Good Morning everyone! It’s been a week since I’ve sent an update, so I figured that you’d be interested in knowing all that’s happening here.

Preparations in Santa Cruz

It’s been two weeks since I’ve been back, and I think that I’ve finally acclimated to the climate differences. Once again I’m ‘enjoying’ the heat & humidity. It’s been a great two weeks, being with the family again and getting back to life as usual. By life as usual, I mean that I’m running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get about 1344 different things done at the same time!

Roof

We have been trying to get a few more quotes on different types of roof structures for the church. My hope was to begin construction as soon as I got back, but since my trip to the states, I’ve been a little uncomfortable with the canvas top that we were going to put on top of the metal structure. Returning here, I talked to several people in the church, and we decided to get some other ideas & quotes before we finally contract someone to do it. So that’s what we’ve been doing. We hope to finally get someone working on it by early next week.

Small Groups & Preview Services

Next week we will be starting several new small groups around the city. In one of those we will begin a study of the book “The Love Dare”. There is SUCH A NEED here for healing in the family.

On Wednesday evening we had a meeting with a couple who sadly is a clear example of the “norm” here. The couple has two small children (both under 2), and the wife wants a divorce. He doesn’t. BUT… he is running around on her. He works all day, many times doesn’t come home at night and has at least one other child with another woman. He says that it is impossible to be faithful in Santa Cruz, but he does love her (he says), and doesn’t want a divorce. She shared that she can’t stand it anymore, and that she has done several things to try to get back at him. She even went out two weeks ago to try to find someone to cheat on with, but she couldn’t go through with it. Just a complete mess. We finally asked them… “What do you truly want.” Both of them stated that they would like to make it work, so we began working with them from there. Of course, these things happen everywhere, but the thing is that this seems to be normal here in Santa Cruz. I have heard the same thing from THREE different sources in the past two weeks… “It is impossible to be faithful to you spouse in Santa Cruz.” Even so, God is doing great things. We now have TWO weddings lined up for next few months here in Santa Cruz, so there is much hope!

We are going to have to work with this a lot… and we have decided to start right away. In that group, along with others that we will be starting, we hope to keep all of those who we have reached throughout the last half year involved, and as soon as the roof is done, we can begin having our monthly “preview services”. Please read our Santa Cruz Church Plant Proposal, where we explain those services more clearly.

Baptism in Sucre

Tomorrow, I (Jason) will be traveling to Sucre for a baptismal service in the evening where over twenty will be baptized. The church is doing very well there. They had a large evangelistic event on October 26th, where over 40 people received the Lord in their lives. They are also preparing for another one on November 29th. They have been working hard on these events, preparing, renting the venues, advertising, etc. I’ll be meeting on Saturday afternoon with Joel & Veronica, the couple who we have left in charge of the church. Later we’ll have the baptism. Sunday morning I’ll meet with the leadership team early, then I’ll be meeting individually with people all day until the service in the evening, where I’ll be challenging the church to really reach out in the next event. (I’m not really happy about meeting with people all afternoon… I’ll miss listening to the Steelers game!!!) I’ll be returning to Santa Cruz on Monday to hopefully get things moving early next week on the roof.

Only $4000 Short!

We haven’t started buying everything that we need for the new church plant, because we want to be ABSOLUTELY SURE of how much we have to work with. It has been amazing seeing God’s hand move during this time. What so many of you have given to further this church in Santa Cruz has been powerful. When we first made out our budget, seeing that we would need $36,000 as a MINIMUM to truly get things started in Santa Cruz scared us. Where were we going to get that? We had no other option but to do our best to let everyone know the need and then trust in God and to let Him do what he does best. It didn’t look very hopeful at first, but… when does it? If we can say something about God… he really does like to make us do some soul searching. But HE IS FAITHFUL.

So far, we have raised $32,228.22 out of the minimum of $36,000 that we need to raise. That means that we are exactly $3,771.78 short! PLEASE CONTINUE TO PRAY and if you haven’t become a part of what God is doing here in Santa Cruz… PLEASE DO! HE WILL BLESS YOU, and HE WILL BLESS THIS WORK. We believe that with all of our hearts. (Please read this post that I wrote back in February, and trust that this word is for you also! God’s Promise)

We Love you all and Pray that God will bless you always! Have a great weekend!

Love,