Archive for March, 2008

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

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