I have not found so great faith Jesus amazed his followers as well as around-him-ramblers by how he defined a great faith. Many thought that kind of faith would need many days of praying and …
If you take out the names reading the gospels and the book Acts, you may get a feeling you are reading the same book! Preaching, persecution, healing, raising from the dead. Well, the answer is on the surface – it is the same Jesus in all these books. He was bound by time and place in the gospels and He was unbound in the Acts. But it was still the same Jesus. We live in the era when He is not bound by time and place. He wants to continue doing the same things but, this time, through us. And, there is a constant writing of the book Acts going on, this time, including our lives.
Family Summer Camp
Our highlight of the year is coming up. The dates of the camp, June 26-31. Please be in prayer for spiritual protection of all participants. Pray for safe travels of everyone to the site. Pray for all necessary equiment to come. Also, pray that those non-Christians there may see the light of the gospel in the camp. Pray for those who are born again to grow spiritually. Finally, pray for us to “present every man perfect in Christ”.
Other Prayer Points
As we wrote to you previously we got involved with children and teens in our neighborhood during the lock down. Now we meet with them every night for some games and fellowship. That leads us wanting to make a next step – make a vbs type program. Please pray for their sensitivity to the good news. Pray for their parents to give their permission to continue to meet with us. Pray for preparation and a fresh start of a next year for our ESL school. As I wrote we need to come up with a new name for the school. There might be some other adjustments that we will have to make. Pray for wisdom!
Friends and Family
Tim has passed his finals. Big relief for us and time to recuperate before the new school year. Liliya dad’s health continues to deteriorate. Please be in prayer for that also. We thank God for each of you who dedicated time, talents and treasures for the cause.
You can make tax deductible contribution to Ufa Bible Ministries which is recognized by the IRS as a 501c3 non-profit entity. Make checks payable to: Ufa Bible Ministries PO BOX 1761, Columbia, SC 29202
After shipping 2 containers in January a third one containing food was shipped in February. After the 2 containers arrived in Haiti they were sitting on the dock waiting for the inspector to approve them and a gang came and emptied both containers, dumped out boxes, stole many things, mainly food and left a giant mess. It has been a headache trying to get everything back to the right mission as we had 7 missions on these two containers. When things got dumped, they were picked up and placed in any box so we just returned a few boxes last week to the rightful owners. Fortunately, our food container arrived after a very leisurely trip around the Caribbean but things went very smoothly. Only 4 missions shared the food (1,000,000 meals) of packaged soup and the food and the Haitians doing the pick-up were all safe.
Church
Pastor Charles’ village church in Gonaives celebrated their 8th anniversary in May with revivals, food, singing and many other activities.
Pastor Gilbert started a new church near Saint Marc and was blessed with a donation that will pour the concrete floor and possibly put a roof on the church. They are looking for chairs to be donated, either plastic stacking or folding chairs. If you have a lead, please let me know.
School and Sponsorships
The school celebrated Flag Day with children playing instruments and singing and having a small parade. This is a big day in Haiti. The food arrived at the school and as you can see it was welcomed with great gusto. We had one of the sponsored children’s 18 month old sister die and it sounds like it was from starvation. The same week the child’s sponsor also passed away. We are looking for people that want to sponsor ($25 a month, $300 per year) Things are really hard in Haiti with no president, very little law and gangs ruling the country. Kidnappings are rampant and stealing is out of control. People are starving to death as many of the missionaries have pulled out. Schools will be out the middle of June but we are happy that the soup is there to provide meals for the children in summer. If you sponsor, we collect money even in the summer which is then used to cover the cost of school uniforms, shoes, books, bags, and more.
