Jason & Norah Skipper

Sucre Church (MCC)

We’re Going Home!

Date: April 6, 2011  Author: Jason Leave a comment

Hello! Greetings from beautiful, finally cooler (after the hot summer) Santa Cruz, Bolivia! As we head into fall here in the southern hemisphere, we know that you are heading into spring! What a wonderful time of year spring is, with the vegetation and the birds returning… I haven’t been home in the spring since I came to Bolivia 15 years ago! This year, though, we will be home! We have big news to share with you in this letter!

Our Burden: For many years now, Norah and I have discussed the possibility of some day returning to the United States to live and to plant a church there. Every time we travel home, I feel a large burden for the people of our country. We are sent from the USA, working so hard to reach and impact the people of Bolivia for Christ… BUT the truth is that America is just as much of a mission field as most of the rest of the world is. Statistics show that in 2010 only 16% of Americans attended ANY type of church on a regular basisThat percentage is even lower among younger generations. The church is losing ground fast! In 2007, before moving to Santa Cruz, we almost took the plunge to move back. We even announced it to quite a few people. After returning to Sucre though, we felt that God told us “not yet.” Later when we felt God calling us to plant a church in Santa Cruz, I pretty well gave up on the idea of ever again returning to the USA to live.

The Announcement: Amazingly enough, here we are today announcing the following… The time has come! After 15 years of ministry throughout Bolivia, we will be moving back to the United States in June to continue our call to expand God’s kingdom through church planting there. God has opened all of the doors and has resolved all of the problems of our leaving Bolivia – in an astonishing way!

God’s Ideas: Let me explain. In December of last year, as we were praying and making our plan for the churches in 2011, we felt God tell us that the time had come for us to go. We wrestled with the idea for awhile, thinking that it was just our ideas or emotions; but we finally came to the conclusion that God really was speaking. Our biggest worry was leaving the churches. Although we have progressed a lot since we began here in Santa Cruz, we felt that leaving the church right now would be murder. We also felt that, although the church in Sucre is doing very well, they could easily veer off track without our close supervision. We have put so much time and effort into the work here and in Sucre, and so many of you have given so much, that allowing those things to happen wasn’t an option. I told God that if he really wanted us to go, then he would have to give us a viable option that would not only allow the churches to continue forward, but to do so very strongly! Honestly, that looked grim. I finally wrote the pastors who have worked with us for years from the church in Buenos Aires, Argentina. After several weeks of contemplation, they finally asked that Joel (the pastor in the Sucre church) and I travel to Argentina to talk to them in person about it all. What happened there just blew us away! After our trip, we know 100% that God was behind all of this, and that He has everything under control.
What’s Going To Happen With the Bolivian Churches: Basically, the church in Argentina is going to take over the leadership of our churches in Bolivia. They are going to send a couple as missionaries to the Santa Cruz church, and they will be guiding and helping Joel & Veronica in the Sucre church. This church in Argentina has more than 25,000 members in their congregation, and of those over 500 are Bolivians. These 500 Bolivians are uniting to pray and fast for the Bolivian church and to give towards our two churches. They have set a $5,000 dollar monthly budget to help rent better, more visible, centrally located places and to reach out to the cities through advertising and evangelistic campaigns! The pastor of that church said,

“God has called us not to just plant another church. When we go to a city, we have to impact that place for Christ. We have to touch all parts of society: the rich, the poor, the government, etc. The churches in Sucre & in Santa Cruz must become ‘THE’ church for that city. When non-Christians think of a church, they think of that church.”

All that we could say was “Amen!” We are now preparing the Santa Cruz church for our leaving and the new couples arrival. We have announced this to them, and although many are sad, there is a great deal of excitement also.

What We Will Be Doing: Over the next year to year and a half, we plan to plant a church in a small to middle size city somewhere in the USA. Norah and I will be traveling home next week (on April 11th), to do a road trip to visit several possible plant locations. We will be traveling up to Minneapolis, and down through Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, North & South Carolina & Georgia. We will also be attending a church planters conference in Orlando Florida from April 26 – 29. After that we will return to Bolivia through May to finish selling off all that we can and then we’ll head back north with the entire family in June.

