Picking Up The Pieces
As I write this letter we find ourselves here in Mexico in a dichotomous situation of being closed and open at the same time. The COVID-19 curve continues to accelerate here but at the same time most businesses and churches are now open. The businesses are open to generate income since the Mexican government does not have the funds to subsidize people who have lost their jobs. As of the 30th of June the churches in our State are officially permitted to open as we have been petitioning the government to be recognized as an essential activity.
As we wrote in our last newsletter, we never closed our churches nor did we suspend services during the 3 months that the churches were officially closed in our State. We made a lot of changes in our way of ministering and in the larger churches we moved out of the buildings and ministered in smaller groups throughout the week. We did a lot of what we called "acoustic" services with no sound system and only a guitar or two. We were getting ready to dust off the accordions and bring them back from retirement. Our purpose of continuing to have church services is that we feel that they are essential. The world will never see our gathering together as essential but we know that it is. Our strength and our power comes from being gathered together in prayer and worship. Broadcasting services and Facebook just don’t get the job done (we do both).
One of our highlights during this time was the growth of our helps ministries in the churches. Even the poorer rural church got food packages together and distributed them to needy people. Our ministry was donated a special offering to help financially needy families and through this we were able to bless 22 families. Our churches also continued with our missions program and we were able to not have to cut back on the support that we send to our missionaries in other countries. With many of our member not attending services (we let every member decide to attend or not according to their faith in this area) our income was very limited but God blessed it to fulfill all of our needs.
During this time of limitations in church activities we still continued to reap souls for the kingdom of God. Our baptism services were only with up to 10 people present in the church or for those that wanted more people present we had them outdoors in a river. One of the people that we baptized was a 78 year old man that had been attending church with us for over 30 years. He had been more or less faithful in attending but there were things in his life that he didn't want to give up. He knew that once he made up his mind to serve Jesus these things had to go. In the years of coming to church he had come to the point of baptism many times and twice he had even given us a date but to no avail. I don't know exactly what made him carry through with his decision this time but what I do know is that there has been a change. Even after all his years of being in church, his post-baptismal life is very radically different.
In June Philip was blessed to have his 60th birthday. We had planned to have a "church party" that would have had over 300 people in attendance. Because of the social contingencies that was not possible but we didn’t let the event pass unnoticed. We had a dinner for only pastors from the city and family and with only them we had 60 people attend. The weather cooperated for us and we held the party outside of our school facilities.
Thank you to each of you who have partnered with us in finance and prayers for this ministry. We know that a lot of you are struggling financially also but as we continue to give God continues to bless us. Has children of God we don't depend on the world's economic status; we depend on God. We bless you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Philip, Lucy, and Vanessa Tolman
