Dear Friends and Family,
We
hope this letter finds you doing well! We are staying very busy and
continue with all of our normal church ministries. Every week, we
share the Gospel throughout the community, and we continue to see
regular visitors. In late September, we used our new “baptistry
pool” for the first time and baptized three who had trusted in
Christ. During an in-home visit, a man named Carlos called upon
Christ for salvation. Near the end of the month, we hosted a small
team from our sending church. It was a multi-purpose trip, but one of
the main purposes was to assist us with our chartering service.
Pastor Kelley presented a resolution formally recognizing our
church’s constitution and charter as our church was officially
chartered as an independent Baptist church. Here in Costa Rica, many
churches do not have formal membership, but ten people formally
became members of our church and signed our church constitution and
chartering document. This brings us to 25 founding members, not
including children and teens, as we begin this new chapter as an
independent church. We also ordained our first deacon, and we trust
that he will be a faithful example for others to follow. We also
prepared a “History of Our Church” video that followed the
history of the church from our Bible studies in our garage, through
the pandemic, to where we are today. Many people said that they had
never attended a service like that before and that it was very
edifying. We are also seeing several others get involved in serving
in different ways, and we are thankful to see the Lord continuing to
grow and strengthen His church!
In the first part of the
month, we celebrated birthdays for Jeremy and Lila. Lila is now 15
years old, and we are so proud of the young lady she is becoming.
Jeremy is pretty much the same, just a little bit older. This month,
we will celebrate Ellowyn’s birthday as she officially becomes a
teenager. We all enjoyed spending time together with the group from
our sending church. Besides evangelism and our church activities, we
took a trip to a local volcano, visited the coast, and enjoyed many
meals together.
As we look forward to what God will do in
October, we want to thank all who pray and give so that we can do
God’s work in Costa Rica. We also want to give a special thanks to
our supporting church in Ohio that sent a special offering to help us
purchase more chairs.
This month, please pray:
1.
That God will help us reach even more souls for Christ.
2. That
God will continue to strengthen and build His church in San Pablo.
3.
That God will lead us as we look for land or a building to be our
future meeting location.
In Christ,
Jeremy, Michelle, Lila, Ellowyn, and Elijah Blanz