It may take quite a while, but once we are able to plant this church, we plan to continue working in Bolivia. We plan to use a percentage of all income in the church to help the Argentine church plant new churches all around the country. We also want to set up teams to travel there to help in building, evangelism, and anything that can possibly help advance the gospel in Bolivia.

Lake Titicaca, Island of the Sun, Bolivia w/ Norah's Family. Left to Right. Derrick, Jason, Norah, Rosemary (Norah's sister), Efrain (Rosemary's husband), Silvestre (Norah's dad), Susana (Norah's sister), Richard (Susana's husband), Caleb (Rosemary & Efrain's child), David (Norah's brother)

Our Current Situation and Closing Petition: We’re a little nervous about how all of you, our supporters, are going to take this. We know that you have given so much, and it’s very important to us that you know that what you have given has not been in vain. God has, is and will continue to do so much in Bolivia, and it wouldn’t have happened without you. This, although very exciting in some ways, is very scary for us. We are basically starting over. We have nothing in the USA. Both Norah & I are 34 years old with three children, and we don’t have a house or a car or a bed. Of course, we are trying to sell our things here, and plan to buy a few things there. We’ll be able to sell our car at a good price, but most of what we have will not sell for much money. (Even the car isn’t ours; it’s the Hand of Hur’s vehicle!) We’ll only be bringing luggage home. We have no insurance and the income that we receive here will not reach living back there. It’s scary, but even so, WE BELIEVE GOD and with pleasure we are taking this step of faith!

We ask that during this time, you would PLEASE continue to be faithful with your gifts and support. This move is going to cost a lot of money, and we don’t have all of that money at this time. (By the way, we’ve never had all of the money BEFORE we decided to do what God tells us to do! ☺) In June we will begin fundraising for the new church plant, and we will talk individually with you about continuing your support for the first stage of the planting process. But before that, we ask that you would help us in any way possible to make this transition smooth for our family. I HATE to ask for personal help, but we’re at a place right now that we have no other option! Please pray for us too!!! Thank you once again for everything, and may God bless you abundantly!!!

Love,

Latest Newsletter!

Date: September 24, 2010  Author: Jason Leave a comment

Newsletter September 20, 2010


One Week Away From Second Event!

Date: May 3, 2010  Author: Jason 1 Comment

Good Morning Everyone!

I’m sorry, but we are terrible!!! Look at that, the subject of this e-mail/post is “One Week Away From Second Event” and we haven’t sent you anything about the first one yet! Wow. Sorry about that. Let us tell you about what’s going on… it’s been exciting!

BUSY, BUSY & BUSIER!

Last year when I (Jason) was in the states sharing about what we have wanted to do here in Santa Cruz, we knew that it would be a lot of work. Still, as is usual, we underestimated how MUCH work was really in store for us. We were finally able to get started putting the roof on the place in early December. The idea was to finish in a month, do most of the electricity work and decoration in a few days and we truly thought that we would be able to start by early February. We decided to be careful with pushing it too hard, and after checking dates, we decided that the next best date would be March 7th. So we put that down on the calendar as our official start date. Needless to say, even that was too soon. We ended up having to postpone the first service (evangelistic event) until April 11th. Even then we worked day and night, 7 days a week, for over a month just to be ready for it.  We ended up having to ask my Father-in-law to return from La Paz to help us put tile over the cement floor.  That took almost a month.  While they were doing that we worked for close to a month on setting up the electricity in the place with the light and socket systems, stage lights, outside lights, etc.  Norah made the curtains while we worked on making a home made, collapsible 13 foot wide projector screen, putting the sound system together, and about 2,000 other things… :-)  Needless to say, we lost contact with a lot of people during that time.  Even mom wrote me asking “Where are you?  Are you Ok?”.  That tends to happen when we get busy.  Sorry!

