A Busy Year Ahead!
A Busy Year Ahead!
January 1, 2020
As you read in our last letter, we are stateside for my knee-replacement surgery. The surgery went as planned on Dec. 2 and I am now in physical therapy working on regaining mobility. We appreciate everyone’s prayers. They were definitely heard as there was a serious complication caused by the spinal block they administered to me. After waking in the recovery room, they gave me some crackers and something to drink. As I ate, I told the doctors that I began to feel some abdominal pain. That pain quickly moved up into my chest. Carla said that at that point I turned very pale and passed out. She looked at the monitor which showed a flat line for my heart rate and a dangerously low blood pressure reading. Family was ushered out of the area as they worked with me to bring my stats back up to normal. Once I was stabilized and began to feel better, I was discharged to go home. We were all amazed that it was an out-patient procedure, but I was in and out in the same day. Thanks again for your prayers as I heal and work through physical therapy.
While here in the US, Carla and I have been working on plans for the International Bible Conference we will be hosting in May of this year at our Cajamarca church in Peru. There is a lot of planning and coordinating that will have to be completed. Please pray that everything will fall into place and that the Lord will bless the conference.
We are still planning, Lord willing, to be back in Peru by mid-February. The first week in March, Darren, the intern that spent several months with us last year, is planning on returning to spend three months with us this year. It will be a blessing to us and to our ministry to have him there.
Once we are back in Peru, we should be receiving a container of a partial shipment of Bibles and many Roman’s booklets for evangelism. We plan to use these primarily to distribute to those national pastors and missionaries who attend the Bible conference in May. Whatever is left over will be shipped to others who are asking for Bibles for their ministries.
Our Cajamarca church will be celebrating its fifteen-year anniversary in August so we will be busy planning for that event also. We are looking forward to this milestone.
We have had some individuals say that they are planning on visiting us in Peru this year. Two of which are our home church’s pastor and a long-time member. We look forward to receiving these visitors and allowing them to see first-hand what God is doing.
We mentioned in our last letter about some other possible doors opening up in training national pastors. Only time will tell. What we do know is that we should be very busy again this year.
We are hearing from the national pastors in our churches in Cajamarca and Guadalupe that the work is still going well. It is a blessing to be able to leave for a while and know the work continues.
We have received many emails from pastors and missionaries thanking us for the Bibles they have received for their ministries. I’d like to conclude this letter with a recap of one such letter. A national pastor wrote that he and his church were praying one night that God would help them find a good price on some much-needed Bibles for their church. Many of the members did not have a Bible. The next morning, he started to leave his house to go look for prices in bookstores. Before leaving, he received a call from a pastor telling him about our ministry. He quickly contacted us, and we sent him the Bibles they needed. The pastor wrote, thanking us for our ministry and praised the Lord for the timely provision of His Word. It is letters like this that make it all worthwhile.
Thank you for your faithfulness in supporting the ministry here in Peru,
Don & Carla Rich
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