I wanted to give a quick overview of the last month of ministry here in Santa Marta. Of course we sent out a prayer letter a short time again, but our blog gives you a different perspective on things, not unlike the way the four gospels amplify our understanding of the life of Christ.
The key phrase has been “no stability.” We didn’t have much stability on the ministry front for various reasons. Alfredo had a group come from Bogota. We were in three different places for Sunday services. We have tried to follow up on contacts from the movie nights we had, but have met with challenges. Many people show initial interest, but that can quickly fade, especially when we don’t measure up to their expectations. Neither Scott, nor Alfredo, nor I has gotten into a good ministry routine for this new year.
On the family side of things, we’ve been waiting for the birth of our fourth child, which affects our stability as well. At times Holly feels bad. At other times, she has a number of doctor’s appointments (like this morning), which means that our schedule is not normal. Alfredo has had many family members come in the last month, which has also made his weeks different.
We have not even taken a photo of our new church meeting place. We had our first service there on Sunday. The attendance was down, and we need to fix a few minor details (like buy a speaker so we can hear the preacher better), but all in all it was a good day.
We rejoice that another person has made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. The angels rejoice, and so do we!
For this new year I’ve come up with a number of new goals for my part in the ministry here. One of the first is the desire to get our ministry training school started. We want to begin to offer courses as soon as possible. We don’t have a normal Sunday School program but want to offer a more in-depth program instead. I’m going to start thinking about how the curriculum will be set up. Then we need to begin to think through the details of offering our first course. We also need to start thinking about the legal formation of the church (which is a long process at times). This implies the writing of the bylaws for the church and submitting them to the government. In Chia we never reached this goal even though we worked on it for more than two years.
On a personal note, I’ve decided that I’m going to study the works of Martin Luther this year. I’ve actually started writing a booklet in Spanish on his theology of the cross. I hope to actually finish it and not bog down, as often happens with my personal projects.
A special thanks to bartpogoda on Flickr for the use of the photo.
