To our dear friends and supporters:

We once again start our letter by thanking the Lord for each of you and your faithfulness towards Him who loved us, died for us and rose again for the Glory of God…Jesus Christ!

This letter will be a little bit different in the sense that it’s being sent out to you from New York as we are now home on furlough as we mentioned in our last letter. WOW! Did we need to return and didn’t realize it! It’s hard to believe that we had planned on staying 2 more years. Looking back we’re so thankful that the Lord has brought us home, and we plan to rest, report, seek His face and also raise new support.

Please let us share a little bit of our last few weeks so that you can pray, rejoice, laugh, and even mourn with us! First let me share the sad moments in Honduras we had just before we left. You already know about one of our teachers and her whole family (the Nolasco family) that was slaughtered in what is to us one of the worse killings we have ever seen. Well, just about 6 days before we left, one of our mothers (Mrs. Martinez) who is a lawyer was fired upon over twenty different times and struck four of those times. She received two shots in the arm, one in the neck and one right through her face! To the Glory of God, she managed to survive and is doing well, but her assailants have not been caught (justice is at times slow). This was the last sign that we needed to come home and get out for a little while.

Now we’re in NY and are so thankful to and for our home church family. They worked hard for weeks to finds us a house and vehicles for us to live and drive in. What a blessing it was for us to be able to walk into a home fully furnished and a vehicle waiting for us while our van was being finished. Unless you have tried it, it’s not fun to set up shop when you’ve just moved out of a house, sold your cars, arrived tired from being awake for 33 hours, with 9 other people (4 of them children), 40 pieces of luggage, with a little bit of culture shock, no car…and then have to set up shop for your family…not! So you can imagine how thankful we are for our FBBC family and the “few” gray hairs and a little loss of sleep they saved Mrs. Laparra and I and the team. Praise God!!!!! 

The same week we arrived we needed to get ready to head to Pennsylvania for our son Nicolas and Rebecca’s wedding! Yes! Our Nicolas is now married and they’re living in Minnesota. It was a wonderful wedding and it was so nice to see how many of their friends traveled long distances to be there for and with them. Pray for them as they start their new lives in a new place and new road. We’re so anxious to see how God is going to use them as they seek to serve and live for Him by reaching out to the lost.

The busy life continues, as we rest a little and seek God’s face for His direction while on our furlough. We have also traveled to PA to take Elisabeth to Encounter Revival Ministries; she’s been accepted there and she’ll serve the Lord there at least a year. Pray for Mrs. Laparra and me because it’s been really hard to let her go. Andrew has left E.R.M. and has returned to NY. with us.

In a couple of weeks we’ll head down to North Carolina to spend time with our son Matthew and Ashley as they will make us Grandparents in November. We’ve been accepted at Siloam Missionary Homes and we can stay there for the rest of our furlough if God so leads. We are seeking God’s face to see if we should do the rest of our furlough from there or New York.

Paul, Andrew and Samuel are considering living together in NC, so we covet your prayers for them as they start their lives there.

Lastly, we covet your prayers for us; our finances and visiting of churches as our budget of 15 years ago did not include gasoline prices and the high cost of everything that y’all are going through here. This is the first time in 15 years we’ve come home to raise support and we seek His wisdom to be the best stewards of His finances. We also would ask you to prayerfully consider if God would have you involved in helping us with our $2,200 plane ticket bill that is left, and or the $1,400 bill for car repairs to get on the road.

In closing, we’d be honored if you joined us in prayer for the wisdom to manage our furlough in a way that will honor God. Here they are:

1. We need to get some rest and have time to step back and seek His face.
2. We need to spend time with both of our families, blood and spiritual (we’ve been gone a long time) to minister to them.
3. We will be reporting to our churches to thank them for their faithful support, spend time with them and minister to them also.
4. To also raise support, but that will be done last.

Thank you for your prayers, support, cards, gifts, calendars, care packages and for your love. We really appreciate y’all!!!