Over the past months, many of you have been praying along with us that we would sell our condo. This one roadblock has turned into the very thing that has prevented us from buying plane tickets, quitting our jobs, and officially starting our transition to Bolivia. It is with great joy we share with you that after 11 months, 54 showings, 5+ open houses, 1 bathroom makeover, and 7 flowerpot replantings, we now have a contract on our house! The Lord’s provisions are good, that in a market like this, we would sell our house and not lose money on the sale. Selling our home took longer than we would have hoped, but the Lord has eternal timing and we have already begun to see a glimpse of His hand at work.
One wonderful blessing we have received on the journey to selling our home has been the unbelievable amount of prayer support that has been lavished on us. So many of you have poured hours into praying for our condo to sell, and your encouraging words have been a blessing to us. We hope that God has strengthened your trust in Him, and that you too can take a moment to celebrate what He has done. There is great joy in recognizing the goodness of God in both the waiting and in the celebrating. This experience has significantly opened our eyes to the power of prayer support in our ministry. Thanks for your faithfulness. To God be the Glory!
We also celebrate God’s timing for another reason. Some of you may have noticed in our subtitle above that another change has come our way. Just over a week before we sold our home, we received an email with some updates on our ministry assignment. We have shared with many of you in the past that the ministry of Food for the Hungry in Bolivia relied heavily on USAID funding, which is given to the 15 poorest countries in the world. Bolivia has fallen to number 17 on this list and is no longer eligible for USAID funding. Because of this, FH has done some tremendous organizational restructuring in Bolivia. Instead of starting up new programs (like John would have been doing in Cochabamba), FH is going to focus on making their current programs stronger. They have decided that their ministry could utilize us best in another town called Sucre. We will still be doing the same work—training pastors in rural churches and helping those churches strengthen their ministry to their communities. The groundwork for this program has already been started in Sucre, but in order for it to progress, they are in need of someone with John’s skills to move the program forward. This has been a big change for us to wrap our minds around, but after some thought and prayer, we feel God’s hand in this new change. We are also thankful that we had not sold our home yet when we received this news, as we may have already bought plane tickets to the wrong destination! God is good!
