Fire! Sunday morning at 4 a.m. one of our staff members, Abner, received a phone call from a friend that informed him that there was a fire at the coffee house in Antigua. He woke me up and we went to inspect the damage from the fire that may have been caused by an electrical problem in the school that is behind us. The local firemen were able to extinguish the fire quickly so the damage was limited to part of our roof that we share. A lot of the water came into our meeting room, storage room, bathroom and kitchen so there was a big mess to clean up. The roof has been replaced but we are still waiting for the wiring to be repaired. We do have some electrical circuits that were not damaged so we are using them to run the appliances we need. This happened the day before we started the Financial Support Raising Seminar held at the coffee house.
Pastors under fire. Pastor Antonio and Pastor Efrain whom I work with often in San Pablo La Laguna have both experienced attacks on their families during the past 2 weeks. Pastor Antonio was celebrating Mother's Day as well as his son's 11th birthday at his church in the evening. After the service he loaded their PA equipment in the car and waited for his daughter and son to join him in the car. While he was waiting some men began to attack his daughter and he ran to rescue her. Meanwhile some other men stole all of the equipment from his car valued at $2,500. It was a set up that traumatized his family and set the church back financially with the loss of equipment. Pastor Efrain's daughter was also attacked by a driver of a Tuk Tuk taxi on her way back home from school. The driver drug her to a soccer field and began to beat her because he said she was not paying enough attention to him. Efrain's wife suspected something was wrong when her daughter did not come home at the normal time so she called her school to verify that she had left. They immediately drove the road she would normally take to get home and found the Tuk tuk parked on the side of the road. The attacker was beating their daughter violently and she suffered a fracture in her forehead. The man was placed in jail but then the family sought revenge by destroying some new construction work at the church. Please pray for these pastors who have become my friends and partners in ministry. They are both doing a great work for the Lord in a hard city under difficult conditions.
Send the fire! I will be leaving on May 26 to go to India to join Tom Elie, an evangelist from Minnesota. We will be conducting two conference for Pastors and hosting two, five night open air meetings in Andra Pradesh where we will be proclaiming the gospel message to thousands of people. Pray that God will send the Holy Spirit fire upon us and the people as we minister in an area that has not had much exposure to the gospel message. The last time I went we experienced many people being healed and set free from the power of satan. Will you partner with me in prayer during this time from May 26 to June 16? India is an unreached nation when you consider how few Christians there are among the 1.1 billion people. Your prayers are needed to prepare the way.
The four day financial workshop we are hosting this week has been a tremendous blessing to the missionaries attending. They are being encouraged and challenged to believe God for the provision needed for their ministries and all of us are receiving new ideas that will help us in these difficult times. One thing that has impacted me a lot is the idea that God wants to dream his dreams through us. Have we every really gave consideration that the dreams we have for reaching people with the gospel and extending the hands of Jesus to the needy are really the dreams that God wants to live out through our lives? There is so much he wants to do and he gives us the privilege of partnering with him.
Thank you for your support that has enabled me to be able to take advantage of the opportunities for ministry in Guatemala and India. I look forward to all that God will do in these next weeks. When I return I will be working with a church group from Chico, California that is coming for 11 days of ministry in San Pablo and Antigua. They will be constructing 2 homes plus conduct ministry with children and families.
For Him,
Bruce
Correspondence address:
Bruce Ahlberg
6ta Avenida Norte #33
Antigua, Guatemala
Contribution address:
YWAM Chico
15850 Richardsons Springs Road
Chico, CA 95973
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