God’s Protecting Hand and the Bibles Have Arrived!
Hello from the beautiful Andes Mountains,
We’ve been off and running in the first two months of the new year, with no signs of slowing down. I think that you will see that God has been blessing.
On January 11-16th, we took twelve of the youth from our Cajamarca church on a mission trip. We traveled to Guadalupe to help our new church on the coast with its first VBS. Our youth passed out tracts and invitations in the city, decorated, cleaned, sang, performed skits, and taught classes. They did a great job and we had 7 decisions for Christ as a result! Two of our young men gave devotionals in the evenings. These youths are our future leaders-in-training and it appears that the church will be in good hands.
On Sunday night after VBS we used the Mobile Unit in the street next to the church to show a Christian movie. We had around forty-five in attendance. Two adults made decisions for Christ that night!
We also had nine souls saved at our Cajamarca church in the past two months for a total of 17 between the two churches!
Our Guadalupe church is seeing growth. We have one young family and several adults who have become faithful. We are also seeing more kids excited about church and even coming early to each service! What a joy it is to hear them outside playing before the services and singing songs they learned in church. On February 5th, we inaugurated our first evening service. There were nineteen in attendance. That morning, we had 37 in the pews!
BIBLE Ministry update – The Bibles arrived here in Cajamarca on March 1! As of this writing, we have already delivered 120 cases (1680 Bibles) to pastors and missionaries who have been waiting. We continue to receive requests daily. Carla and I leave tomorrow, March 4th, on a trip to deliver 2800 Bibles to pastors and missionaries in Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. Please pray for us as we travel thousands of miles delivering the Word.
This ministry has grown so much. Within a week of announcing that the Bibles were on their way, we received requests from Peru, Columbia, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Mexico. Some of these are not even in S. America and we had to refer them to other ministries for their needs. God is getting His Word out!
JUNGLE Ministry update – We now have 6 books translated into the Awajun dialect and formatted for printing and we are planning a training conference in the month of July for many jungle pastors.
God’s hand of protection is ever with us. Every weekend, Carla and I drive to the coast to our new church and return on Monday morning to Cajamarca. There are only 2 ways to enter Cajamarca. One bypasses the city (our normal route) and the other takes you directly into the city. This past Monday, we returned as normal, but we had the national pastor with us who needed to see a dentist here in the city. Because of that, we chose the other route. We learned later that at the very moment that we “would have been” on the other road, there was a tragic accident involving around 8 vehicles resulting in 4 deaths. Carla and I would like to say ‘THANK YOU’, first to God, then to all of you who pray for us. You will never know how much your prayers for us are appreciated as we constantly travel for our ministry. We covet your prayers for safety and wisdom. May God bless each of you who remember us in your prayers.
As you can tell from our letters, we are very busy, and there is still much to do. We are still praying that God would send a like-minded family to work alongside of us here in Peru. Please help us pray for God’s provision.
Serving Him for you in Peru,
Don & Carla Rich
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