January 2016

2016 started off well. After spending Christmas with Rob’s parents for 3 weeks, we came back to a busy base. We received 2 teams from YWAM. One from Brazil and one from Kona, Hawaii. Together with these teams we were able to hand out approximately 1,000 Bibles to our neighbours. We took responsibility for our village (345 homes, 2 schools and 3 temples) and went school to school, house to house and even giving bibles at the local Buddhist temples (which happily received them).

“So they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord, who bore witness to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands.” (Acts 14:3)

We have some amazing testimonies of what God was doing through this…

1. As we went out in small groups of 3-5 people, one team came across a lady with a bloody, infected knee.  They offered to pray for her and instantly her entire knee healed up, leaving perfectly clean skin and a painless knee.
2. Another group prayed for a man who had shoulder pain. After praying about 3 times the man’s shoulder was completely healed. He was moving it around like a windmill and telling his neighbours about the healing that took place. This one was caught on video.
3. As news spread about some “YWAM people” healing the neighbors, another small group of Bible distributors was called over to a local shop and were asked to pray for healing of knee pain on one lady and finger pain on another. Both were healed and gave testimony to God’s goodness. The testimonies were also caught on video.
4. One team went to a home and found out that one of our staff had given them a Bible last year. They had been reading it for months already, commenting that since they had received the Bible their home was filled with joy. They asked for more Bibles to give to their family members.

Please pray…

…for these people to get a true hunger for the word of God and that they would come to know Jesus and follow him as a disciple…and lead others to Jesus as well.
…for a Bible to be given to every home, to every student and to every temple in the province of Chiang Rai (we need approximately 600,000 Bibles = 1,200,000 U$D)
…for YWAMers, churches and other organizations to partner together to end Bible poverty in Chiang Rai, Thailand.

Just think… if just 10% of the people who received a Bible read it, that would be 100 people reading the Bible. We don’t know what percentage of people are going to receive the word of God as good soil (see Luke 8:5-15), but we do know that those that do will produce fruit 30, 60 and 100 fold. Let’s pray for that good soil in our neighborhood.

PASSPORT UPDATE:
There seems to be a possible solution occurring as we send out this update. However, we have nothing guaranteed yet. If we don’t get this solution within 2 weeks, we’ll have to return to Venezuela as a family to deal with everything there. Please keep praying for God to give Cy the passport that she needs in His way.
We’ll let everyone know when a final solution has been found. Thanks for all your prayers for us throughout the world. We have been blessed to have so many that care for us among the nations.