Puerto Rico: The Back Door for Reaching the US Spanish Speaking Population. Our ministry is Church planting and training men and women for Christian service at Puerto Rico Baptist College.
We are reaching people here, who immigrate and reach others in Spanish speaking communities across our nation.
Good fishermen have tackle boxes with a good selection of items to choose from, the tried and true and sometimes, something new. We want to be good "fishers of men" so here is what we are currently doing. The Tried and True: For door to door evangelism, we have recently bought a couple of boxes of gospel tracts. We like the ones that have print big that are easy to read for our poor rural people who often can't afford eyeglasses. The one's that are well illustrated and have fewer words seem to to be the ones that get read the most.
Passing them out in mountain neighborhoods, on hillsides without streets, makes for a lot of hill climbing. We navigate narrow cement stairs that zig-zag up the mountainsides. Some of my previous visitation partners have health issues that have them less able to accompany me. I am trying to recruit new helpers. I have visited alone and will do so if necessary, but visiting with others is the Biblical pattern and it certainly is best. Please pray that I can find some new visitation partners soon.
Something New: A Puerto Rican pastor's son I know and I talked about a new thing we heard of. We learned that on Facebook you can put a circle around a community, say a 5 mile radius around the church, and boost a post to that community. So we tried it. I wrote an invitation to our church, connected a Google map to it and set it to run for 7 days. Here is what happened.
We got a lot of reaction! For about the same cost of a box of tracts, we got 206 reactions, 55 written comments, and 29 shares! A few of the comments were negative, but I was able to answer objections, dialog with some people, and was encouraged by the vast majority of positive comments. We received a lot of promises for prayer, and even promises to attend.
We will keep doing the tried and true, but will also continue with the something new. I think this will be a great addition to the various way we do or could do evangelism here where we labor in the interior mountain region of rural Puerto Rico.
Hurricane Issac is coming. We are in the cone of probability for a strike this coming Friday. Although for now, it looks like the northern edge of Issac will scrape the underbelly of our island. If it misses us, it might seem that all the time, materials, and expense of being totally prepared was wasted. Well, not really. It serves as a good drill for weathering future storms. Preparing for Irma last year left in a better position to survive Maria that devastated the island a year ago.
Please remember us in prayer here in the Caribbean, especially during the hurricane season.
We are in hurricane season again and people are nervous about it down here, after having lost so much and endured so much from hurricanes Irma and Maria last year.
Recently, a storm passed us to the south and panic gripped our area causing many store shelves to be quickly emptied of key supplies.
It feels like paranoia, but it is understandable. People suffered much more during and after the hurricanes than early reports indicated. Those experiences have not been forgotten. It was a false alarm, but alarms like these take their toll.
We suffered the loss of the church building we were renting near the city center. Church members lost roofs and were forced to move away to live with relatives in other towns. Our numbers decreased, but we kept our congregation together. Our people wanted to continue as a church and continue an outreach and church planting ministry to our devastated town of Comerio.
We began meeting again, first in a home for a while, and then in a small concrete building that was a video rental store that was operated by a church member who died of cancer last year.
The good in all of this is that our remaining members are encouraged to have survived and been extremely supportive of continuing the work of missions in our town and elsewhere. We have remodeled the building, and are putting up a sign on it this week. We have ordered and received hundreds of gospel tracts and are planning a tract distribution day soon.
It is like beginning again, but with a good dedicated core group as a team that has a lot of good will and experience. Our church has saved twenty thousand dollars toward getting a building of our own, so we have that to draw on in emergencies. Friends and supporters sent us financial gifts to help. It was a blessing to be in a position to distribute food, tarps to cover damaged homes, and to help repair storm and tree damage to our Bible college. The resilience of our people and the positive progress we are seeing is very encouraging.
Sarah & Mario Fragela
This August, the last of our unmarried daughters, Sarah, got married. She married a Puerto Rican young man, Mario Fragela, that had been a student of mine.
We had the wedding here and had quite a few people in our home. I preformed the ceremony and was able to give a simple and clear gospel message along with the vows. From all accounts, it went well.
Kristin & Danny Becerra
Two years ago, Kristin married the son of a Puerto Rican pastor I work with. Before, we were outsiders working as missionaries here. Now, we are united by marriage to two different extended Puerto Rican families. I notice I get a lot more smiles and positive nods from people as we go about our work here.
We are happy survived the storm. We are enjoying the smiles and help of new people. We are thankful for a core of faithful and dedicated church members who have sacrificed to continue the work of church planting in the rural mountain areas of Puerto Rico. We are thankful also for your help and encouragement.