Animal and Agriculture Projects
Pastor Charles has been sending pictures of new baby goats being placed with families. Some of our older students are now taking responsibility for the animals. Charles inherited a large piece of land when his father passed away. He is wanting to take the children there and teach them agriculture. There were 700 packets of seeds on this container for the garden and the children to use to grow food for the school and their starving neighbors. One of the things we have talked about is fruit trees. For about one dollar you can buy a fruit tree. Within 8 months the banana trees are producing fruit. The obstacle to this is most of the people rent their property. Very few own the house or land they live on. So, we would like to put their trees on Charles’ property. We are still in need of a bus to transport the children to the garden and to soccer games and other outings. Can you imagine living within several miles of the ocean and never having seen it or gone swimming? He also has a place to take church members for a retreat in the country side but we cannot do that without a bus.
Fundraising
The 5th annual golf scramble was held on May 28th with lots of golfers, best prizes ever, great weather and donations that helped with the cost of shipping the food container. Thank you Joe Mica and Ken Strickland for chairing this and all your great helpers! We can’t say thank you enough.
Greetings loved ones! The time has finally come for us to celebrate a major victory! After months of back and forth with lawyers, fine tuning of contracts, and negotiations, we’ve finally secured the space in Galway City center that we’ve been dreaming of for many years! Last month we shared the story about how God confirmed this was going to be our space, using the phrase “to the right of the cross,” and then seeing the random cross-like structure just outside the building.
The space is everything we’ve been dreaming of. We envisioned something central, which this space certainly is. We envisioned something that is on the major footpath, which this space certainly is as well. Larena had a vision back in 2021, when we were driving to Dublin. She was listening to The Greatest Showman soundtrack, and saw us standing in the streets of Galway, in a specific part of the city where the pedestrian walk opens up really wide. She saw me dressed up like Hugh Jackman in the movie, singing and performing for the crowd. As she looked around the crowd, everyone was black and white. But sparks of light began coming from us as we performed for them, creating color. Larena was going around handing people little pieces of paper that began turning the crowd into color. It was an amazing vision that spoke to us about the impact we will have on bringing people to the Lord. What’s interesting, as we look back, is that the space she saw us in just so happens to be directly in front of the place we now have! Praise God!
Something we also envisioned was that the space would be within the original city walls. You see, years ago God gave me a vision of the city walls surrounding Galway. Most of it is already gone, but in this vision it was a representation of the historic and spiritual walls that surrounded the city. As I stood there watching, He sent an enormous tidal wave, which knocked the walls down. Then he spoke to my heart, this is the time to take ground for Him. It was a powerful vision, which we kept in our hearts for years. Now, as we step into this space, we realize the fulfilment of that vision. We are taking ground for the Lord, in a place that has historically been shut off to a powerful move of the Holy Spirit.
Recently I felt prompted to look up the exact location of this space, in respect to the historic city walls. It turns out the space is right inside the original front gates! There’s something very symbolic and powerful about how God has positioned us here. I love how He’s put together all of these amazing subtle details that pack so much meaning. God is so good! Now begins an exciting journey of faith and trust, as we seek to fundraise and furnish the space, transforming it into a beautiful setting for large group meetings, Bible studies, and Alpha courses. We are reaching out to people, asking for their help in our networking efforts. Our goal is to reach several churches, who might be willing to partner with us financially each year, so we can keep the momentum going. So far, we’ve had a couple great leads, and we’re currently putting together a video and a webpage to illlustrate our needs for this project more clearly. Do you have any connections that you think might want to partner with us in our Galway City efforts? If so, let us know. We would love to share our call and vision. We have another amazing praise report. Liam’s rash has finally cleared up! This poor kid has been suffering for months now, breaking out in an itchy rash that kept waxing and waning over and over. He was scratching non stop, often breaking skin and causing bleeding. It was so stressful. Everything we tried failed. Everything the doctors suggested failed. Finally, Larena was having a conversation with her sister, who suggested that maybe it was a certain kind of hives, triggered by allergy and the immune system’s overload. It was exactly the piece of the puzzle we needed to finally tackle the situation. We got some treatment specifically for these hives, and after a few days he was completely clear! It was a huge relief!
