The Hand of Hur, Inc.
Archive for January, 2007
New Year, March For Bolivia
Jan 16th
Hello and Greetings from Bolivia!
Happy New Year! May God bless you and you’re family in a wonderful way throughout this entire year. We want to wish God’s utmost grace, love and favor for you in this New Year. Norah and I and the kids are just great. Everything has been going so well here, despite all of the political problems, so let me tell you all about it.
The church continues to grow rapidly. On December 31st we had a big celebration in the church rejoicing for all that had been accomplished in 2006. Our goal for the end of the year was to have 150 cell groups. We ended up reaching 172 cell groups, 650 – 700 people assist those groups. We were happy!!! Although we have grown quite a bit over the past four years, we had never completely reached a year-end goal. This year we reached our goal and surpassed it. Now we must work hard to raise up more groups, reaching ever more people. That evening (the 31st), Pastor Mike Lantz, (who is the vice-president of The Hand of Hur, and was in Sucre with the team that comes every year to work with the Orphanage) came to preach in the church. He challenged the church for 2007. He said jokingly that he wouldn’t return to the church unless we had 250 cell groups by the end of the year. He later commented to me how surprised he was when no one even batted an eye when he said that. Until now we haven’t set a year-end goal for 2007. We need to sit down with each leader and find out what we can do – with God’s blessing. We do believe that we can at least double our cell groups by the end of the year. J In 2006, we also had 14 Encounter retreats for new believers, taking over 410 people to those retreats. One other big accomplishment was a large worship concert on December 2nd. Our church rented a coliseum and widely advertised the event. Approximately 1,200 to 1,500 people attended. That evening 51 people received the Lord (at least that is the number that we were able to get all of their contact information from). We plan to do several of those activities each year.
Next week we have a large activity planned in the main Park here in Sucre. We are inviting the entire city of Sucre, other churches and also the government of the City, State, and those who are writing the new constitution, to a prayer concert for Bolivia. In that meeting Norah and I will be giving a message on what God wants for Bolivia, and we will also be praying as a city for Bolivia – for all that is occurring here and for what will be happening during the next months during the writing of the new constitution. We will not be expressing our opinions or taking a political stance, but we will be talking about what God wants for Bolivia; unity, love, and faith in him. Please pray for us during that activity (It will be Thursday the 25th at 7:00 PM Bolivia Time (6:00 PM EST)). It’s important that we as a church take God’s word to our people.
Our family is blessed. Erynn is in first grade, and doing great. She got straight A’s in her last report card. Jordan is fine too. He turned 3 yesterday. He’s still as fun as always, and he is finally starting to talk a little bit more. I’m not too worried about him, because he seems very bright, and he understands two languages perfectly, so I think he’ll be fine. We just got back from a 7-day vacation to La Paz. We went to visit Norah’s parents. I played golf 2 days there (One of the nicest courses in South America is in La Paz), and we also went trout fishing up in the mountains two days with the family. That was fun – and cold! We went to some lakes that are close to 15,000 ft above sea level, and it was raining. We caught some nice rainbow trout, however, and just enjoyed having a week away from everything. We got back Sunday, and are now ready for more. 
We plan to travel back to the states for at least a few weeks this year. We’re not sure of the exact date, but we will be letting you know as soon as we know. Keep us in your prayers always. We love you, and may God bless you richly. Jason, Norah, Erynn & Jordan
Been Buried in Work
Jan 4th
Hi Everyone. First of all I’d like to say Happy New Year. We hope that this new year will bring you great blessing and abundant life from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Since we’ve returned from Buenos Aires, we’ve just been up to our necks in work. There are several reasons for that. One, we are trying to change several things within the church. We need a lot more organization, plus we’re trying to move some things around so that people can more easily climb the ladder of success; Win, Consolidate, Disciple, Send. Looking over 2005, We’ve taken more than 200 people to the Encounter Retreat this past year. But one of our main problems has been keeping those people around. They go to the retreat, we work with them a lot, but sooner or later, if they don’t become involved in the process, they fall away. Our consolidation & discipleship processes haven’t been where they need to be.
I’m a firm believer in this truth, “The Christian, Church or Cell Group that doesn’t grow… Dies”. I feel that if someone doesn’t grow in Christ, he dies Spiritually. We should never stop growing in our Christian life. Keeping that in mind, it’s pretty understandable why when people don’t continue in the process, they kind of fall off. But the main problem isn’t that people don’t want to come, it’s that up until now, we haven’t been able to organize thing very well. So we’ve been working a lot in that.
We also have had several large evangelistic services. One on Christmas, and one on New Years Eve. The one on Christmas was a combined service with other churches, but on New Years Eve, we as a church, rented a coliseum. We were celebrating two things: our 3rd anniversary and of course New Years. It was a great service, although we didn’t have the attendance I had really hoped for. A lot of people during these weeks travel to other parts of the country. Sucre is pretty empty this time of year. In any case, 25 people received the Lord that evening, and hearing their testimonies these days has been wonderful.
With all of those large events, we’ve just had the regular services and cell meetings and leaders meetings, and other things. Anyone who thinks that Pastors work is easy, I can tell you that at least here, when someone puts their mind to reaching large goals, there’s hardly time to sleep. I admit that working in the normal way, having a few services a week, and hoping that the people come wouldn’t be to hard at all. But when you have the growth that we’ve had, and all of the different activities going on, and taking on 12 people as true disciples, almost like children to you, It’s certainly a full time job, if not more. (Whew… I know that sentence is a mess, but I’m not going to fix it. I’ll let English majors like my dad have fun with it! I speak Spanish down here anyway… )
Yesterday was our 8th wedding anniversary with Norah. That’s just hard to believe. We weren’t able to go out last evening, but we’re going to try to this evening. Hopefully I can get someone to watch the kids.
I guess that’s all I’ll write for now. We’re waiting for a Pastor who is coming to visit us this morning. He wants to work with the cell church also, so he wants us to help him out a little. May God bless you all in this New Year. Write if you can…
Love,
Jason, Norah, Erynn & Jordan
