March Prayer Letter

We have had another exciting month here in Ivory Coast. God has been so good to us in allowing us to serve Him in your place. We believe that the work here in Ivory Coast is advancing, and we are so thankful for the signs of growth that we see among the new Christians.

We started off this month by preparing for Easter Sunday. We began to go soul winning and visit contacts to let them know we were going to have a special service. One lady that we visited was surprised that Easter was in March. She asked why the President of Ivory Coast moved the holiday from April to March. Mattt Litson and I had a good laugh about that. We were able to make some very good contacts, and we have had several visitors come to church as a result of these efforts.

One house we visited on door to door soul-winning was the house of a famous Ivorian comedian. His wife invited us in, and we were able to share the gospel with this family. The wife has visited the church a couple of times. We ask you to pray for this family that the Holy Spirit would convict them of their sins and lead them to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

The area that the church is in is predominantly Muslim. Soul-winning in this area is very difficult, but with your prayers and our Father’s help, we are seeing people saved and lives changed.

We were able to paint the church building and fix the holes in the floor. Matt Litson bought 40 plastic chairs. The work was mostly done by the young boys in the church. These boys, whose ages range from eight to fourteen years old, were so faithful to come every day during their spring break and volunteer their services at the church. It was so much fun to watch them want to learn how to do these different jobs. Matt Litson and I had our hands full trying to keep this troop of fifteen boys motivated and working together. When all of the work had been completed, these young boys were so proud of their accomplishments.

Please pray for us in the coming weeks as I will be making preparations to get a new work started in the town of Bonoua. We will be going to the main government offices to introduce ourselves and let the town officials know what our plans are. Doing this is considered polite in this part of Africa; if you skip this step, it could be costly in the future. Please pray that we are well received in these offices and that the Lord would use these visits to bring these men to a place where they could accept His Son as their Savior.

We plan to start out slowly by doing one day a week of soul-winning and then a Bible study. Please pray that we would be able to see many people get saved through this endeavor. It is our goal to start a church in this town during our next term, but we want to begin to plant the Gospel seed so that the Holy Spirit can do His work in these people’s lives.