Pitterle Family
BP 11004
Boutique Digue
Antananarivo 101
Madagascar
Via France
(261) 020 22 48155
(261) 033 11 55644
April 2003
Dear Family and Friends:
We hope you are doing well. We are all
fine. Grace has become our family clown; she loves to make
us laugh. Stephen continues playing with the neighborhood
kids and he likes living in our private, tropical yard with
chameleons and other animals and bugs. Leigh and Stephen
are entering the last quarter of fourth grade.
We had an especially wet rainy season with
some flooding earlier this year as well as a hurricane hitting
the island. Typically it is the poor people who suffer most
when there are difficult times. Without visiting this place
it might be difficult to imagine the poverty, so we thought
we’d try to put it in a little better perspective.
Although we were very surprised how low it is, the poverty level
in M’car was defined last year as 42 cents per day!
This comes out to $153 per year. Last year, 70% of the
country was living below this level. And now that the
effects of last year’s crisis have been measured, the
current figure is that 75% of this nation’s residents live
on less than 42 cents per day while many others live on just
slightly more. The situation is not as bad in the capital
of Antananarivo and in the province of the capital.
However, 80% or almost 90% of the people live below this poverty
level in the other five provinces.
Furthermore, 95% of the poor do not have access to
electricity. In the rural areas, 93% of the households do
not have access to (healthy) drinking water.
While the physical poverty is significant, we believe the
spiritual poverty is more critical. As we read Deuteronomy
28 and Leviticus 26, we see that spiritual poverty is a root of
physical poverty. This further underscores the importance
of and the need for the truth so that spiritual houses can be
built upon the solid rock of Jesus and people can have a living
relationship with Him.
John finished teaching the Biblical theology of missions at the Bible school early in March. It was somewhat challenging to prepare for this subject he never had before, but the class went well and all of the students passed.
We have good news about developing a Malagasy study Bible. Initial approval has been received from the States and a project coordinator just visited M’car. He met here with the director of the Malagasy Bible Society and they signed an agreement to use the Malagasy Scriptures! We also learned about this three-year program and have begun to pray for direction regarding our future.
In January, John visited Antalaha in the
warm, vanilla-growing northeast. Pastor Mirana is doing a
great job and has given books to all the elementary school
students in the city except at the two schools that were not
interested. This leading BoH pastor and his wife have a
special children’s program, which is rare here, every
Saturday. That Saturday, they had a big BoH celebration
with more than 300 people, mostly kids (see photo above). John
helped equip this pastor to do the first BoH training in the
northern province in Sambava during February. Pastor Mirana
then did further training in the nearby cities of Andapa and
Vohemar in March.
At the end of January, John trained a
Malagasy pastor in English for the first time. This pastor
then took some books to Manakara on the southeast coast. In
mid-March, John trained 22 people from the largest Protestant
denomination here. This was set up by a friend who served
us as a translator here in December of 1996.
To date, more than 126,000 precious Malagasy
children have received Books of Hope and some 107,000 books have
been delivered around the country for distribution. We
expect 250,000 new Malagasy books to arrive in the port on April
6, including for the first time versions for Jr. and Sr. high
school students. We are praying this will be exempt from
import taxes and customs fees. John hoped to get a helpful
letter from the National Director of Private Schools. But
Jesus scored again as we also received letters for each of the eight
private / denominational schools!!! What an open door!
Because our supervisors will be returning to
the States this summer, we have been taking on more
responsibilities. John has been more involved with finances
for the orphanage and Leigh will be doing the accounting books
and reports. John also expects to get involved with
outreach on the university campus.
To continue working with the Book of Hope
and for the newly beginning project to produce a Malagasy study
Bible, we plan to stay here another year. We have to raise
support for our next one-year term that begins in July. For
this current term, our account balance has continued to diminish,
as the cost of being here has been greater than incoming financial
support. Therefore, we must receive one-time gifts and
regular / monthly contributions in order to continue here.
We request that you ask the Lord if He wants
you to help. The pledge
form can be sent to the address on the form with a
contribution or pledge. If you do not understand something
on the pledge form, please let us know. (For example, many
people can leave blank the account numbers and “church to
credit” on the form.)
We thank everyone who
has partnered with us to help bring the awesome news of Jesus to
this needy nation. Thank you everyone who has prayed for
the people here. Please do let us know if you have any prayer requests.
In His infinite awesomeness
and awesome infiniteness,
John, Leigh, Stephen and Grace