May/June 2008 Prayer Letter

Dear Pastors and Praying Friends,

Greetings to you in the name of our precious Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Praise God for the blood that washes sinners white as snow (Isaiah 1:18). I am thankful that I had that blood applied to my account on March 17, 1984; it was truly the greatest day of my life. We are looking forward to seeing many Perú vians have the “greatest day of their lives” as they put their faith and trust in the One who can truly cleanse them from their sin and give them an eternal home in Heaven.

Leaving for Perú!
Well, we have great news. On April 21, we bought our plane tickets to Perú! We will leave on July 1st and arrive in Arequipa, Lord willing, on the morning of July 2nd. The Lord allowed us to get both of our tickets to Lima, Perú  for a total of less than $800. After we buy tickets from Lima to Arequipa, the total price will be around $1,000. This is considerably less than what we had originally thought. What a blessing! Thank you for your prayers and sacrificial giving on our behalf.

The last few weeks leading up to our departure will of course be very busy ones. We plan to visit more churches, say last goodbyes to family, and pack and prepare for the big day. On May 20th, we had our departure interview at Macedonia. It is so exciting to see how God has worked and provided so that we are now almost ready to leave. On June 15, we will be having our Commissioning Service at our sending church, Bergholz Baptist Church, in Bergholz, OH. We ask that you would not only pray for us, but also for our families as they prepare for the difficult time of saying goodbye for several years.                        

Blessings:
God also blessed us with 5 new churches partnering with us in April for the work in Perú . The Lord has supplied 10 new supporting churches in the last 3 months, and we are thanking Him for that. We started out in February praying for 20 new churches, and we know that God is able to supply the 10 more supporting churches that we believe would bring us to 100%.

We were traveling to a meeting in Urbana, Ohio, when our car began to malfunction. We were able to get to the church safely, but the car would not start after that. Thank the Lord a deacon at Grace Baptist Church, who happened to be a car mechanic, looked at the car and spotted the problems—a bad battery and alternator. He was able to repair those things and get us back running by the end of the service. What an incredible blessing!

Thank you
This will be our last prayer letter, Lord willing, written from the United States. We are so excited and definitely ready to begin learning Spanish and doing the work God has called us to do. We would be remiss if we did not personally thank each and every one of you that has made all this possible. Thank you for sacrificially giving and praying that the Gospel might get to the people of Perú  and to the entire world. What we are planning to do would be impossible without you as churches and individuals who have partnered together to help us. Our true desire could be summed up in the words of the Apostle Paul writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God in Philippians 4:17, “…but I desire fruit that may abound to your account.”

To help keep folks better updated on all that is going on in our family and ministry, we have started a blog. You can visit it at www.stovers2Peru.blogspot.com. There is a link there where you can subscribe to receive our updates by e-mail. This won’t  be taking the place of the normal prayer letter, just giving more frequent updates. As always, we appreciate your faithful
prayers and support.

Your Laborers for Christ,
Robert, Sara, and Josiah Stover