Important Meeting on Saturday, October 3

Date: September 25, 2009 Author: Jason Leave a comment

* I SENT THIS OUT THROUGH REGULAR MAIL TODAY, AND WANTED TO POST IT HERE TOO. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PRINT THIS, CLICK ON THIS .PDF VERSION OF THE FILE.

Letter USA Sept 09

Hello! You know, in this fast paced world, the Internet is SUCH a wonderful thing sometimes. After our last letter, Norah and I traveled to Argentina for a leadership conference. During that event, God CLEARLY reconfirmed to us how we are supposed to work and truly launch the church in Santa Cruz. After much prayer, we felt that it was absolutely necessary for me to return home for several weeks. We announced it on our website and on facebook, but it’s hard keeping everyone up to date through regular snail-mail! I arrived on the 17th, and will be returning to Bolivia on October 29. Erynn & Jordan are in school now, so it wasn’t possible for the whole family to travel with me.

We have BIG dreams in Santa Cruz. There is such a need there. In the few short months that we have been traveling to and living in that city, we have seen so much MORE poverty, misery, sickness, crime, corruption, broken families, promiscuity, etc., than what we are accustomed to seeing in Sucre. I admit that at first I saw planting a church in Santa Cruz more as a strategic move, planning to use that church to financially support church plants all around the country. Even though that is still the case, my heart has just been so impacted by the people, the lives and the stories that I have seen and heard there. Honestly, over half of the people we have met there have never lived with their father! Santa Cruz needs GOD!

IMPORTANT MEETING Next Saturday, October 3, at 6:30 PM at Faith U/M Church in Cranesville, WV!

One of the BIG problems that we’ve had over the years is that we have not been able to keep up with our partners very well. We haven’t seen some of you in many years! God Bless you for continuing to be faithful through it all. As they say, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”, and that has definitely been the true for us in many cases.

Having said that, next Saturday, we want to invite you to a meeting that we will be having with all of our current and former supporters, those who have followed us throughout the years, and with all who would be even remotely interested in what God is cooking up in Bolivia! In this meeting we want to show appreciation for the love and support that so many have given us over the years, share the great things that God has done in Sucre, and to get everybody on board and excited about what he has called us to do in Santa Cruz!

The meeting will last about an hour and a half and I will be sharing pictures & videos. We’ll be serving snacks and I also hope to be able to chat with you and answer all questions that you would have.

May the Lord bless you in all that you do. We know that you are very busy, but ask that, in God’s Love for Bolivia, you would PLEASE try to attend! We hope & pray to see you there next Saturday!

Love,

The Skippers

Trip Home

Date: September 8, 2009 Author: Jason Leave a comment

Good morning everyone! I just wanted to let you know that I will be traveling home on September 17th for six weeks. Norah and the kids will have to stay here in Santa Cruz because of school, but I will be traveling to try to raise some funds so that we can really get things moving with the church here in this city.

While in the US, I’d like to visit and get to know several new pastors and churches & I would also like to have a meeting with all current supporters of our ministry. I’d like to share what all God has been doing this year with the churches & what our plans are for the future.

As soon as I have any information on dates and things like that I will let you know!

Blessings,

Jason, Norah, Erynn, Jordan & Derrick

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.

Finally, a Place & a Call For Help

Date: June 30, 2009 Author: Jason Leave a comment

— Printable Version: letter.usa.june.29.2009.finally.2

Greetings from Santa Cruz, Bolivia! We pray that God blesses your life and family in an amazing way during this time. I can say that God has been so good to us!

We finally moved to Santa Cruz on June 11th. Moving from one city to another is not my idea of fun. It’s a lot of work and stress. We are now probably 80% unpacked and can live normal lives again. We’ve had quite a few people over to the house in the past week for a meal, and that’s been nice. Our house is very nice, although the yard is currently unusable. The last people who lived there had a large dog that dug up the yard, so they pulled out all of the grass and replanted before they left. It will be very nice about 2 months from now, but right now the kids haven’t been able to take advantage of a yard… something we haven’t had for years in Sucre. Rent is twice as expensive as in Sucre. We are paying $500 dollars a month for the place. The location is very good for us, which is very important. Santa Cruz is a city of 1.5 million people and is quite large. We are happy to be living only 5 minutes from the kid’s school and about 10 minutes (in our car) from the place we’ve chosen for the church. We feel that God has blessed us tremendously with this place!

The kids have taken the whole move great. They love it. In Santa Cruz there is a much larger English speaking community. In Sucre we had more or less 12 English speaking friends. In Santa Cruz there are probably several hundred. There’s even an English speaking church. Erynn and Jordan went to their Bible School last week. They absolutely loved it.

Jordan’s language skills have just blossomed lately. He still suffers a lot in pronunciation, but I think that he will be OK going into Pre-K this year at the English school. We have decided to start him in school a year later than normal, and feel that he will be better that way. He is now five… entering Pre-K this year and next year he’ll start Kindergarten. Derrick is just jabbering away all day. We bought a bunk bed for the boys now that we’ve moved. Jordan’s excited about sleeping on the top bunk, and Derrick likes not being stuck in the crib anymore! 8-) We live next to several soccer fields. I (Jason) have been jogging pretty well every day, and Erynn has been accompanying me on most of those runs. It’s nice to get out and move around a lot more (In Sucre, I always felt closed in). I’ve been feeling so much better. Since our trip to the states in December/January, I’ve lost 46 lbs. It’s amazing what that can do for your health.

