Dear Praying Friends,
Jennifer and I would like to wish all of our family and friends a Feliz Navidad. This Christmas will, without a doubt, be quite different from any other Christmas that we have had together. This Christmas will be our first without any of our children with us. Now before you go “awwwww,” please let me explain why. The original plan was to have the whole family, especially our three adorable grandchildren, all together at Christmas for the first time in the history of the world and the first time we had been with all of our kids for Christmas since 2005. It was a great plan! But it was not God’s plan. About five months ago we received a call from Bradley, our second oldest, announcing that he and Stephanie were going to give us another grandchild. One week later our oldest son Aaron called to announce that he and Lacey were going to give us another grandchild. Since we can only afford one trip back to the States at this time we decided to postpone our plan for a Christmas family reunion. Our three oldest will still be gathering in Texas for Christmas but Dallas, who just started a new job last month will be spending this Christmas in California without family. Please keep him (and his mom and dad) in your prayers.
As I mentioned in the last letter we have been looking at locations for the church and we still do not have a peace about which place God has for the church building. I have also talked to the other missionaries here in Mérida about how they had acquired their church buildings. They were very informative and related stories to me basically about two types of problems that we might encounter; one external and the other internal. During the process, it seems they each have had some varying degree of difficulties from outside of the church, those being the necessary dealings with the seller, the real estate agencies, the government agencies and the neighbors. As always, things are a little different here in Mexico. For example, if we are going to buy an empty lot and plan to build a church building, each neighbor and business on the street must be informed about the plans to build a church. Even if only one of them objects to it we will not be able to build the church on that property. The other internal concern we have is the financing of the building. Most Deaf in Mexico do not earn much money and we are very cautious about taking out a loan to pay for a new building. We are praying for God’s wisdom concerning all of this and are we are trusting that in his perfect timing he will not only lead us to the right building or property but at the same time show us his will in the financing of it. So for now we will stay where we are but still keep looking as we wait patiently on the Lord.
Two new projects are in the works for early next year. We have always used the printed Bible tracts that other churches and mission ministries have provided for us, but in January we will be publishing our first tracts for the church. They will include information about the church and the plan of salvation. We will also be publishing a special tract to give to the deaf. It will include a simple plan of salvation in both words and sign language and a map to our church. In February we will begin a literacy program to help those that don’t know how to read or who read at a very basic level. We ask that you pray for God’s guidance as we work out the final details for these projects.
Serving the Saviour,
Bill Green