This month we had a visit with a girl named Abbie, who we’ve known for many years. Abbie was one of our interns several years ago. She helped us with our youth and young adults ministries. She helped me build pallet benches for a 4th of July party. Little did we know, the trip she took over here to help us really impacted her in a huge way. It was here in Galway that she realized that she wanted to go into ministry. She has worked with Chi Alpha at the University of Wisconsin, and now pastors a church in Madison, WI. We enjoyed catching up with her, hearing her journey, and spending some time together. The process she went through to start the church in Madison was very similar to what God is calling us to do in Galway, so it was very encouraging to hear how she did it there.
We now begin a long process of preparing the space for ministry. The first step was to knock out a wall to make room for a larger kids ministry area. I was able to pick up a sledge hammer and demolish it all in one day. Now, I need to organize the cleanup of all the drywall and framing. Next step, we will be plastering up holes in the walls and painting. In the meantime, we’ve found a used door that we were able to save quite a bit of money on, that will go in as my office door. Please keep us in your prayers as we tackle all of these projects little by little. We wish we could fast forward and have everything ready right now, but we know there’s an important process to this. We’ve reached out to a few people we are currently ministering to, asking them if they’d be willing to give a hand. Every one of them is excited about the space and is enthusiastic about helping. Praise God for what He’s doing. We are so thankful for His faithfulness, His promises, and we’re thankful for you! If not for your support, this wouldn’t be possible!! We love you! ~The Johnstons
Prayer Requests We would be honored if you would pray with us concerning: Please pray for the process of renovating, painting, cleaning, furnishing the space in town for ministry. Please pray for the fundraising process. We are praying for churches and individuals to feel led by the Lord to help us. Please pray for the hearts in Galway. For the people we are to minister to now and in the near future. Please pray we will be able to share Jesus with the people on the streets, the homeless, college students, buskers and everyone in between. May we see the Lord transform their lives and give them living hope!
Support Information If you would like to team up & contribute to this important mission, please make checks out to: Hope Ireland Missions 229 W. Exchange St. Crete, IL 60417 (Chris & Larena Johnston on the memo line) Simply go to: www.hopeirelandmissions.com & click on “partner.”
Transition in life is inevitable! Our family is experiencing much transition this summer…now we will have our sons David and Jonathan in Texas, while Emily, Analynne and I will stay in Guatemala.
This time, after Jonathan left, our family has been very emotional. The house is quiet, his room is so empty, and we have been adapting to the new family settings.
In the last couple of weeks, we have been giving away Jonathan’s old clothes and selling some instruments and electronic equipment….as you can imagine, this has been very emotional due to the fact that Jonathan has been part of our family worship team for the last eight years.
A few weeks ago, after my car accident, I participated in a leadership conference as one of the speakers. Due to the social media platform, we were able to reach people in different locations in Guatemala and in Mexico.
On Saturday mornings, I have been teaching an apologetics class for ASELSI in Chichicastenango, and in the afternoons I have been teaching the art of communication class online for students from Mexico, Venezuela, Guatemala and Texas. This has been a transitional way of teaching after the COVID restrictions.
Emily is experiencing a big transition not only with Jonathan leaving but as many of our closest missionary friends are returning to live in the U.S.; please pray for us to make new friends. As the elementary principal at Christian Academy of Guatemala, she is also praying for all of the teacher positions to be filled for August. If you know anyone who might like to be a missionary teacher, please let us know!
As we prepare our suitcases to go to Texas and visit our family, we know that God is faithful. He never leaves us or forsakes us, and we will continue to serve Him, teaching His Word and serving the beautiful people of Guatemala.
One of the families leaving to live in the U.S. is the chaplain’s family from the kids’ school. As we were saying goodbye, the chaplain said to Analynne, “I think you could be the next student chaplain; I know that you have what it takes!” What a privilege to see our children growing in the Lord!
We will be in the DFW area for a month from June 15 to July 15. We are ready to see our family and visit our ministry supporters. Please pray for favor and opportunities to connect with more people and to continue to raise some funds to get a newer family ministry car. Thank you so much for your prayers and financial support.
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