Author: Rick

P Radios

The P radio ministry is far more effective and impacting than I had suspected. When I was with the P’s in January, I was blown away at the feedback I was getting from people who were listening. When you are all by yourself in your studio recording programs, you have no idea who’s actually listening on the other end. I got a taste of that in January and I realized, “we need more radios!”

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We estimate there could be up to 100,000 P’s. There are at least 11,000 believers and over 200 churches that we know of. It’s very difficult to quantify accurately all that the Lord is doing behind closed doors of borders and jungle territory, but we know the Lord is working powerfully and in high volume of numbers as the P people have an incredible hunger to know God. The church is growing rapidly, both numerically and in spiritual maturity. The radios are having a huge impact on this! Imagine that… I am able to teach over the airwaves to thousands of people daily, way out in the jungle where we just can’t go.

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2 years ago, we distributed 2,800 radios. The impact is immeasurable but we know it is good. I was so impressed by the people that commented to me personally in January. The theology and understanding reflected in the feedback that I heard personally revealed a deep understanding of the gospel as we as our union and life with Christ. The radio ministry is powerfully affecting the nation, but the amount of radios is small among so many. As I stood in the crowd and reflected, my heart said, “we need another 10,000 radios“. We want to see radios in the hands of the unbelievers too as the teaching specifically speaks to believers as well as unbelievers.

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There is a strong appeal and invitation in every program and to all people, small and great, boy or girl, good and bad, saved and lost. It is an appeal to believe the gospel and receive the infinite love of God and to walk with Him in life. It is an appeal to believe the word revealed to mankind in the scriptures. As people hear the power of God’s truth, love and grace in their native language their lives are changed by the power of the truth to the measure they believe it. This is what impacted me. These radio programs are 100% in the native language of the P’s. There are virtually no other people outside the P nation who have learned their language. Our missionaries are the only ones. But since the government has evicted us from the indigenous territory, we cannot be bodily present there as foreigners. But God has blessed me with a continuing ministry in the P language through radio!

I enjoy teaching verse by verse through the NT and also composing music in P. Ha! who would of thought I’d be composing music! Below is a song I recently composed and recorded it two days ago. Yesterday, I recorded another.

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Here is a translation of the above song lyrics:
When the Lord’s anointed one
Comes from the heavens
And when his splendor is made manifest
We shall see his faceWe will hear his voice
The voice of love
He will speak goodness to us
And our hearts will be healed.

CHORUS

He will come as the rising sun
Putting an end to darkness
In absolute light
He will come, He will come
Our Lord will come.

He will put an end to
Bodies that die,
And to our suffering
And we shall be changed

BRIDGE

Coming in the clouds
The righteous ruler of all
He will restore
All that which was created

He, the highest ruler of all
Will come to join with us
And he will judge
The wicked rulers of this world

The P’s themselves will be joining the air waves soon as they are building their recording studio. But all this is for not, if we cannot furnish them with more radios. The radios are a dedicated short wave frequency with solar chargers on them. They also have the entire P audio NT installed on an inner chip so they can listen to the word even when we are not transmitting the programs.

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Many false groups and cults are targeting the hungry hearts of the P’s. These cults are Venezuelan Nationals who speak in Spanish, but since many P’s are bilingual, they are infiltrating the nation through the bilinguals. This, of course, has no power like the power of the Holy Spirit to convince and free the heart, but it causes blindness and confusion. We want to see them fed with the truth!

To build and ship one radio it costs about $20 USD. We are trusting the Lord for 10,000. Many thanks for your prayers for this project. If you would like to donate towards it, or if you know of others who may you can access our donation page here: https://spiritofmartyrdom.com/piaroaprojects/

I plan to leave Mexico on Saturday. I am missing Robin and family. I appreciate your prayers for a safe drive home.

All for now,

t.

Jungle Bible Conference

VIRTUAL TEACHING
With the rapid advancement of technology, many P villages are installing Starlink satellite internet in their remote jungle villages. On Friday, I got a message from E asking if I would teach on the qualifications of elders/overseers/pastors from 1 Timothy and Titus. On Saturday and today, for 2 hours each day, I was their guest speaker where they connected their device to a large screen TV and set it in front of the crowd. Here I am (see photo below) in my studio in Mexico teaching live out in the jungles of Venezuela! It’s unheard of, but now becoming normal!

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On both days, I was live and had liberty to teach in P, verse by verse from the P scriptures on this topic. At the end of each session, I opened it up to questions. It was pretty cool.