Norah and I continue to pastor both churches in Sucre and Santa Cruz. The leadership team is mostly in charge of daily activities in Sucre. We fly to Sucre every other week to minister to the congregation on Sundays and to our leadership team on Mondays.

The contract for the place that we’ve been using for services over the past 4 years in Sucre has ended. The owner has asked us to start looking for another place, which is tough because there are VERY FEW places that are the size we need. We’ve been looking for months, but haven’t found anything suitable yet.

The church is Sucre is doing very well. Our leadership team seems to be growing without us being there. The fact that we are not there most of the time, but we continue to supervise and guide works very well. They are maturing quickly, without losing focus. We’re 100% sure that we’ve done the right thing in moving to Santa Cruz.

Over the past few months we have become increasingly frustrated with the work in Santa Cruz. We’ve been traveling there since February, and have opened several small groups. We had the large evangelistic campaign in April where around 55 people received the Lord. Those two things have gone very well. Our main frustration has been that we haven’t been able to really START as a church. We’ve been looking for a place desperately since April but hadn’t found anything. Any place that was suitable cost $1,500 dollars a month rent or more. A new church in Bolivia just can’t do that. Additionally, we need to buy chairs, a sound system, projector, and other things. It looked impossible. We had hoped that maybe something would happen so that we could do it, but no miracles occurred.

Several weeks ago Norah and I decided, after talking to our mentor in Argentina, that the best thing to do would be for me to travel home to the states for 4 or 5 weeks and to try to raise the money. I didn’t feel good about it, but it seemed like the only possible solution. We would raise the money needed to start and to rent a worthwhile place, planning to cover 5 or 6 months rent. During that time we would work hard with the church, trying to grow enough for it to be able to pay the rent on its own.

We had pretty well given up on finding a place before the trip, but two days before I planned to buy my ticket, we got a call from a couple in the church. They had just seen a place and wanted us to go see it. We did, and after a little brainstorming session we realized that the place would be perfect. :!: The rent was $600 a month, but this couple really wanted to rent the back part for themselves. It’s quite a large place, with several large rooms in the front, a 3000 sq/ft middle part, and a small apartment in the back. It was decided that we would pay $400 and they would pay $200 a month.

The middle part is the perfect size for the church. We need to put in a portable roof over the center part, take out the plants, and place flooring in the center. We have permission from the owner to do that. ;-) $400 a month in a strategic place is so much cheaper than anything else we’ve seen, and is probably reachable for the church from the beginning! Glory to God!

Ok, here’s the deal. We need some help. We finally have a place, but we have a lot of work to do before we can begin and we don’t have the money to do it. We know that God will provide, but we need to let the need be known. We MUST put in a roof that we can take out when we leave. It will need to be a metal structure with some type of outdoor material as a roof. That will cost about $8,500. We need to take out the garden in the middle and put down a simple floor. We estimate that will cost about $1,500. We have reduced our start-up costs by bringing 200 chairs and 2 large speakers from Sucre. We also decided not to buy instruments in the beginning. We will use backing tracks instead. We still need to buy a projector, a computer, decorations, and a stage. We also need about $2000 to print evangelistic material and advertisement for the long evangelistic campaign that we HOPE to begin on July 24th.

We have been somewhat frustrated over the past few months, but we believe that God knows EXACTLY what He is doing. We have received so many promises from Him for the work that has started here. We will work hard and believe in Him until the end. God is good, and we know that He will abundantly provide!

If you can give, remember that all gifts are tax deductible. You can give online on our website or you can send a check to: The Hand of Hur, Inc., 293 Bray Hill Lane, Oakland, MD 21550.

We thank you so much. May God bless your life immensely, in all you do! Please continue to pray for us daily. We need it so much.

Love,

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,

Trip Home & New Church in Santa Cruz

Date: February 18, 2009 Author: Jason 1 Comment

Good morning everyone!

I really wish that I was better at updating the website… but I guess that wishing doesn’t make me any better at it. :-( Since we last updated here, we have been back to the USA for a month, we returned to Bolivia and have now inaugurated the new church in Santa Cruz!

As most of you know, we were home in Garrett County from mid December through mid January. We had a great time, and really enjoyed seeing everyone… and also most enjoyed meeting Derrick for the first time too!

Our Goal in the States

Our main goal was to raise much more monthly support, and to be honest, although we received quite a few newpledges, we didn’t even come close to our goal.

As we have mentioned before… we have really had a tough time of it over the past year or so. This is because of the rising costs of living and ministry here in Bolivia PLUS the fact that over the years we have slowly lost support, mainly because of lack of contact. That, and the fact that we have felt VERY CLEARLY from God that we are supposed to extend our ministry to the city of Santa Cruz, put us in a tight spot. How? With what?

