It is amazing what the Lord can do! What a great God we serve! A year ago, there was a city of over a million people with only two fundamental, independent Baptist churches. Now there are three! It has been wonderful to be an important part of it. We celebrated our first anniversary on August 18.
This past week, the Lord seemed to send a little awakening to the small town of Casas Grandes. We started a church there that I have pastored since the last week of March. We had an evangelistic campaign there this past week, and the Lord gave us over 900 people in attendance, with 466 decisions for Christ. We did mass evangelism in the communities with Bible Clubs. It is a very effective ministry tool here in Mexico! Many parents also came.
The Lord gave us over 250 at the closing service at the church! The town has only 5,000 inhabitants. That means that nearly 1/5 of the people came to a public service this week and heard the Gospel! Nearly 1/10 of the town made decisions for Christ! The Lord gave us 19 workers from 5 different churches. It is wonderful to see what the Lord can do when Christians work together and do not care who gets the credit—as long as God gets the glory.
Another great answer to prayer is that the Lord has given us a pastor to take the church for this year, with the good prospect of becoming full-time next year!
All in all, it was a great grand finale to the time I have spent in Chihuahua. My expenses have increased greatly since the Lord led me into church planting, and my sending pastor, Dr. Dean Noonan, has advised me to raise more support. The Lord has given me a pretty full schedule from August 22 into December. I hope this might be the last trip I need to make to the USA for a while.
Prayer Requests
1. For the fullness and power of the Holy Spirit, enabling me to be a blessing to the churches in the United States
2. For more supporting churches
3. For support for the start-up costs and two-year budgets of new church plants
4. For direction for next year
Yours for souls,
Christopher Sage