Greetings from Ottawa, Canada! I hope you had a blessed Christmas. For Esther and myself, this was our first Christmas season in Canada since 2011 and the first one ever for Benjamin. We are so thankful to visit family and friends in Alberta, Niagara Falls, Toronto and in Ottawa where we spent most of our time.
This year has been tough to schedule ministry because of a couple of covid waves that were creating havoc on traveling and ministry plans. Thankfully, the last few months have been good. I was finally able to travel to Timor, do our Bible camp and more.. Here is a brief report.
Indonesia needs your prayer right now. As the delta variant is ripping through the nation, we are experiencing the biggest surge we have seen so far. Here in our small town, we are also experiencing an increase in cases. As a result all public gatherings have been stopped by the local government. Our weekly meetings have moved online and all ministry trips have been postponed for the moment.
Warmest Greetings from Indonesia! We hope and pray you are in good health. This past year has been difficult on all of us but we thank God for His help through it all. Our small town here in North Sumatra is still fairing well compared to other parts of Indonesia. Thank God we still have some freedom to live and minister locally. We even managed to make a few short ministry trips these past months. Here is a brief report on what has been happening.
Hello from Indonesia! I hope and pray that you and your loved ones remain healthy and well taken care of. All of us here are doing good. Our small town in the mountains of North Sumatra is doing much better compared to the rest of the country. We currently have just over a hundred total confirmed cases. Yet we still limit our travels outside our region since the pandemic is still raging in the densely populated bigger cities not too far from where we are. We thank God for His protection during this unprecedented time we are living in and ministering in.
New years greetings from Indonesia! We had a wonderful trip to the central part of Indonesian Borneo. It was the location of our Jesus festival back in 2015. This time we were invited to minister in a Christmas outreach service. It all started as one of the pastors there was dining in a restaurant and while there she met a woman who had received a miracle during the Jesus festival back in 2015. As a result we were invited to do this Christmas outreach service. We had a great time ministering the word of God and praying for the sick.
On September 28, 2018 a 7.5 magnitude earthquake followed by a tsunami devastated the city of Palu in Indonesia. At this time of writing the official death toll is just over 1,700 people with thousands still missing. The first time I heard about the earthquake and tsunami was during our 2nd night of the Jesus festival in Timor. It had just happened a few hours ago we were all in shock. It took me back to the time when I first came to Indonesia back in 2004. Two months after I arrived, an earthquake and tsunami struck Aceh which is the province to the north of our hometown in Indonesia. Over 200,000 lives were lost during that time.
Greetings in the Name of Jesus from the Island of Sumatra! The work of the Kingdom continues to expand reaching more and more with the good news of Jesus. Praise and glory to our faithful Lord for his provision and protection as we continue to work in this vast mission arena. For the most part Esther and I have been focused these past months developing believers in our house fellowships. This month we will add two more house fellowships in two towns. There are also plans for two Jesus festivals coming up in September and October of this year. Here is a brief update of what has been happening with us.
During the last week in December, we got a chance to visit quiet a few less privileged families to pray and share the gospel with them. We also blessed 19 families with Christmas food packages consisting of rice, cooking oil, sugar and local holiday treats. One of those people we visited was Rani. As our team ministered, she opened her heart to believe in Jesus. A few days later she was sitting in the front row during our Christmas celebration service and later came forward to publicly declared her faith in Christ. Praise the Lord! In the closing days of 2017, we purchased our first ministry minibus which came just in time to transport families to and from our Christmas service. What a way to close out the year!