Dear Praying Friends,
I
opened my eyes, and there they were!
Even after all my years in FBC Hammond, I have never been able to adjust
to “Spanish time.” Our people are so
much better than they were in the beginning.
Now most of them arrive before
the preaching starts! Two Saturday
nights ago was no exception. We seemed
to be especially low as I was making announcements. I had just recognized visitors and decided to
pray for a special prayer request.
Apparently, as I was praying, our entire church came in! I opened my eyes to a full house and several
visitors. We had our highest attendance
to date, with 58 in church and 11 saved!
God
has blessed our San Genaro church with several new families this last
month. I am excited for what the future
holds. This last Friday was a holiday,
Santa Rosa Day. Since most of our people
had the day off, we decided to have a big lunch at our church; 31 of our people came and helped us devour 7 pollos con papas and ensalada! We sang some choruses and had a question-and-answer time, and then I
took a few minutes to share my vision for the future of our church. Please
continue to pray for our young church.
God has blessed us with some great people, and I know God has big plans
for us.
God
is blessing in all of our churches as well.
Our church plants in San Gabriel and Surco are growing steadily. Two of our Bible studies are also rapidly
nearing the process of being converted into churches. Please pray for both these areas, Chanchería
and San Genaro II. Both of these studies
have enormous potential. Of course, our
biggest need is men. Please pray that
God will help us to have men ready to help start these churches in the coming
months.
Our
main church continues to thrive. We have
been averaging well over 100 in both of our Sunday services. Many new families have begun attending, and
our Saturday soul-winning meeting is growing as well. It has been very exciting to see our people
learn to win souls. God blesses soul winning!
Through soul winning and public services, we were able to see 143 people
accept Christ as Saviour this last month.
As
I stated earlier, our greatest need is always men, men with the desire and the
knowledge to help us do what God has put us here to do. Every day we are reminded of the great need
here, opportunities that are before us, and yet the limits that we have because
of manpower. Recently,one of our men,
Jhon, took
a trip to Jauja, a city five hours away.
He went for the purpose of witnessing to his family. In three days he was able to lead 24 of his
friends and family to Christ! The sad
part is that there is no good Baptist church to which we can send them. We could start a church there tomorrow . . . but
we don’t have a man ready whom we could send.
The
same could be said for Ayacucho. Many of
you have read much about our faithful church lady Cecilia. At the beginning of this month, she went to
Ayacucho, a large city eight hours away.
She went to witness to the family of her stepfather. She was there for just over a week and won 51
people to Christ. She e-mailed me a list
of the names and phone numbers of all 51 people so we could start a church
there. I would love to . . . and we could
tomorrow . . . if there were someone we could send.
Thank
you for your prayers and faithful support.
God has blessed our ministry here in amazing ways. This would not be possible without each of
you. Please continue to pray. Our ministry is still very young, and God is
opening many doors for us. Pray that we
will be able to find, win, and train the people who can help us reach Perú for
Christ.
Your
ambassadors to Perú,
Junior
and Jessica Martin
Romans
9:3