OUR TEAM AND GETTING PEOPLE TO COME TO THE FIRST EVENT

We were a little worried about what was going to happen in our first service, because our main team here in Santa Cruz had dwindled over the few months heading up to it.  Basically we found out who REALLY was with us and who wasn’t.  We ended up having maybe 20 or so people who were dedicated to what God has called us to do.  We did several things to try to get new people to come to the event.  Beginning in early march, we (the team) each began praying for 10 non christian friends that we were going to invite to the event.  During the entire month leading up to the event we prayed for these people daily, and we also fasted for that cause.  We also printed out 3000 fliers to pass out to those who we had been praying for, to those who live closest to the church, and to the areas surrounding several of our small groups.  On Saturday, April 10th, 29 youth arrived from the Sucre church to help us out as well.  They went out to several places around the city during both days to do street dramas and hand out fliers for the event.  In addition we set up two different busses from opposite sides of the city to bring groups of people before and take them home after the service.

HOW DID IT GO?  GOD DID AMAZING THINGS ON APRIL 11TH!

After months of hard work, lot’s of prayer and fasting, and putting our faith in God, HE opened up heaven’s gates that evening.  Our goal was to have a minimum of 100 people for this first event.  We ended passing that goal by 50.  That evening 150 people attended the event.  We showed a video about God’s Love at the beginning of the service, the worship team from Sucre played and led several songs, there was a drama, I (Jason) sang a special and then entered directly into the salvation message, which lasted about 20 minutes. We prayed with the people, took an offering and finished.  We gave awayfree ice cream before and after the service which was just was wonderful for two reasons.  First, the people actually got there on time, and then they stayed afterwards so that we could talk to them and get to know a little bit about them.  We were able to get the information (phone numbers & addresses) of around 100 new people.

AFTERWARDS & PREPARATION FOR SECOND SERVICE

Our goal all along has been to have several LARGE once-a-month services, and when we have a large enough team to be able to do the same thing weekly we’ll move to weekly services.  In the meantime we will be working in small groups throughout the month, working individually with the people and also preparing for the upcoming event.

A week after the first event we invited everyone back for a meal  at the church.  The goal was to share with everyone, try to get to know them even better, and eventually include them in one of our small groups.  That meal went very well.  During the past few weeks we have also been practicing music with some who attended our first service.  I announced during that service that if anyone knew how to play an instrument, to let me know.  Eight people came to talk to me after the service!  For this upcoming service wewill be doing almost everything ourselves.  The church from Sucre will not be coming, with the exception of Joel Cuellar, who will come to lead the song service.  We will playing all of the instruments with those who talked to me!  Also we have raised up a chorus and a choreography team from our own group of people… plus a group of young people from our team will be presenting the “Everything” drama for the next service!  (See it on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyheJ480LYA.)

CONCLUSION… THE EVENT IS ON MAY 9TH… PRAY FOR US!

Our second event is this coming Sunday evening, May 9th.  We will be having a work day on Saturday, then we will go out to the neighborhood around our church that evening to invite everyone.  On Sunday morning we will all split up into two groups and go to two different sectors of the city to invite people, and we will be bringing busses from those areas in the afternoon.  Our goal for this upcoming service it to have 200 there!

We ask that you continue to pray for us and all that God is doing.  Please know that all of the sacrifices that YOU have made financially are bearing fruits.  Thank you for that, and we ask that you continue to be a part of the great things that God is doing and will do here during the next several months & years.  We still have SO many financial needs here.  In an upcoming letter I will spell those out for you.  So please continue to be faithful in your giving!  If you don’t currently support us… PLEASE DO!  Trust me, this is going towards something that is leaving its mark on this world for Christ.  You can get more information on supporting us on our website http://www.hohnet.com.  If you have any questions, please feel free to write us!

Below I’m including several photos from the event.  You can also see the entire photo album here… http://www.hohnet.com/photos/inauguracion-mcc-santa-cruz/.  Thanks again for everything and have a great week!  God Bless,

Santa Cruz Preparation, Sucre Trip, $4000 Short!

Date: November 13, 2009  Author: Jason Leave a comment

Good Morning everyone! It’s been a week since I’ve sent an update, so I figured that you’d be interested in knowing all that’s happening here.