I’ve been to Guanay a couple times. It was I think about an hour flight farther into the rain forest from the village we used to live in. At this conference today, there were representatives from 25 villages numbering about 500 people. May the Lord give them the desires of their hearts to know Him and to understand His ways in the church. How horrible things go in church when leaders have selfish motives or when they are simply selfish people. Paul’s instructions to both Timothy and Titus are so pertinent, but they are good for everybody to learn and grow in, not just pastors. Pray for these churches to grow in grace and love and that the leaders may lead in true humility. It is truly a good work to do the work of a pastor!

G n M
I have not received any more news on G and M. The last I heard they had been released from hospital and are in a P village called Agua Mena recovering. There is no internet in that village and so we have not heard any more from them. I trust that no news is good news.

ELENDIE
Our dear Elendie who has been creating such beautiful music in P and is so talented doesn’t even have his own guitar! Some money was donated recently for the P’s so I asked Russell and Fernando if they would be so kind as to go downtown Bogotá and pick him out a brand new guitar, which they did just a couple days ago! Russ will take it to the border the next time he goes. This will be a special blessing for Elendie to get his very own guitar. We were able to get him a fairly decent one with a case and an Amp! I look forward to more music!

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Thanks for your prayers and love,

t.

Jorge & Sole

You will remember how, years ago, God gave us a special friendship with Jorge and Sole. You may remember how they had started coming to San Carlos in quest of growing spiritually. When I first met Jorge, I asked him, “what brings you to San Carlos?” He being a believer and me not knowing, me being a believer and he not knowing, he answered honestly and said, “I am coming here to get away from the city and to seek a relationship with the Spirit.” When I heard that, in my inside voice, I said to myself, “what ‘spirit’ is he talking about?”

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It indeed turned out, as you will remember, that it was the Spirit of God. He had at that time and still has today a genuine desire to grow spiritually in Christ. From that time many years ago till now God has done so many things in their personal lives and has given them a wonderful ministry pastoring the Agape Christian Fellowship church here in San Carlos. I see them doing wonderful things and I see the Lord using them in wonderful ways. Consequently I see fruit from their ministry and likely around the corner things may be about to take off. They are even talking about beginning a Spanish service in addition to the English service. They are involved all over the community in the lives of many people, believers and unbelievers. They are truly a light shining in a dark place.

I am writing this letter specifically for the purpose of asking those of you who would desire to do so, to add them to your prayers. Robin and I just came back from their house and they were sincerely asking for prayer. You know how vulnerable we all are to the attacks of the enemy and the pitfalls of the flesh when we do not pray, or when we are not prayed for. If you don’t feel led to remember them regularly in your prayers, please at least say a prayer for them.

  • Pray for their marriage.
  • Pray protection from spiritual attacks.
  • Pray for Jorge especially as his mother’s cancer is back at an “advanced” level. She is in Tucson and Jorge doesn’t have a visa to go see her. This really weighs heavily on his heart.

Thank you. They mean a lot to us and we know that the Lord connected us together with them.

t.

Author Posted on Categories Mexico

March news

Every year we come to Mexico there is always something new. Life seems to be always changing, and we especially see that in this place that is host to many transient people.

After being together with the P’s in Colombia this year, I was inspired by the powerful ways the Lord uses music. The P’s love music, so this opens up special opportunities to minister the word of God to them. You may remember from a previous email me sharing Elendie’s music and also the story of Rick’s music.

Now that the NT is done, the P’s aren’t here. This year I am not teaching at the Bible School, nor have I been preaching at church, so this year has been P music in my studio! It’s been a challenge to learn how to properly record music, but I am so blessed to have Fernando (Russell’s audio engineer) working with me and teaching me how to go about it.

Jorge and Sole are such a blessing! They have surprised me many times at the dedication they have to serve the Lord together as a team at Agape Christian Fellowship here in San Carlos. They have moved into roles which facilitate their gifting so well. Sole leads worship every Sunday and has begun a women’s Bible study in Spanish where great things are happening. Jorge faithfully preaches every Sunday and is also involved in many people’s lives. They are currently talking about adding a service in Spanish as well on Sunday. Pray the Lord uses them mightily.

