To our dear friends and supporters,

We trust and pray that each of you had a wonderful and blessed Christmas and New Year. As we think of each of you, we are so incredibly thankful for how faithful you have been to the Lord all these years through the Laparra Family Team Ministry in Honduras and Guatemala.

As we ever get closer and closer to the precious and wonderful return of our Great Saviour…may this year be used to seek for the highest level of love, passion mingled with compassion and a desire to serve Him with everything that we have, and to use every bit of energy we posses through His wonderful grace, for the cause of Christ.

As we look back at the past 14 months! We think wow! What a time! If you remember I really didn’t want to come home and God had to do some pretty interesting things to get us to leave and take a furlough; and now that we’re home, Wow! Did we need to come home! 1999 was the last and only time we’ve been on furlough, thus being home after so many years has been quite an experience for all of us on the team. Our first three months were used to settle in and visit many of our churches in our area and then in October we traveled to North Carolina due to the Lord providing housing through Siloam Missionary Homes in Snow Camp. This meant November & December was really the first chance we got to stop and appreciate, ponder and realize the many physical, cultural, economic, moral, spiritual and materialistic changes our country had gone through since our last time home.

 That is one of the reasons that we pray for every leader and pastor in America! Wow! What an incredible challenge! What an incredible opportunity to further the gospel in these last days! We were very excited to come home and find many churches, pastors, leaders and Christians in general with a renewed passion to preach, teach and most important of all, live out the Word of God before this poor, lost and destitute world of ours. We came home to find many of our youth with a new and unique fire for God, and a new and unique desire to live under the simplicity of the Word of God and want nothing more than to let this ever lost world know there’s still a God, a Saviour and a friend that loves them, died for them and is alive so that they may live. It was so very exciting to see our God still working in so many individual lives

But at the same time we also came home to find many that were asleep when we left, still asleep! And even many more had fallen asleep! And from what we’ve been able to pray and observe, from the array of items that could be accredited for this great sleep; it was not pride, it was not laziness, nor selfishness, or lack of love, knowledge, desire or ability that took the prize! The unmatched winners were materialism, commercialism and lust! These three put together make for a deadly powder keg that has overwhelmingly taken over.

We came home to find many, not empty, but abandoned pulpits; used more for propaganda and advertizing then to feed the people of God and preach and teach His word! We came home to find how many of our leaders, both secular and spiritual had allowed themselves to succumb to the dreadful disease of becoming people pleasers instead of people perceivers. We came home to find that families are in disproportional numbers, no longer the foundation of many churches; they have been replaced by programs, professionalism and degrees. We came home to the reality that reaching teens in Honduras is still an outreach mission… in America is a rescue mission!

So much more in our hearts to speak and we’re already out of space. But please let me say this in closing. These sincere words are being said to convey something I have already said earlier: Wow! What a challenge! What an opportunity to further the Gospel in these last days! What an opportunity for us to once again shine for Christ! And I believe God is giving us that opportunity before we all leave this place to head home! We love you and want you to know the Laparra Family Team is here to serve you in any way we can while we’re home. From our experience, reaching our teens is just about the only way we can save this next generation! They’re still very susceptible and seeking! Go after them! We love you all!!!

The Laparras