Jonathan and Becky Earnhart: February 2008
Dear Friends,
Summer in Peru is coming to an end. We have concluded our last activity of our "Crazy Summer" program.
Last weekend we had 10 couples participate in our Couple's Retreat. We were missing quite a few couples, but we had a good time and we were able to teach a number of very important and relevant classes. Our teens and singles prepared a banquet and program for Friday night and ran a day care for the whole retreat. We are blessed to have some terrific workers in our church!
Our Evangelistic meetings brought in over 70 first time visitors. We had a number of salvation decisions and we are following up on every visitor. We praise the Lord that a number are still attending services. Please pray for their spiritual growth.
The Sunday we finished with that meeting we traveled with a group of 21 leaders from Tacna to Arequipa to help Pastor Henry with his VBS. We combined the VBS with our Leadership Camp, so we had a very busy week. The turnout was tremendous, with over 115 kids every day. It rained every day which made it even more amazing that the kids would attend faithfully. We had over 40 in the Leadership Camp and it was exciting to see many decisions made for the Lord.
Pastor Henry is still super-elated that they are now the owners of their own property! They have been busy painting and cleaning to be able to use the entire property. We are doing our best to scrape funds together for a temporary tin roof for the back patio. That will serve as an auditorium that can seat up to 150+, but we will divide the extra room into classes until the church needs the entire space.
Our new work in Tacna is now averaging 25-30 in attendance. We are currently meeting in the yard of one of our church members. We are trusting God to provide for the purchase of a lot where we can put up a temporary roof as well as construct simple living quarters for the family that will be living at the new property for security reasons.
Please pray for a couple of other needs. First, we are in need of new supporting churches. We visited 42 new churches last year, but only 6 were able to begin supporting our ministry. The dollar is dropping every day and we are having to look at cutting back on different ministries as well as printing tracts. The other need is for a van for our family and ministry.
We praise the Lord for a surprise gift that paid for Sarah's school books. We are still paying on Andew's shoulder operation as well as our return airplane tickets. We know God will meet each and every need as His Word promises!
Please especially pray for my counseling load. I am counseling 4-5 couples every week and some of them have some very serious marriage and family problems. I have never felt so overwhelmed as I do right now. I know that God has placed us here for this time, but it is an incredible struggle to try to understand all the cultural differences as well as face things that I have never faced before. Please pray for God's perfect wisdom for us!
Thank you for faithfully holding us up in prayer!
Fellow laborer,
Jonathan and family