Family

Church Progress… No Place To Call Home

Date: May 9, 2009 Author: Jason Leave a comment

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,

Latest Newsletter

Date: November 11, 2008 Author: Jason Leave a comment

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! 8-)

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,