Pitterle Family

BP 5196

ANTANANARIVO 101

MADAGASCAR

Via France

jpitterle@simicro.mg

(261) 020 22 48155 - home

(261) 032 02 56393 - cell

Dear Friends and Family:

We are happy to announce the birth of our baby daughter, Grace Kara, born Oct. 17 and weighing 7 1/2 pounds.  Leigh and Grace are both doing very well.  We are very thankful.

Stephen and Leigh are doing well with third grade.  Stephen is becoming a good reader.  One of the things he likes about home schooling is that he often finishes in the morning so he can enjoy the warm weather the rest of the day. 

We wanted you to know that we put our previous Madagascar newsletters on John’s home page (http://www.personal.psu.edu/jxp10) along with some prayer requests.  The link is near the bottom (of the main page) below the baobab trees and the rotating earth.

In July, John helped with the construction of a new building on the Bible school campus.  During August, we were involved in some evangelistic crusades where many people received Jesus or recommitted their lives to Him (see response below).  Now he will once again teach English at the Bible school. 

For the past month and a half, we have been busy trying to get two shipments of 300,000 copies of the primary school Book of Hope.  What an adventure!  After much time and paperwork, there are 12,000 books in Tamatave and 288,000 books here in the capital Antananarivo (Tana).  The books look very nice and colorful.  Although there were a few times when it looked like we might have to pay customs on these shipments, we did not.  Thank you Jesus!

The translator of the high school edition recently finished her corrections.  Then John spent considerable time (re)revising the spacing/formatting of the document.  Now that we just took some digital photos for this book, we hope to have this edition available for distribution some time next year. 

After being here more than a year, we are finally less than one week away from giving the awesome news of Jesus to the precious children of this needy nation.  We still have some organizing and scheduling (of translators, schools and Christians for distribution) yet to do so your prayers would be greatly appreciated.  In general, the main plan will be training and distribution followed by children’s crusades in Tamatave and Tana.  The most important work will remain with the Malagasy churches and Christians as they disciple new believers on a long-term basis. 

We expect to have two distribution teams (in different schools) each doing two or three distributions in the morning and two in the afternoon.  The children’s crusades after the distributions in the schools should be very important.  We plan to have one crusade in Tamatave and several in Tana since it is such a large city and young children may not be able to make it to a far-away place.  (We still need to make flyers, that will be inserted in each book, announcing the time and place of each local crusade.)  At these meetings, the children should have an opportunity to better understand the Good News of Jesus and have an invitation to commit their lives to Him.  Prayerfully a vital connection will be established between these children and a participating church. 

Below is the tentative schedule.  Your prayers are greatly needed and would be appreciated very much!  Please pray for miracles and eternally changed lives. 

After the initial distributions are finished, we expect to continue with additional distributions.  Then, in December, it would be helpful to pray for the presidential election in this country. 

For John, the past few months have been perhaps the most difficult of his life.  In turn, we still believe that Jesus wants to birth something significant in this nation. 

Thank you so very much for praying for the children and families of Madagascar.  Thank you everyone who has supported and partnered with us.  We appreciate what you have done to help share the awesome news here.  We expect that the Lord’s truth will change hearts and lives.  Thus, we believe the future of this nation will be impacted for good.  Lastly, if you have any prayer requests, please let us know. 

                                                In His infinite awesomeness and awesome infiniteness,

                                                                        John, Leigh, Stephen, & Grace