Archive for January, 2008

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

1. We Pray
2. Through our Faith God uses Us or Others to answer those prayers.

I teach this to our cell leaders all of the time. For things to work, usually you need both of these elements. A person who tries to reach others without first praying for them and/or for God’s guidance is usually just wasting his time. We can talk all day until our face turns blue, but if the Holy Spirit doesn’t convince those people of their need for God, it’s worthless. Also, if I pray for weeks and months and years for a person to be saved, but I NEVER share God’s Good News with them, I’m being a hypocrite! Why? Because FAITH is not a feeling, it’s an action. Even satan and the demons believe in God, but they don’t PUT their trust and lives in him. We must pray, and believe God’s promises in the Bible. He says in Matthew 28 “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” God’s Promise? You go, and I’ll be with you until the end.

Saying all of that… I believe that we as a church must put goals for ourselves and for our church in faith, and then we must first pray and break down the barriers that satan has lifted up in people’s lives and in our city, and then second we must go and work hard at reaching those goals with God’s help.

That’s quite a long introduction for telling you what is happening here! (I’ll have to put this into my Soundoff Blog too… although it’s not a complete argument… ) In the church, we are working hard at trying to continue to reach out and impact this city in a tremendous way.

Last Friday, I gave our team an 8 page plan of things that we will be working on during the next 6 months! Of course, that paper had many parts; “Where we are now”, “What needs to improve drastically”, “What is good, and we need to continue to do and improve on even more”, “What this team and Church can Expect from me and Norah”, “Our General Goals for 2008” and “Our Specific Goals for the next 6 months”. Needless to say, our team, and the church as a whole is extremely excited about the goals that we have put forth for ourselves.

Cell Group Restructuring

I struggle quite a bit with the culture here in Bolivia, but one thing that I love is that people are willing to dedicate TIME to whatever they feel is worthwhile. One of the problems that Norah and I have noticed in our church is the lack of strength in a good percentage of our small groups. People will open groups everywhere. Up until now we have close to 200 groups around the city. Some leaders even have 3 or 4 cell groups, but many of those groups just don’t have the impact that we want our groups to have. So we are doing a little bit of restructuring to help these groups to have a much bigger impact where they meet and for them to grow.

We have decided to temporarily join many of the weaker cell groups… and from now on all groups will have two (2) weekly meetings! (I know that seems like a lot, but it’s necessary and they’re all for it!) The first meeting will be a planning meeting where the “core” of the group (the most constant members) will meet. Here is an outline of the order of that meeting.

1. Initial Prayer
2. Bible Reading (and maybe a small teaching)
3. Share the Vision
   1. Growth Goals
   2. Church’s Vision
   3. Evangelism
4. Results from the last planning meeting
   1. What goals did we meet?
   2. Were all new assistants visited?
5. Plan for the next Evangelistic Cell meeting
   1. Delegate visiting responsibilities (ask the members of the team to visit new assistants and those who did not come to the last cell meeting.
   2. Ask different members of the team to disciple the new converts.
   3. Decide how each member of this “core” team will participate in the next meeting.
   4. Prepare the details of transportation to bring the members of the cell to the Sunday Service.
   5. Decide who will direct the prayer, take the offering, who will teach, etc.
   6. Put forth goals for each person to bring new people to the cell meeting.
6. Prayer for the goals and for the new people who will be invited to the evangelistic meeting.
7. Fill out Statistics Form
8. Announcements of events in the Church
9. Final Prayer

This meeting will help us put a lot more emphasis on the small groups, and the additional planning and prayer will definitely help the groups to grow and impact those around them. We tried this on 2 small groups from the last week in November up until now. Between those two groups, they have won 23 people to Christ in just over a month… so we know it works! Now we’re putting it in action.

Growth Goals

We have put the goal of each cell group doubling by our annual Cell Church Conference which is in June. This doubling will not be based on the 200 groups that we’ve had before this restructuring… it’s based on the number of cells that we have AFTER the restructuring. This restructuring will take several weeks, so we won’t know the exact number of cells that we have until probably the end of this month.

Organization Goal

One of our big problems here has been our lack of organization. We do things great, and people are excited and energized, but we have no membership lists, or even a definite list of those baptized with us, children dedicated, or even of cell groups. So we let the team know that we are going to organize this church this year, whether they like it or not. In a later post I will expand on WHY things are so hard to organize here.

Many Other Things

I realize that this has gotten long, so I’ll quit here, but we have a lot of plans that I’ll be sharing with you later. I’ve been terribly busy trying to get all of this going, but it is already having a big impact here in the church. People are excited and are ready to go. So we don’t have a whole lot of time to rest right now. Please keep us in your prayers always!

Love,

Jason