November Prayer letter

Hello Valued Prayer partners!

We certainly do appreciate your partnership with us! Thank you so much for your prayers over the last month since our last update!

The last little while I have been marking my Pastoral and Leadership Training students on their teaching methods. The main idea of the class was to enable them to expositorily teach the Scriptures and get the meat out of them in order to grow their congregations spiritually. One of the main needs in churches here is for strong, deep Biblical teaching and this is what we are hoping to accomplish.

I've had 6 students teach so far, from real newbies to seasoned pastors. Overall they are doing pretty well, although it seems to me that for some, the more experience they have the more difficult it has been for them to learn something new. Please pray for our students that they will learn to take the meat of Scripture and feed their folks a steady diet that the people may grow up in Christ and not be tossed around by the mass of false teachers that we have here. (Eph 4:14-15) Read my blog for more details of this part of the ministry!!

The teaching at Calvary Chapel Bible College is continuing. They've asked me to teach another class next semester, I'm just in the process of praying about what book to teach on. Please pray with me on this!

NEW NEWS

I've been given an opportunity to go down to southern Mexico for a week or so in early December. One of our YUGO Missionaries, Efrain Torres, had started a ministry down in his hometown of Acatita, Sinaloa. He is leading a Canadian group down there to do some evangelism in December and invited me to come along to see what is up. I'm looking for a place to take my Pastor and Leaders Training grads to next spring. This area is ripe for the message of Jesus Christ with very little Christian witness. See this article (page 2) from a sister mission MGF who has assisted in some work there...

Please pray that God would supply the finances for this trip-- it is in less than a months time away!

Speaking of finances...

Our last month was quite low. For only the 3rd time since being here we failed to receive a full check. As a matter of fact, our take home amount was about half of what we usually get. So in November we have canceled all non-essential driving are cutting back on our groceries, have shelved a vehicle for the month and are spending as little as we can. God is good and is helping us to reevaluate our needs. Because of having to go out and mark students-- that travel has increased markedly these last few weeks, which means we can do little else! Praise God we had full support before this so our cupboards are doing OK, but we cannot go too many more months like this!!

Please pray that our regular support will be back up to normal this coming month and that God will also provide for the trip to Acatita to help spread the gospel and disciple brand new believers.

Language Acquisition

Finally we're asking pray for our language acquisition. We are finding that Shar and the boys are going through some pretty intense isolation as their limited skills in Spanish hamper their abilities to integrate with the people around them. We had been praying about sending the boys to a local private school-- so they could learn Spanish, make friends and give Shar more time to concentrate on Spanish. But that is not working out.

Our next thought is that maybe we need to take some more intense language studies. They say if you have about 6 months of intense, daily full time study you can become fluent in the language. We've had 1 month of study like that and the rest has been learn as you go. We've probably all met people in Canada from "the old country" who never really did learn English well enough to get by outside of the family- and that is not what we want to have happen with us!

So we are hoping to do 2 months of Spanish this summer in Ensenada, about 120km south of here. 5 days a week 6 hours a day. Please pray that God would give us wisdom and direction in that and that we'd get enough Spanish for me to be fluent and Shar and the kids to be conversant. We'd love for them to be able to get into the community with activities like soccer, swimming lessons, kids and ladies activities at church. We'd also like them to be able to make friends and share the gospel with our neighbours.

Thank you so much for your partnership with us! It is a privilege to represent you down here in Northern Mexico! We are laying up treasures for ourselves in heaven together! I pray that God will meet all your needs according to His Riches in Christ Jesus! (Php. 4:19)!

God bless!!

Mike, Sharlene and the boys