Pitterle Family
BP 5196
Antananarivo 101
Madagascar
Via France
(261) 20 22 48155
(261) 33 11 55644
December 2003
Dear Friends and Family:
We convey very warm (and sunny) CHRISTmas
greetings from Madagascar. We are doing well here as
Stephen and Leigh are looking forward to a little break from
school (that is going well). Grace is amazing and she
continues to bring joy to our lives. We celebrated her
second birthday in October.
Our colleagues, Doug and Pat Blue, have
resumed their responsibilities with the orphanage. This has
relieved us of some extra duties. We continue overseeing
the truck driver and some maintenance / repairs. At present
we have been trying to coordinate transportation for various
needs for the trucks.
In October, Pastor Mirana, our main Book of
Hope (BoH) pastor, trained 50 pastors and leaders in Mahajanga on
the northwest coast. Although some books had been
previously distributed in Mahajanga, this was the first time we
had training in this province. Now we have completed BoH
training and started distribution in all 6 provinces and in the
country’s seven largest cities. The story of Jesus is
Good News for the children and is changing lives for eternity!
Also in October, we tried to motivate
pastors here in the capital to reach out to children and youth
with the Book of Hope. Since then, some pastors have
expressed a desire to distribute books in early 2004.
We have a new translator working in our
office. She has been working on a shorter version of the
high school book that is in demand around the world. We
also sent books for the first time to Ambatondrazaka, northeast
of the capital.
This month John trained 30 students at the
Bible school. This brings our total to about 225 people who
have received Book of Hope training here in Madagascar this year.
There is still no word from the office of
the Minister of Public Education regarding our request for
authorization to share the Book of Hope with all the public
school children of Madagascar. Your continued prayers for
this would be most appreciated.
In November, the Bible school students
served others and shared the love of Jesus in their neighborhood;
many people prayed to receive Jesus. John finishes his
class on “Personal Evangelism” on December 16 when most
of the students receive their final exam. (See the students
in their classroom above.) However, there was one new
student the class before this exam and two new students two weeks
before it. They came from more distant parts of the
country. In this course, we have covered much material:
Biblical foundation / scriptural responsibility, hell’s best
kept secret, Roman’s road, the Gospel (message),
“Evangelism Explosion,” personal testimony, practical
witnessing guidelines, handling objections, leading people to
Jesus, friendship / lifestyle evangelism, survey evangelism, the
“Four Spiritual Laws,” servant evangelism, Every Home
for Christ’s “Heart of Man,” prayer evangelism
(aka Lighthouses of Prayer), Book of Hope, training others, and
follow-up / discipleship. Could you please pray that these
students will know Jesus and the Father’s love as they make
Him known and give away His love?
When we were working on only the book of
Genesis, we started with four translators, three editors, and one
computer person. Now that we are working on study materials
for Exodus through Ruth, we have eight translators, five editors,
and two computer inputters. We have a good team and we
continue meeting twice per month. This project consumes
most of John’s time.
We continue editing and revising our current
work as it is important for everything to be consistent. There
are many details and specific formatting requirements. Things
are proceeding well. One goal is to produce a Bible with a
minimal number of errors. This is challenging, as other
projects here do not have such high standards as for a Bible.
And our main goal is that this first Malagasy study Bible will be
a tool that will help people to study God’s word and
discover His life-changing truth for themselves. Prayer is
critically important for this.
We continue looking to the Lord to provide
our monthly finances. For the last three and one half
years, our account balance has declined until we now have less
than $1,300 remaining. Thus we are still fund-raising for
our current term. Regular and/or one-time contributions can
be made payable to and sent to General Council of the Assemblies
of God, 1445 Boonville Ave., Springfield, MO 65802-1894. On
the memo portion of the check, it would be good to write,
“Pitterle, MA, 292883.”
We are grateful to everyone who has
partnered with us in the ministry here and we are very thankful
for everyone who has prayed for the children / people of
Madagascar and for us. We really appreciate you because we
could not be here without you. Your prayers are vitally
needed. Please do let us know if you have any prayer
requests.
In
His infinite awesomeness
and
awesome infiniteness,
John, Leigh, Stephen and Grace