure, but we are also looking and praying that God would uncover or send that person He has prepared for this work.

One of the things I have to admit here is that I think we messed up. Not on God’s calling, but on his timing. I’m a naturally impulsive person, and I wanted to get started right away. I realize now that God has His own timing, and that timing isn’t always our timing. What we need to do is follow His lead and trust that He will open and close doors in His time.

We still plan to return as soon as possible to begin ministry in the US, but we do not know how soon that will be. It could be by this summer, or it could be a few years yet… but I don’t want to go out on a limb and mess up again.  We’ll finish our job here and go when God allows for us to leave. We continue in contact with the Church Planting Organization that we plan to work with, and they are being a big help to us in our work right now. Hard Financial Times

Since our trip to the states, we have been struggling to get our bills paid every month. The great thing is that God always provides, but we have little extra to even think about doing larger events and to get the material and equipment that we need to continue to expand our ministry here in Bolivia. I do not enjoy asking for money, but I know that it’s not for us, but for God’s work. We ask that all those who support us monthly to PLEASE continue doing so, and we thank you SO much for the sacrifice you make to further God’s kingdom. If you don’t support us, we ask that you would consider doing so with a one-time gift or through monthly support. All gifts are tax deductible, and you can send them by check made out to The Hand of Hur, Inc. 293 Bray Hill Lane, Oakland, MD 21550, or you can also do it easily on our website www.hohnet.com through PayPal. ¡Gracias!

Conclusion

Thanks for taking the time to read this letter! Please keep us in your prayers. Bolivia is on the verge of civil war and Americans and Christians are not this president’s favorite people. Pray that God would protect us and our family, that He would guide us in all we do, and that He would supply all of our needs, and more, so we can continue to further His kingdom here and beyond. Also, VISIT our website WWW.HOHNET.COM. I have been updating it constantly and I´m sure it will be a blessing to you. Thanks again and may God bless you in a special way… Love,

Jason, Norah, Erynn, Jordan and Derrick