Thank you for your prayers and financial support. We greatly appreciate them. We are keeping very busy here and are just finishing our winter months. We are really looking forward to the warmer weather and some sunshine! We only get to see the sun a few times during eight months of the year, which makes summer something to look forward to.
We started the month of August with a five-day trip to Iquitos, Peru, with Mark Rader, a fellow missionary from Team Peru. Iquitos is the largest city in the world not connected by roads to the rest of the world. Everything they have must come in by boat or airplane, but since it is located along the Amazon River, boats are the most common. A pastor in the area asked Mark Rader to come and teach at their Youth Conference, and we went along to help. A good number of local pastors joined us, and we had a great conference. Since the conference meetings were only in the evenings, we took advantage of the remaining time by visiting 3 different schools and preaching the Gospel to the students. Over 50 teens made decisions to trust Christ during the school meetings. We used some of our time to go soul winning and saw many get saved. Irene was able to lead 4 people to Christ, and we made many great contacts for the church in Iquitos to follow up with.
We also took a little bit of time to go sightseeing. We took a boat ride on the river in order to visit a butterfly farm and an animal rehabilitation center. Irene got to hold a sloth, and I held some monkeys and an anaconda. We got caught in a heavy rainstorm while out at the rehabilitation center, and all of us got soaking wet! We thoroughly enjoyed it because we don’t have rain like that in Lima.
We started our Bible institute in August. There was a lot of preparation required to ready the classrooms. Work that was needed included obtaining desks, building whiteboards, purchasing and installing TV monitors for media presentations, installing new lighting, painting, and adding a tile floor to one of the rooms. We have 23 people enrolled in our first semester! The institute meets on Monday evening of each week, and each semester will last about 16 weeks. We have a 3-year course planned and are offering 3 class periods and chapel each Monday.
A group from San Luis Potosi was visiting with Pastor Victor Palo and helping his church with outreach in their area. They and people from his church came and visited in San Gabriel for a day to put on an evangelistic puppet show at our church there. We went out all day with them, soul winning and inviting people to the show. Over 215 came to the show in the evening! About 80 of those were adults. The church building was packed so full that we could not move around. Approximately 50 people raised their hands for salvation at the end of the evening.
In September, we held our Second Annual Pastors’ School. Pastor Johnathan Ashcraft from Monterrey, Mexico, and Pastor Andres Gomez from Hammond, Indiana, were our guest speakers. The theme was “Going Back to the Basics.” We had over 16 local pastors attend, and many of them brought some of their people with them to learn. There were over 160 registered attendees throughout the conference. On the first day, we taught them how to go soul winning. For some, it was brand-new information, and for a few, it was a refresher course. After the teaching was finished, they had the opportunity to put it into practice, and 16 people were led to Christ by the pastors and their people during a 2-hour period. By the end of the conference, 2 pastors had committed to starting new churches within the next year, and most of the others committed to starting or restarting soul-winning programs in their churches.
We are praying for you! Please let us know if you have any special requests.
In His service,
Chris and Irene Williams
