Couples Retreat:
This past week we had our annual couples retreat here in Bolivia. It is always a special time for our church and really a blessing for our families. Our special speaker this year was Pastor Austin Gardner from Vision Baptist Church in Alpharetta Ga. He is always a great encouragement to us, and the ministry here. We started our conference on Friday night at the church with a few games and then pastor Gardner taught the first session. In the past we have spent the night at a conference center but to help with price we decided to have the first night at the church. After the session we had a special pastry that has meat and vegetables in it along with a time of fellowship. Then on Saturday we went to the conference center that is about half an hour outside of the city in a more rural area. We had seven different teaching sessions and our meals provided by the conference center. We started each session with some games and then a question and answer time. Then on Sunday we finished up with our regular services but with teaching on the family. The teaching was exactly what was needed for our people helping them learn things like “The roll of men and women in marriage” and “How to truly Forgive”. During the conference we had 20 couples participate with about 5 of them being visitors. There were many decisions made during this time and several of the new couples were at church on Sunday. We pray that we will continue to see much fruit from this time not only in the church but also in the homes of these people.
The Church is Growing:
We would like to ask you to pray for the church in Cobija. The Lord continues to bless, and the people of the church have been working and sacrificing to reach their goal of expanding their church building. To accomplish this they had to start by building the foundation, which made two classrooms underneath and then after putting a solid cement floor they could start building the expansion. They now have the walls and roof up and are working on the details to have everything finished. The urgent need that they have now is for the windows and electrical wiring. Without the windows the building is at a great risk of being robbed and the wires that they are temporarily using are in reality a fire hazard. Right now they need a little more than $500 for these two items and then they will only lack the tile, paint and decorations. The Lord also continues to bless the second work that they have in the small town about two hours from them. With it being rainy season that two-hour trip turns into five hours. They now have their own building and people are still getting baptized. Please pray for the church in Cobija as they are on the home stretch to reach their goal. If you would like to help them to reach their goal please let us know and send any donations to; Macedonia World Baptist Missions, P.O. Box 519, Braselton GA 30517 and mark as Cobija building fund.
New Opportunities:
Our desire has always been to reach out to the many areas of our city that have little gospel witness. One such area is called Quillacollo. (The double l’s are pronounced like a y), It is about 30 min from where our church currently is and has close to 200,000 people and growing very quickly. We have a family in our church from that area and they have been nice enough to open their house to allow us to have services on Thursday nights. It has been 5 or 6 weeks that we have been meeting and even though we haven’t started passing out invitations or advertising but just from the family inviting their neighbors and friends we have averaged from 15 to almost 20 each Thursday. There are about 5 of us that usually go from the church and the family that lives there and the rest have been visitors. This is really a great opportunity and if the Lord allows we hope to start having more services in the near future. Stay tuned.
Prayer Requests:
1. Pray for our upcoming youth conference in July with Bro. Jeff Bush
2. Pray for my family and their safety as we work here in Bolivia.
3. Pray for Isaac, Pablo and Juan that are preparing for the ministry in our Seminary.
4. Pray for the many areas of our city like Quillacollo that don’t have solid Bible preaching churches.