What a blessing to begin another year serving our Saviour here in Lima, Peru! Time has flown by, and we are late in sending out this prayer update, for which we apologize. This morning we prayed for each of our supporting churches and friends as we regularly do. It is amazing to us that we have such faithful and kind supporters and prayer warriors who join us in the fight. We thank God for you.
This year has brought much growth to the church in San Gabriel. It is indeed a privilege to pastor these dear people. We celebrated our 5th Anniversary as a church in January, and we were thrilled to see the church members take the burden of the big day upon themselves and work together as a team to make a wonderful day. Many visitors trusted Christ that day, and 8 souls were baptized! We now have a baptistery installed in our auditorium, which helps tremendously, although we miss the days of baptizing in the park. We have had a good start to our soul winning in 2018. In all our ministries of IBI San Gabriel, 86 people have made professions of faith in Jesus so far this year.
The discipleship program, Foundations of the Faith, has been a great help to our church! The first level is a four-book series that is taught in a new-converts’ class by one of our church members, Bro. David Alfaro. Bro. Alfaro has been busy since the beginning of the church, working with new converts each week, and we have already had one graduating class this year.
Team Peru is going forward with several projects that we would love for you to pray about with us! We are beginning a school this year called a pre-universitaria. This type of class is for students who have graduated from high school but are not yet ready to enroll in university. We are hoping to help ground these young people in the faith and prepare them for possible entry into seminary or whatever the Lord has for them. This is a vital need here, and we covet your prayers for a successful start to this program.
We will be helping a new church plant in a city called San Vicente in the month of March. This is an area about two hours from Lima, where there is no Gospel-preaching church. Please pray as we soul win and invite people and as we work in training and helping the pastor of this new work.
Coming up in April, our church in San Gabriel will host its first missions conference! We have had a Faith Promise program for the last two years, but this will be the first conference. We are very excited about this and are praying to add a few more missionaries to those we already support.
God is working here in Peru, and we need your prayers as we continue to try to make His name great.
His for souls,
Zach and Karin Foust
Zachary, Caleb, and Logan