It has made a big difference. Please continue your prayer and support for our missionary work here in Puerto Rico.
Tina was interviewed for a TV segment about Puerto Rico recovery efforts yesterday (Segment starts at 3:05, Tina's part: 7:45). Chuck Holton, A former army Ranger, visited the island as trouble-spot news correspondent for NRA TV. We met him and some of his helpers and showed them around the day they arrived. Chuck brought a SAT phone and allowed our Bible college kids to contact their parents to say they were OK. That night, they could not find lodging in any hotels, so we offered our home as a base for them the week they were here. They left us some cool inflatable solar lanterns which came in handy for our Sept-Jan period of no electricity.
Chuck remembered us when he went to do an update on the recovery (or non-recovery) here in Puerto Rico. He called us by Skype and Tina gave him an update on the state of things on the island.
We appreciate Chuck and are grateful for his help and also for getting the word out on what is happening down here. Chuck and crew are great people to have around when things get tough.
I ordered a "Sampler Pack" or assortment of gospel tracts from a couple of places. We got a nice selection online from a place called "Moments with the Book"
I asked our people to read and evaluate them. We look for tracts that have clarity in communicating the Gospel, are likely to be read, and that our members would feel good about giving to someone.
Then we ordered a bunch of the ones that our members liked the best.
I find that the members of our missionary church are more likely to pass out tracts they have read and got exited about, than those we just order and put out in a tract rack.
Scheduling a "Tract Day" is something we have done in the past and I think we will do again in the near future. We pick a day, usually a Saturday from 10-2. We try and get everyone from our church, plus maybe some friends from other churches, to pass out tracts with us. Then we split up into small groups and have a tract blitz, blanketing different areas of our town with tracts. After a couple of hours, we return to the church for lunch and share our experiences. I ask our helpers to give a testimony Sunday morning about their experiences to encourage the church.
Does it work?
Having a tract in hand makes it easier for our people to visit homes than just walking up to a door with a Bible. Since it's easier, the tracts make the visit between our members and neighborhood people more likely to happen. It is true that the personal contact and the shared testimony of our members is more likely to encourage others to make a life changing decision than the tracts we give out, but the presence of a tract giver, giving a positive testimony, makes the tracts more likely to be read and for that message to be received in a way that will make a difference.
I give a devotional on Wednesday mornings to the 7th through 12th graders at Levittown Baptist Academy in the town of Toa Baja, Puerto Rico.
They can get pretty excited about things..
I also teach Bible to a class of 8th graders twice a week. Just one of me and thirty-three of them for an hour. Some days that hour seems like it's a lot longer than an hour.
I used to be intimidated by the thought of speaking to rowdy groups of kids. But, even when there doesn't seem to be enough of me to last that hour with the lot of them, I have always found that the Word of God is enough to get us through. It is sufficient in itself to do miraculous things. It is easier to boldly proclaim something when you know with a certainty that it has the power to change lives for the better.
So here we are, missionaries in Puerto Rico, boldly proclaiming the Word of God, not just on Sundays, but during the week as well.
You may also note that we seem a bit tired at times. That's OK too. I don't mind getting tired doing something that's worth while doing, and nothing is worth doing more than reaching the souls of men (or rowdy school kids) with the Word of God. It has the power to change lives. That's something we should all get exited about.
Today, a church member brought a bag of papayas he harvested and gave them out after our Mother's Day Banquet. In spite of the hurricanes destruction, the trees recovered and began producing fruit again. He told me the biggest one was over 13 lbs and that they were especially good for making papaya, strawberry, and vanilla ice cream smoothies.
Our church is being replanted again as well. We have rented a small building in a new location. We have met there now for the last 3 weeks. Every week it is looking better and there is a good spirit among our people. Please pray that our church might prosper as it is replanted in its new location.
After four months of no electricity and numerous months of rebuilding, we are trying to get back to our practice of weekly ministry updates.
People responded to our needs and sent money to help rebuild missing roofs, personal losses, and to repair damage at Puerto Rico Baptist College. The fence between our Bible college and a mechanic's car strewn field was taken out by the hurricane and a number of very large trees that came crashing down on it. But thanks to gifts that we have received, we were able to contribute $2000 towards rebuilding it. Now, not only does the school look better, but because of the wall, it is more secure.
Tina has been taking pictures of the progress on her way to cook meals for the students. It's going up!