Preparations in Santa Cruz

It’s been two weeks since I’ve been back, and I think that I’ve finally acclimated to the climate differences. Once again I’m ‘enjoying’ the heat & humidity. It’s been a great two weeks, being with the family again and getting back to life as usual. By life as usual, I mean that I’m running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get about 1344 different things done at the same time!

Roof

We have been trying to get a few more quotes on different types of roof structures for the church. My hope was to begin construction as soon as I got back, but since my trip to the states, I’ve been a little uncomfortable with the canvas top that we were going to put on top of the metal structure. Returning here, I talked to several people in the church, and we decided to get some other ideas & quotes before we finally contract someone to do it. So that’s what we’ve been doing. We hope to finally get someone working on it by early next week.

Small Groups & Preview Services

Next week we will be starting several new small groups around the city. In one of those we will begin a study of the book “The Love Dare”. There is SUCH A NEED here for healing in the family.

On Wednesday evening we had a meeting with a couple who sadly is a clear example of the “norm” here. The couple has two small children (both under 2), and the wife wants a divorce. He doesn’t. BUT… he is running around on her. He works all day, many times doesn’t come home at night and has at least one other child with another woman. He says that it is impossible to be faithful in Santa Cruz, but he does love her (he says), and doesn’t want a divorce. She shared that she can’t stand it anymore, and that she has done several things to try to get back at him. She even went out two weeks ago to try to find someone to cheat on with, but she couldn’t go through with it. Just a complete mess. We finally asked them… “What do you truly want.” Both of them stated that they would like to make it work, so we began working with them from there. Of course, these things happen everywhere, but the thing is that this seems to be normal here in Santa Cruz. I have heard the same thing from THREE different sources in the past two weeks… “It is impossible to be faithful to you spouse in Santa Cruz.” Even so, God is doing great things. We now have TWO weddings lined up for next few months here in Santa Cruz, so there is much hope!

We are going to have to work with this a lot… and we have decided to start right away. In that group, along with others that we will be starting, we hope to keep all of those who we have reached throughout the last half year involved, and as soon as the roof is done, we can begin having our monthly “preview services”. Please read our Santa Cruz Church Plant Proposal, where we explain those services more clearly.

Baptism in Sucre

Tomorrow, I (Jason) will be traveling to Sucre for a baptismal service in the evening where over twenty will be baptized. The church is doing very well there. They had a large evangelistic event on October 26th, where over 40 people received the Lord in their lives. They are also preparing for another one on November 29th. They have been working hard on these events, preparing, renting the venues, advertising, etc. I’ll be meeting on Saturday afternoon with Joel & Veronica, the couple who we have left in charge of the church. Later we’ll have the baptism. Sunday morning I’ll meet with the leadership team early, then I’ll be meeting individually with people all day until the service in the evening, where I’ll be challenging the church to really reach out in the next event. (I’m not really happy about meeting with people all afternoon… I’ll miss listening to the Steelers game!!!) I’ll be returning to Santa Cruz on Monday to hopefully get things moving early next week on the roof.

Only $4000 Short!

We haven’t started buying everything that we need for the new church plant, because we want to be ABSOLUTELY SURE of how much we have to work with. It has been amazing seeing God’s hand move during this time. What so many of you have given to further this church in Santa Cruz has been powerful. When we first made out our budget, seeing that we would need $36,000 as a MINIMUM to truly get things started in Santa Cruz scared us. Where were we going to get that? We had no other option but to do our best to let everyone know the need and then trust in God and to let Him do what he does best. It didn’t look very hopeful at first, but… when does it? If we can say something about God… he really does like to make us do some soul searching. But HE IS FAITHFUL.

So far, we have raised $32,228.22 out of the minimum of $36,000 that we need to raise. That means that we are exactly $3,771.78 short! PLEASE CONTINUE TO PRAY and if you haven’t become a part of what God is doing here in Santa Cruz… PLEASE DO! HE WILL BLESS YOU, and HE WILL BLESS THIS WORK. We believe that with all of our hearts. (Please read this post that I wrote back in February, and trust that this word is for you also! God’s Promise)

We Love you all and Pray that God will bless you always! Have a great weekend!

