Planting In Good Ground
Planting a crop is very hard work. If the field is not properly prepared before planting your work will be doubled. We have a small ranch of about 600 fruit trees and we have learned the importance of looking for good ground. In the church the same concept is true. We can spend all of our time planting seed on the path or among the thorns and we will never have a harvest. We need to look for good ground to get our returns. In 2021 we spent a year preparing the churches and planting the Word outside of the church. This year the Lord has opened the door for us to have an abundant harvest and see all of our churches grow.
As we mentioned in our last Newsletter we felt that it was time for the churches to start doing aggressive evangelism. In December we started with a 3-day evangelistic crusade in the main park of the city of Tepic. For the last 2 years, we had only been having church inside our 4 walls or in homes. During the crusade, we saw real miracles of healings and bodies being restored. More than the miracles it was a place of breaking fears that were holding down many people in the church. There were a lot of people that came back the next day bringing people that needed a healing touch on their bodies. More than anything the name of Jesus was glorified. The last day of the crusade was Sunday the 19th and we cancelled our church service and almost everyone from the church came out to attend the crusade.
At the end of January, we will be starting a new semester at our Bible school. In the month of February, we will be starting with our Bible outreach and doing evangelism with the Jesus film.
In the last part of 2021, we finished the year with a Youth Conference in San Pedro with Stephen & Marcela. We sent a busload of young people (with their chaperones) and they were blessed. Each person that went came back motivated to continue on with their walk with God. We also had our church Christmas Posadas (this is more than just a Christmas party) where the church family gets together to celebrate the birth of Jesus and do activities that represent the Virgin Birth of our Savior. There is a lot more that we could talk about, but I want to share a short story of one of our converts.
I will call him Pancho. About 23 years ago Pancho was sent to one of our churches by his leaders, who were Satanists, to destroy the church. He was not able to do what he was sent to do but before he left he had heard enough of the Word that it stayed with him. We fast forward 18 years and Pacho comes back to the church accompanied by his wife and 3 of his children. He has left the coven and he is now a born-again Christian along with his wife, his parents and part of his wife’s family. I will not go into the details of the struggle he went through to be free of the demonic activity in his life but even today he still is in constant warfare. What I want to mention is that Pancho and his wife are now starting their 5th semester in our Bible school. They both have ministries in the church and are helping us with one of our church missions. These are lives that have been transformed through being born again.
We pray that the blessings of our Lord Jesus Christ will be upon your families and your homes. We have so much to be thankful for. If God lays on your heart to help in the upcoming projects we have please do so, We have students to sponsor, Bibles to give away as well as our own personal expenses to cover as we work with the churches here. Also if someone wants to come and teach English as a ministry for 3 to 6 months we have an opening for you.
Philip, Lucy, & Vanessa Tolman