After analyzing these questions… we basically said that the only way that we’re going to be able to pull it off is to raise a whole lot of monthly support, in the middle of the worst economic crisis that most of us have ever experienced, in only one month! Our monthly income wasn’t reaching; we weren’t able to pay our bills on time. We were WAY behind on Erynn’s school fees, etc. That’s here in Sucre, in Santa Cruz the cost of living is about 30% to 40% higher. Our original budget just to start the church in Santa Cruz was $32,000 to $36,000, depending on what we could raise. Our estimates for Rent and Bills and Salaries there were close to $4000.

Results?

Needless to say, we didn’t even reach our goal for the personal income that we felt that we would need to live in Santa Cruz, let alone raise enough one time gifts and monthly support to begin the church in Santa Cruz.

That’s where the bad news ends… THANK GOODNESS!!! (To make this clear, we have received quite a few new pledges since we have returned… but they still don’t reach… YET) ;-) .

Something that we have learned over the years is that God doesn’t usually work how we expect him to work. Knowing this and knowing CLEARLY that God had called us to do this; we decided to go ahead and do it anyway, even though we don’t have any money to do it. We didn’t know how, but we just decided to charge forward. Boy I’m glad that we did.

We had originally set the date of February 5th as the day that we would have our first meeting with all of those whowanted to work in Santa Cruz. We decided to continue forward with that date. We didn’t know WHO would be there or WHERE we would meet, but we decided to do it anyway.

I flew down to Santa Cruz on Saturday January 31st, and stayed in a cheap hotel there. After several days of looking around, I had decided to just have that first meeting in a medium sized room at the hotel. So on Tuesday the 3rd, I began calling a few people that we knew were going to be there. To my surprise, the first guy who I talked to said… Pastor, we have a place to meet now! He had talked to someone that he knew… whose relatives own a house in the center of the city. After talking to them, they decided to allow us to use their patio as a place to meet for FREE as long as we needed it. WOW… A MIRACLE! We went to see the place on Wednesday with Norah who flew down a few hours before… and it was perfect. The place can fit around 80 people in it pretty easily, they had chairs and even a small platform area to speak from for services. The owner, who is a Christian, told us that we are welcome to use everything that she has for as long as it is useful to us!

So we called everyone that we knew, gave them the address to the house, and began preparing for our meeting the next evening.

Our First Meeting

We really didn’t expect many people on the first evening. Three of our leaders from the church in Sucre had decided to move to Santa Cruz to work with us there. We knew 2 more couples and one other from Santa Cruz who would be there. Other than that, we didn’t expect much.

To our surprise 24 people showed up in that meeting! We had several who had before been part of our church in Sucre show up, as well as several people who had been part of a large church that had broken up several years earlier after big time pastoral problems. Many of them had never found another church where they had felt comfortable, and when they heard that we were coming, they decided right away that they wanted to be a part of this new work. (God has been so good in allowing us to gain a really good reputation around the entire country).

The meeting went wonderfully. Norah and I shared the vision that we have for Santa Cruz, and the entire country. We shared that we have the minimum goal of having 300 members in one years’ time, and that if God was going to do this work that it would need to involve every single one of them. We shared that we didn’t have ANY money, and that anything and everything that we do will have to come from giving and fund raising. In few words, they were ecstatic.

Expectations and Reality

We had originally expected to travel to Santa Cruz every TWO weeks and not begin having services until April, but everyone wanted to get started right away. After much discussion, we decided to have our first evangelistic service on Saturday the 14th. We flew home on Saturday the 7th, and both of us returned to Santa Cruz last Friday. We had a meeting with those same people again, and on Saturday we had our first Service, which was amazing. At least 15 new cell groups will open over the next two weeks. We flew back to Sucre on Sunday, and had our service here in the evening. We plan on doing this continually up until we permanently move to Santa Cruz in June of this year.

God IS With Us

We still don’t know how it’s all going to happen, but we do know that God is with us! That’s the most important! We are seeing his hand in everything we do.

Partners Needed!

To put it bluntly, we still don’t have enough money to travel to Santa Cruz and back every week. To fly down (by bus it would take us at least 17 hours each way, through rivers and on terrible roads… this would kill us quickly if we do it every week), and to stay in a CHEAP hotel, it’s going to cost us around $1000 a month. Where will this come from? I don’t know. But I’m sure that God will move earth and sky for it to happen.

We PRAY that God will move people to understand the need, and to be sensitive to his voice. If you don’t support us yet, we ask that you would… this is an awesome adventure that we want EVERYONE to be a part of!

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.

As always, this is VERY long. I really hope you made it through!!! May God bless you richly and if you have ANY questions or just want to write… PLEASE DO!!!

Local Phone Number

Don’t forget that we have an Oakland phone number through VONAGE. It works great and we can call and answer the phone here just like we were there… Call us! Our number is…

301-859-4401 (EDIT: We are GMT -4 Hours… 1 Hour Ahead of Eastern Standard Time – EST)

Facebook

Both Norah and I are on facebook too, and we try to keep that very up to date. It’s a very good way of keeping in touch. Just look for JASON SKIPPER and NORAH SKIPPER there on facebook, or you can click on these links…