Thank the Lord we have had a very busy month. We have been able to work on one of our house-churches and now in this location we have the capacity for about 50 plus people.
Let me back up a bit and explain, we have had a group of 10 from The First Baptist Church in Bastrop Texas. I have a brother that is a member and deacon in this Church and he brought this group to visit the work.
They furnished the finances for us to refurbish a veranda (porch) area to accommodate more people. Two weeks ago when I preached there we had 24 people and we were in the living room and down the hall.I could not see everyone that was there so a couple of times during the sermon I tried to move around but could not because of the children that were sitting on the floor. So what an awesome blessing, This area now has more space to accommodate more people. For us here this is nothing short of a miracle. Not only did we make new friends from Texas but we gained a larger area for meetings and that equals more people hearing the gospel. How Awesome is the God we serve. In addition to the larger area there were two ladies in this group that decided that the bathroom needed some rrenovation, so they (these ladies) layed tile and redid the bathroom for her.
This spurred the men on to replace the tile above the sink area in the kitchen. For Gloria, the home owner, this was a dream come true. She told the group that she had dreamed about doing these things to her home but never could have done this on her own. Gloria was widowed last year and is the sole support of a family of 6 children, she does this by selling fish. Some may ask "Why start a house Church here"? The answer is this, for people like Gloria and her neighbors who do not have the financial means to come to the main church in town. It cost 2.20 per person for one way bus ticket. So you can do the math and see the need to bring the Gospel to the people.
The other 4 ladies and Barb did a week of bible study and craft classes with the ladies in another mission point. These ladies are new Christians and are hungry for the Word. In these craft classes these ladies learned a craft that they potentially can make and sell to help with their finances in the home. In this particular area our members are 2/3 below the poverty level. The ladies also made banners to help beautify the mission point and to help with the echo problem in the concrete building. All in all the time spent with these ladies was a very good time for all.
Here is another blessing we had while the group was here, their pastor came with them and he taught in our seminary.Dr. Edge lived and studied in Israel so one of the sessions was on ancient languages. Our seminary students and our Church members received an AWESOME blessing.Dr Edge was able to not only teach in two sessions of our seminary but he was able to preach in our other locations the other nights. So we pushed him to the limit but the people were the winners in being able to hear Gods word preached and to fellowship with other believers.
We have two pressing prayer request for you to add to your daily prayer list.(1) Our Seminary, this is a training tool for those interested in Church leadership. We have 3 men expressing a desire to be pastors, so we need your prayers for them as they study and for Gods protection.We need more helpers as we try to cover the needs in 7 locations,4 permanent locations and 3 house-churches outside of the Main Church. In each of these locations we try to have 2 services per week and usually bible school on Saturdays for the children. Our need for more workers is great- pray for the Lords guidance and direction. (2) Buses, we have two ancient buses that we run on Sunday morning and night. If one is broken down(this is a regular occurrence) the other has to do double duty. The greatest need right now is tires,we have just had two blow outs from dry rot and the others don´t look much better than those that blew out. The cost is $800 per tire and we are asking that you pray about this need and if God lays on your heart to help we will thank you in advance.Thank you for your constant prayers on our behalf and for your interest in missions.
Now for a blessing that we have realized this month: We received the funds to be able to purchase the van for the use in the School and in the ministries of the Church. "THANK YOU" to all who contributed to this blessing. We have already been able to use this van in so many ways for the Lord. Again "Thanks"!!!!!!!
We are planning to come home for the Christmas holidays to spend some time with family. But there is still 2 months before this time that you could come down and see what God is doing with your mission dollars. The bed is turned down and the light is on on the front porch. So Call and come on down.
In His service,
Aj and Barbara
