July 2010
Dear Friends and Family,
We want to thank everyone so much for the wonderful time we had in the States. It was great to see so many friends and family! Our grandson changed before our eyes as the weeks and months went by! What a blessing we could be there. Seeing so many of you face to face meant so much to us, even though it was brief. Thank you for your friendships, generosity and amazing hospitality! Please keep in touch, even if it’s just a quick “hello”. We love hearing from you and praying for you as well.
After four flights and three layovers, we made it to Mozambque - just under forty-four hours. We missed two nights of sleep, partly due to Caleb and Nate’s personal goal of staying awake until they saw the sun rise again! After proclaiming their “victory” they fell fast asleep before the plane even took off (third flight out of four).
We are now back into the swing of things here. The Bible school is continuing and we are making plans for a special three-week leadership training seminar at the end of August. Our plan is to invite pastors who would not normally be able to attend our Bible school for three months. We would also like to be able to give each one who attends an audio Bible with the New Testament and additional ministry resources.
Brian with Bible School Students
Lorena continues home schooling and is happy to be back with her kids in the children’s ministry.
Lorena with Elder and new Children's Ministry Drama Team
Prayer requests:
Pray for our three-week extended seminar and all the planning that that goes along with it.
Realizing the oral culture around us, we are changing our focus to developing and distributing audio training resources. Our greatest ministry prayer request is for our audio Bibles. These MP3 players have solar panels, which charge internal batteries. In addition to the New Testament, we can also place Bible stories and ministry training resources on them. We now have over 100 bible stories in 6 local languages, which we just received from Gospel Recordings. Programming these solar players and preparing the files in the correct format takes a lot of time, and everything involving these players and their distribution seems to be an up-hill battle.
We also now have an additional resource - an MP3 New Testament that can be heard by up to 150 people. It can be charged by an external Solar panel, which charges the batteries. It can also be charged by a small winder on the side of the unit. Lorena would like to get one of these units with the New Testament and Children’s Bible stories to each of those who have started children’s programs in their churches – about 40 so far. Thanks to your generosity, we have the funds to purchase these, but covet your prayers in the logistics of programming and distributing them. Distribution is quite a feet, since many of the pastors and workers live deep in the “bush bush”. Thievery and greed is also huge problem. Often Bibles and resources that get into the wrong hands are simply sold for whatever they can get. But we are programming them in a way that the Bible and lessons cannot be erased! So if they fall into a thieve’s hands, he/she will still hear the gospel.
Again, we thank you for your prayers, encouragement, support, hospitality, and keeping in touch! We serve Him together as you continue helping us in all these areas.
Much love,
Brian, Lorena, Matthew, Caleb, and Nate