Love,

Santa Cruz Church Plant Proposal

Date: October 10, 2009  Author: Jason Leave a comment

PDF File High Quality

PDF File Low Quality

As I begin this proposal, I (Jason) have to look back and laugh about how God works in our lives. Studying Business Management in college, I was taught to plan ahead and to not live life by the seat of my pants. Making a one, five, ten year and even a life plan is important. I took that advice, and really thought that I had it all figured out. I had a date when I would start building my own house, and was to start my own business after college. I guess that God had other plans because in 1996 He took me to Bolivia for two weeks to help build a seminary. Eight months later I returned planning to stay for a year. Then I met Norah. Need I say more? We married in 1998 and have dedicated our lives to God’s work. It seems ironic that 14 years ago I was “the man with a plan” and now here I am writing this proposal to plant our fifth church in a place that I never imagined going in my life!…

Please Read the rest here…

Update on Needs

Date: July 14, 2009  Author: Jason Leave a comment

Hello Everyone!

Team From Sucre

This has been quite an interesting time for us. We feel SOOOOO close yet so far away from being able to really take off with the new church in Santa Cruz. We have a team from our church in Sucre here in Santa Cruz this week, helping us work on the new place, getting it ready for meetings, and the large evangelistic campaign that we want to hold very soon. They have also been doing dramas and evangelizing in the streets pretty well every afternoon and evening. It’s been an exciting time. The team of 10 who came are so pumped up about the work that they are doing. They just love it.

Roof Will Cost $8,550

At the same time that we continue to reach out more and more, we seem to feel more and more limited in what we can do. As I mentioned in the earlier post, we finally have our place, but we need to put a roof on it. I calculate that the roof would cost us $3,500 just from word of mouth of what people thought that it would cost. It turns out that the best that we can do is for $8,550 dollars, and it will take a month to build! That’s AFTER we sign the contract. Well… we can’t sign the contract without the money, and as of right now we really don’t have any.

I Will NOT Let Go of God’s Promise

Over the past few days I have been told by different people to maybe think of doing it in a different way. It sounds correct, and to be honest, we many times mess up on what God’s will is. At the same time I feel that God has given us a promise with this church… both in reaching the multitudes AND financially. Let me quote what I wrote back in January…

==== God’s Promise ====

Yesterday God gave us a pleasant surprise. A dentist who was once part of our church who now currently lives in Argentina is here in Sucre for a few weeks. She came to our house yesterday with a message that she felt that God had given her a month ago for us. (She had no idea about what has been going on in our lives or ministry as of late).

She told us that God had instructed her to tell us several things. 1st, that He has not forgotten about the promise that He gave to us many years ago. He has been preparing everything, and that we WILL see that promise fulfilled in our lives shortly. She gave us this verse from Genesis 28:15… “And, behold, I am with you, and will keep you in every place where you go, and will bring you again into this land. For I will not leave you until I have done that which I have spoken of to you.”.

That promise that God gave us many years ago was that he was going to give us multitudes throughout all of Bolivia, and that he was going to use our lives to bring complete change and blessing to this country.

She also told us that God showed her that economically he was going to raise up our lives and the church like he never has before. During the worst economic crisis that the world has seen in a long time, he was going to bless us like never before, and that those who are part of what we are doing will be immune to the problems that the world is facing. We will be a testimony to thousands of his faithfulness.

Glory to God!!! May his word be true! We will put our trust in HIM.

It’s hard to understand God’s ways and plans… but I will say this. GOD… I WILL NOT LET GO OF YOUR PROMISE. I WILL BELIEVE UNTIL THE END!

Luke 18 sums up my attitude well:

1 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ 4 “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!’ ” 6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

We Believe Lord, and We Will Cry Out To You Day and Night. Lord, provide for your work so that Santa Cruz and Bolivia can know that YOU are God. Amen.