Greetings from the Tisbury Family,
We hope that you’ve all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are not too overwhelmed as you begin to prepare for the Christmas holidays. In this exciting season of celebration and thanksgiving make sure to remember the most important reason that we have to celebrate; the Life, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. As I (Chris) was spending some time in the word and prayer this morning, I was overwhelmed with some of the wonderful truths of the Gospel message. The two scriptures that I was meditating on most came from Romans 5:8 which says, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” and also in 1 John 4:10 which says, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins.” Think about that! It brings my heart such comfort and peace to know that while I was in complete rebellion against him, driving the nails into his hands and feet, HE still took the initiative to save me. He wasn’t sitting up in heaven waiting for me to get my act together before he would intervene. THIS IS THE “GOOD NEWS!” Just as we are, be encouraged in this glorious truth today and in this season as we celebrate the Savior who left heaven and came to earth to make reconciliation for us.
We want to briefly update you on our journey to the mission field, but before we do that, we would like to once again thank everyone who has invested in us so far. Your prayers, encouragement, and support have sometimes been the things that have spurred us on to keep pressing forward. Our journey has been filled with ups and downs and has gone just about the complete opposite of what we imagined when we started, but we know that God is faithful and his Word will always prove true. With that said, let us fill you in on some of the details. Our plan is to be on a plane heading to Bolivia on January 27th. The only reason that date would change is if our documents got tied up somewhere in the approval process. As of right now, all our documents are being translated into spanish. When that step is completed we will have to get them authenticated in Jackson and then they’re off to the Bolivian consulate. Please be praying that The Lord would give us favor in this process because they tend to drop the ball on foreigners coming into their country, especially since they recently changed the laws on visas. The president has completely done away with volunteer and missionary visas, which has actually left us scrounging around looking for other options on how to get in. We are still pretty confident that we will be able to find a loophole somewhere and get in, but for if some reason we can’t, we have talked about attending language school in either Peru or Guatemala since that will be our main focus for our first year in Bolivia anyways. As far as when we get there, we actually have some friends that will be moving out of their place at the same time we will be moving in. They have said that we could probably move straight into their place and they have also offered to give us all their furniture, which is a HUGE blessing. Needless to say, we still have some obstacles ahead of us in getting there, but we are confident that God is going to provide a way and our trust is completely in him alone.
In closing, We would like to give you a couple of things to be praying with us about.
First, we need wisdom in how to go about which visas to apply for and the actual process of getting into Bolivia.
Secondly, pray that the Lord would provide for all of our needs. We are still not where we need to be budget wise, but however the Lord chooses to provide, with that we will be content. One of the biggest things we feel The Lord has been teaching us in this process is to trust him completely even if we can’t see how it all works out. We choose to believe God’s word more than our doubts and worries.
Thirdly, pray that God would give us the grace to learn the language and adapt to the culture quickly, especially our children. And most importantly, pray that Jesus would be glorified in Bolivia. Pray that as the Gospel is preached, the Bolivian people would be cut to the heart and reconciled to our loving Father. Pray that the Holy Spirit would lead the Bolivian believers into all truth and illuminate the scriptures to them. Pray for revival in Bolivia, the U.S., and all over the world. We are confident that you will do these things and for that we thank you.
Love,
The Tisbury's
