Guatemala, October 23, 2008
Dear Prayer Partners,
Today is my 64th birthday. Where have all the years gone? Certainly the Lord has been faithful since my early childhood in New Jersey, growing up in North Carolina, moving to Latin America at the age of 11, meeting Sam in Argentina in Bible School, serving the Lord in so many ways since then, and living by faith day by day. (And I am still learning new things, Office 2007, blogs and websites.)
Seven months have gone by since our last letter and I am wondering how have YOU been? Has the Lord blessed you in a special way? Perhaps He entrusted you with an unexpected problem that shook you from complacency and brought you into a new relationship with the Lord. That has been the case, working on my dissertation for 3 years, finally finishing October 1st with 150 pages, titled "The need of national authors and publications to develop a truly Guatemalan church". With 2.5 million evangelical Christians (out of a total population of 10 million), you would think that Guatemala would produce a good amount of its own literature. Not so. Less than 2% of the literature in the bookstores is produced by Guatemalan leaders, and the dissertation includes proposals to solve this problem.
WRITING AND PUBLISHING (via our small editorial: Ediciones Sa-Ber).
My weekly column appears in La Palabra with a wide readership, and I am continually editing articles or books for fledgling writers (all in Spanish of course). We decided to reprint a book Sam and I co-wrote on the family a number of years ago, finding it as straight to the point as ever. We scanned the text, added clip art, retitled it Principios para la Familia Integral (Principles for the Integral Family), and are preparing a new cover. It fits our 3 goals: short (64 pages), economical ($3.25), and useful (family orientation).
TEACHING. The end of April I finished teaching the course Techniques of Research to the first year students at the Panamerican University School of Theology, and then for three months I taught an experimental course on the Masters in Theology degree level, guiding the writing of the dissertations of 9 students (5 pastors, 3 university professors, 1 administrator). See the picture above. We had an interesting experience of learning and growing, with one of the students graduating October 2nd, and several more will graduate in November.
FAMILY. We became great grandparents in July, when Ryan Samuel was born to Kristina and Mark in Houston. The Lord is good. It's unbelievable that Lisa's son Andy is as tall as I am! We are thankful for each of our children and their families. Sam's sister Lydia visited us earlier this month; she and I edited Yenovk Berberian's autobiography (68 pages), adding photographs. Excellent story! Lydia plans to publish it in Spanish in Argentina. See the following picture of Lydia, when visiting the library.
DOULOS FOUNDATION: Frederick Crowe Institute and Dr. Núñez Library
The Institute, founded and supervised by Sam, provides junior and senior high education to pastors and leaders (and other adults) in the Saturday program, as well as providing the same level of education to adolescents in the weekday program. 40% of our 170 students are from extreme poverty level families who live on less than $250 dollars a month. You can make a difference in their lives as a donor. We continue to rent a large house in downtown Guatemala City; the 6 classrooms barely hold 18 students each when our goal is 25. The 13,000 volume library (begun with Sam's personal library in 1989) survives and grows with donations of Spanish books and funds to cover projects. We need funds to digitalize the extensive card catalog.
THANK YOU for your prayers and gifts whether large or small. We invite you to be a part of our ministry by praying and giving, perhaps sponsoring a needy student ($300 per year per student), or a gift for our personal expenses. We want to thank those who have donated towards the building fund, and for library projects. Please send the designation with your donation.
For a tax deductible receipt, write your check to CMM (Christ’s Mandate for Missions) directed by our dear friend, Jorge Parrott, and mail to P.O. Box 7705, Charlotte, North Carolina 28241, USA. Telephone: (704) 225-3927. If you don't need a receipt and it is more convenient, you may deposit your gift directly into our Bank of America account. Write us for details.
Proverbs 11:25: “A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.”
Prayerfully,
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