Abiding in Him:
When I was younger, I always liked to play outside in the fields and woods on the farm where I grew up. There was something about being out side with he plants and trees. Now, I hated having to mow our yard, but loved to play out in it. When I got a little older, I liked landscaping, and even took it upon myself to do the landscaping around our house and pool. After I dug the grass up, I put down some black material to help keep the grass from growing and then the rocks and plants. After a few weeks I noticed that little sprouts of grass started pushing their way through the black material that I put down, in spite of the fact that I thought that I had dug it all up. The problem was that I didn’t get all the way down to the root, and as long as the roots were still there, the grass would keep growing.
It is much the same way in our spiritual lives, in that if we want to grow we have to be rooted and abiding in the Lord, because it is only through Him that we have life and can bring forth fruit. That was our focus this year in our anual youth conference called, “Abide in Me”. It was truly a blessed time and we saw the Lord work in a great way. This year we had a group of seventeen that came from the US to visit and help in the conference. From the first day the group began decorating and was able to make the whole church look like a vineyard, complete with two life-size trees on the platform. One of the most exciting things about the conference was to see how all three churches worked together and each one was in charge of a different night, coordinating the music, games etc. Each night we had over a hundred people come with several professions of faith and many decisions for the Lord. While the group was here we were able to take them to visit the different churches for service and see many of the sites. One of the days we took everyone to the statue of Jesus that overlooks our city and talked to them about the great harvest and lack of laborers and the need to pray for laborers. By the end of their time here they didn’t want to leave because they had become so attached to people and helping in the ministry. We also praise the Lord for our mission’s director Bro. Jeff Bush who came to preach the conference for us with two of his daughters. He is a great encouragement both to us and the people here. Please pray for all the decisions that were made and that the Lord will continue to raise up servants that will abide in Him and bring forth fruit.
VBS in Bolivia:
As a child I can remember one of my favorite things was going to Vacation Bible School. Of course I liked the games and the craft more than anything else, but learned a lot about the Bible at the same time. This past month we had our first VBS at the new church as a way to bring in new kids and through them reach new families. The theme this year was “Underground Aventure” and the church was decorated like an ant hill with ants and insects hanging from the ceiling and the kids learned about qualities like love, honesty, and perseverance. The group that was visiting from the US was also able to help in the VBS, planning the games, crafts and overall crowd control. Each day we averaged around 30 kids even though there were new ones that came to every service. One of our main desires through the VBS was to meet the parents of the kids and be able to invite them to church. The Sunday after the Vacation Bible School we planned a special service where we gave out certificates to each student with the desire to see their families come to the church. We had three families come for the first time and each one seemed to really enjoy the service and said they wanted to come back again. From this activity not only have we had several new families visit but our children’s ministry grew from around fifteen to now having close the thirty. Many are already asking when we can have VBS again.
Prayer Requests:
1. Pray that we can reach the new families that have visited the church.
2. Pray for the students studying in our Bible College.
3. Pray for our family and safety while here on the mission field.
4. Pray for our city and the many areas that don’t have a church.