Merry Christmas to everyone! We hope that God will richly bless each and every one of you during this time. Thank you for your love, support, and prayers!
First things first in our goings-on here: We’re going to have a baby! That’s right, we are expecting Baby Hedderman at the end of May! We found out in September but decided to wait to announce it until Heather had completed 12 weeks, but she is definitely pregnant! We do ask for your prayers for her as she goes through her first pregnancy, as well as for me—as she goes through her first pregnancy.
Outside of learning how to be pregnant, we’ve packed a lot into these last two months! Thanks to all of you who prayed for our Youth Conference. We had over 200 young people in our conference at the beginning of November. It was such a blessing to watch our church people here work so hard to put everything on and then watch God show Himself in a wonderful way. The theme this year was “I Press Toward the Mark.” In total, we had teenagers from 14 churches, both from Lima as well as from around the country. We had games, breakout sessions, and soccer and volleyball tournaments, but also some incredible preaching. Bro. Norman Kokubun spoke, as well as several pastors from here in Lima. Watching God intertwine all of their messages to speak to hearts was amazing. It was as if it was one single theme being preached from all directions throughout the week.
In the month of November, we had the chance to hold a four-week soul-winning clinic in another local church during their midweek services. Each week, we were privileged to be able to teach them how to go soul winning, as well as listen to their stories of them putting their newfound “skills” into practice. God keeps opening doors here in Lima to grow and advance His work.
Speaking of open doors here in Lima, Heather had the chance a few weeks ago to go and speak in another church’s “Princess Banquet.” She got to enjoy three hours each way in Lima traffic while pregnant, but when she arrived, there were 40-plus teenage girls from their church. It was a fun evening.
Pray for our church, as all the Christmas activities are happening. It’s customary here for each ministry to have its Christmas/year-end party, and so there have been activities almost every night. We are excited about our big evangelistic Christmas program. We will be doing a cantata with a clear presentation of the Gospel. We have passed out thousands of invitations and will keep doing so until the day of the program. We are praying that God does something big in the hearts of all who attend. We would ask for your prayers that His will would be done in everything.
Our teenagers will be having their teen camp in January—that is when the schools are on summer break in Lima. We are praying to be able to take a group of 30-40 there to camp for three days. The main goal this year is to preach on sexual purity and on staying pure until marriage. The big invitation this year will be to enter into a Pacto de Santidad (“a commitment to personal holiness”). We would ask for your prayers that many hearts would be stirred and that many would make the promise to stay pure until marriage and throughout their lives.
Pray for our church. We are looking to take 10-15 people on a missions trip to the jungle of Perú in February. We will be going up the river with one of the missionaries we as a church support, and we will be evangelizing in several villages along the way. We are praying that many will be saved and that the churches there will be strengthened.
Thank you so much to each and every one of you, and we wish you all a very Merry Christmas!
—The Hedderman Family (Josh, Heather, and BABY!!!!!)
