First, I want to thank you for taking the time to read our letter. We hope and pray that you will find it to be a blessing to you and that it will motivate many people to pray for our ministry and for the souls of the Irish people.
January
Our church’s theme for 2020 is “Reaping the Harvest,” and we are concentrating on the harvests that we are sowing in our spiritual lives. We held a church business meeting, and the church people voted to officially support out first missionaries, the Kiss family serving in Hungry. They are Hungarian nationals and have been doing a great job. We have supported them periodically, but we made the decision to support them regularly now. The church building we have been meeting in was finally sold, and the new owners required us to sign a statement that we would vacate the building within a month upon notice. Please pray as we search diligently to find appropriate accommodations. During this month, we began video recording all of our services live online, and the Lord has blessed, as we have significantly increased the amount of people watching our services. Our oldest boy finally had his 16th birthday. Each boy was born during a significant change in our lives, and Keith was born the year we started raising support full-time to come to Ireland 16 years ago. In the middle of the month, all of the missionaries met together for a large prayer meeting to pray for Ireland. A new Nigerian couple named Daniel and Felicia started coming faithfully to our meetings. Daniel is a trained attorney who needed to get his foot in the door in Limerick City, and he asked me to pray for him. When we began praying, he was soon offered an internship with a local law firm. Praise the Lord for answered prayer! A man named Ger has been doing our discipleship course for some years now and finally finished the first week of January. He received his completion certificate, and I have continued with him, doing a book-by-book Bible study.
February
Kelly’s uncle passed away suddenly in January, so Kelly flew back to the USA on February 13 to help her mom for three weeks. Because of this, I needed to add homeschooling to my daily activities. It was a great adjustment, and we managed to get at least a minimum amount of work accomplished each day. However, I have fallen severely behind in my own duties. One of our church people brought over a pot of stew that his mom had made for the boys and me, which was a great blessing. I realise the COVID-19 virus has affected everyone, but Ireland is currently under distancing restrictions. Being a small country with socialized medicine and already lacking needed hospital beds, the potential impact could be devastating in the long run. We are dealing with it the best we know how and trusting the Lord. I warned our people that they should have some extra food and gave them ways to boost their immune systems in case they get it. They really seemed to appreciate it. Please pray for us; pray that the Lord would use this to turn people’s hearts to God.
Soul Winning
I continued to get the Gospel out in the area with my boys, as well as in the services. One Sunday morning, Ronan approached me about his salvation, and I was able to give him another very clear presentation of the Gospel. He understands, but he is hesitant to place his complete faith in the Lord to save him. Please pray for the Holy Spirit to convict him about his need.
Please pray for these needs:
1. New building
2. Co-laborers in Limerick
3. Protection over the ministry
Last, I want to give my sincere thanks to those who pray for our us, send birthday cards, gifts, emails, and messages online and for those who faithfully support us, both prayerfully and financially. Also, I want to say a special thanks to Freedom Baptist Church in North Carolina for their Building Fund offering and for all the churches that gave special Christmas offerings. May the Lord bless all of you for your sacrifices to hold the ropes.
In the campaign for Irish souls,
Keith Hamilton