One of the treasures here for me this year at Agape church was meeting a pastor who was originally from South Africa, but now living in Duncan BC. He faithfully attended Agape this year and blessed us every Sunday and Friday night Bible Study with his presence. In visiting with Tony, I felt led to hear his story, so I invited him to my studio to have a Podcast conversation with him. If you would like to enjoy the Podcast yourself, you can click here to hear it. I’m learning many things from this precious and humble man:

Robin and I keep getting blessed with grandkids! We have 9 and 3 more on the way. Next in line is another baby about to be born to our son Jared and his wife Natalie, then after that Levi and Laura and then Mike and Candace! Robin is such an incredible grandma. Her heart is huge for those kids. This year, she will be heading back to Canada early to be with Natalie and Jared for the birth of their new baby. She flies on April 5th. I will stay back in Mexico working on P radio programs and music until May 5th. I appreciate your prayers as I compose P music. May it be glorifying to the Lord and edifying to the P’s.

t

Author Posted on Categories Mexico

Chapter 5 An Amazing Team

I woke up the next morning to blue sky, the smell of fresh air and the sound of commotion as other campers were up and about before me. It was nice to just lay there for a while and listen to the sounds of the birds and life. I finally got up and showered. I looked down from my balcony location and saw Russell working on the battery to the grey pickup. It had been failing the day before. Russell had a spare battery which he was installing in the grey pickup as we had about a 4 hour drive through the hot, dusty outback of that area. We were headed to Russell’s farm which is in a more secure location than where we had been.

The reason we were heading to the farm was so that we could hold a 5 day workshop for the P’s to learn how to operate recording equipment as they are building a recording studio in one of their villages. Their recordings will join mine on the P airwaves. Fernando, Russell’s spectacular audio engineer, had selected all the equipment and we had purchased it prior to the conference. We were now bringing it in the back of the truck with us along those dusty roads.

As much as I totally wanted to attend the workshop classes, I knew that there were other things that I should be doing to make the best use of my time with the P’s. The Lord had prompted me to invite several P church leaders along to the workshop so that we could discuss church matters face to face. Russell contracted a “Chiva” bus to come to the P village along the Orinoco and transport them all to the farm. There was a group of P musicians and studio trainees and a group of church leaders all heading to the farm.

The grey truck lost it’s battery power again on the road. It was hot with no A/C or windows to open but we caught up to the bus and switched the battery again. We all made it to the farm and settled into phase two of the trip.

Fernando had three parts to his workshop: 1) music recording, 2) podcast recording and 3) field recording.

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Everyone, especially Fernando, was so impressed at how apt and studious the P’s were. They learned quickly. They diligently took notes and videos. One guy even drew sketches of the equipment to make his notes.

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While Fernando was teaching the recording workshop, I gathered in a separate area to talk with the church leaders. We discussed several exciting and important topics. We talked about 1) how elders are appointed, 2) how the P’s can be taking more of the work load (like writing books, creating Sunday School curriculum, creating a P dictionary to establish official spelling), and 3) children’s ministries.

While I was speaking with the church leaders, Fernando took advantage of the opportunity to train them how to use a digital recorder in the field. In other words, they will be able to record a high quality digital recording at Bible conferences or at church and they will then be able to edit that recording and create radio material from it.

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To train them on how to create and record Podcasts, Fernando had them invite me as their guest on the show. There were about 8 of them who each had to create a short recording together with me. I thought that was fun and I was honored to be the guest on their shows. Each one had a question to ask me. I loved it! They had awesome questions.

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Venancio asked me, “Timoteo, there’s a question that my students ask me and I have not been able to answer it. Why did God allow sin to enter the world? He knew what was going to happen from the beginning, so why would a good God allow that?” I said, “You know, I have thought about that same question too. We certainly do know that God knew what He was doing and He knew that the Lamb was slain even before He made the world. Colors and shades are a combination of light and darkness. If it were all absolute light, all we could see would be white light I suppose, so the shadow areas actually help accentuate and define the beauty of the colors. I think it might kind of be like that. If we had never been sinners, I don’t know if we could appreciate God’s grace in the same way. God’s goodness and light is all the more meaningful in comparison to darkness. Paul says that all things work together for good.” All the the questions were awesome. I had wished we could have done that all day long, but I had to get back to my leaders meeting and they to the other stages of their workshop.

They recorded 5 songs during the workshop. It was so good to hear these good quality recordings. I am really looking forward to hearing more and more. Out of the 5 songs, Elendie’s was a highlight. Rick and I created a video version with the English translation of the lyrics.

The workshop and the conference were a tremendous success. It was such a team effort.

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Thank you all for praying and sponsoring. We all together are making great and eternal strides for the kingdom of God. My return flight back to Mexico was again cancelled and I had to endure another 22 hour day. Jorge, Sole and Robin awaited me at the other end in the Hermosillo airport. It was so good to be home again.

t.