Updates

When a child smiles in the midst of opening a present there is happiness
When a child smiles in the midst of extreme poverty there is God

When a child holds out love to his favorite friend there is happiness
When a child holds out love to his absent father there is God

When a child finally gets how to add and subtract there is happiness
When a child finally gets a teacher to come to her impoverished village there is God

When a child who is ill receives the medicine that will make him well there is happiness
When a child who is ill receives the news that there is nothing more we can do there is God

When a child finds out that she can stay up past her bedtime this night there is happiness
When a child finds out that her parents have decided to call it quits there is God

In the midst of pain and suffering in the world you may not find many of your friends,
But you will always find God if you seek Him

As Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." (Matthew 25:40)

I have just returned from a very productive trip to Guatemala completing my Board of Directors for The LORD Will Provide ministry by bringing on three Guatemalans who have a tremendous love for the Lord and a heart for the refugees and poor of Guatemala.

In addition, the Lord has opened the door for The LORD Will Provide to begin work in Martires del Pueblo which is part of Finca El Zarzal the largest refugee village in Central America with 28,000 families (Approx. 125,000 people) living there in close quarters. They have no source of running water, no sewage system and no medical clinic. The government of Guatemala cannot afford to help them and so our work begins.

I am not accustomed to making appeals, but we need your help.

Firstly, we are attempting to bring in another ministry whose sole purpose is to drill water wells in impoverished areas around the world to give the village a source of clean, running water. Secondly, we are exploring our options as to what can be done to best handle the sewage problem. Lastly, a medical clinic is needed and there has already been progress made. The community of Martires del Pueblo has donated a small parcel of land on which we will build a small medical clinic. We have two physicians from Guatemala City who have agreed to see patients for free at least one day per week. The approximate cost to build the clinic is $19,000 which does not include medicines, medical equipment or supplies. Volunteers will be used to staff the clinic when it is open.

If you would like to become part of this effort by becoming a prayer partner, a financial supporter (monthly or onetime) or have an interest in making a short term medical or construction mission trip to the area, please contact me.

In Christ,
Steve

3/29/05

The day was April 6, 2004. It was the day I found out there was no water on the land near Antigua... the Promised Land that the Lord had led me to me to through the miracle of the blue, 5-gallon water bottle. I pleaded with God, asking Him to tell me why He wanted this land without water. That same night I attended a church service at Casa de Dios in Guatemala City. It was during this service that the Lord led me to these verses:

"The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst.
But I the LORD will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.
I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys.
I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs.
I will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive.
I will set pines in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together,
so that people may see and know, may consider and understand,
that the hand of the LORD has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it. (Isaiah 17-20)

The Lord was clearly speaking to me, telling me He was going to put water where there was no water. I wasn't sure how He was going to do it, I only knew that He was telling me He was going to do it and I believed Him. I shared this with many of you, including my pastor.

During that same trip in April 2004 I met a doctor in Guatemala who gave me the name of a man who was originally from Guatemala,
but had now lived in Chicago for some 20 years. The doctor told me he had met this man a couple of weeks earlier and he was looking for land because he was doing something with water, but he wasn't exactly sure what. When I returned home to Texas I e-mailed my story to this man and spoke with him about 10 days later by telephone. His name is Elberth. About a year earlier Elberth had gone to the Lord telling Him he wanted to do more for Him and asking what he could do. The Lord told him to start a bottled water company in Guatemala. During that year he made many trips to Guatemala setting up this new company. When I spoke with him he had the business set up. He had a name for the company, legal work completed and even had a label designed, but he still didn't have a source for water. I told him that I believed our Promised Land was going to be his source. He thought so too. We prayed together and have waited nearly a year now to see how the Lord was going to do this. I even made a trip to Chicago last year to meet Elberth and get to know this faithful man.

Now to bring you up to date. I have just returned from a two week trip to Guatemala (February 21 - March 5). So many amazing spiritual things are happening there, but I had to share this with you. On Friday, February 25 I faced my greatest giant and met with the owners of the Antigua land. They started the meeting by telling me things had changed a little bit. They had recently retrieved the legal papers of ownership that their deceased father had for the land and discovered the borders of the property on one side (the Antigua Highway side) were actually broader than they had originally known. The border of their property actually crosses over the highway by 15 meters and runs 65 meters along the highway. What makes this news so amazing is that the property across the highway drops some 20 feet and is bordered by a gorge on that side. According to the locals, this means that there is water under there.

By the way, did I mention the name of the bottled water company Elberth had set up? "The Living Rock." As God had used Moses to draw water from a rock for the Israelites in the desert, so too had He done this miracle in Guatemala. He is sovereign!!!

In Christ,
Steve

3/30/05

Last night I ran into a great friend of mine who challenged me to tell more of what happened this last trip in Guatemala. "You were in Guatemala for two weeks and nothing else happened?" Much more did happen, but I didn't write about the spiritual things because I don't want people to focus on me. I am just an ordinary guy whom the Lord has called to a ministry in Guatemala. This is a God story, not a Steve story. It is our sovereign Lord that makes the miracles for the purpose of glorifying Himself and accomplishing His purposes. While the Lord has shown and taught me many things on this journey I have told you about, some and others I have not. It is not because I do not want to tell you, but its because I believe the Lord is teaching me things personally about Himself. I shared some events of my training in the book, "The LORD Will Provide"... the map of Guatemala at Hastings the Lord told me was there, taking my friend Jackie to HEB grocery store to buy her groceries and so on.

I will share one event that happened at the end of my two week trip to give you an idea of what the Lord has been teaching me lately. Every gift comes from Him, may He be glorified.

I have been working closely with a pastor named Jorge who was also miraculously called to serve the refugee population in Guatemala. That's another amazing story. Jorge is from El Salvador, but now lives with the people of Martires del Pueblo. He has such a wonderful heart and a great passion for serving the poor. The last full day of my trip Jorge asked me to come and pray for a four year old boy who was diagnosed with Spina Bifida. Jorge also brought along two deacons from his church. When we arrived at the small house we were met by the boy's mother who was very grateful to us for coming. In addition to the boy, three of her daughters were there also. As we began to talk, it became clear to me that the Lord had brought us here to pray for the mother, not so much the boy. As we were about to begin praying for the mother, I felt the Lord was clearly telling me that she had some unforgiveness in her life that she needed to confess first. I asked her, through Jorge's translation, if there was anyone in her life either recently or from when she was a little girl that she had not forgiven. She sat back on her small couch trying to think and kept shaking her head, "No." Then I got the word father. "Jorge, ask her if she is harboring any unforgiveness toward her father." She continued to shake her head no. Then she began to speak in Spanish, "Well, my biological father was not the man who raised me. I was born before my mother was married and I actually had my first child before I was married. We also have just found out that my 18-year old unmarried daughter is pregnant."

"Maybe that's what the Lord meant by, 'father,'" I said. So I prayed against any generational curse that may exist in her family. We prayed for each family member present staying there two hours. I prayed for the 18-year old daughter and could sense the great walls that surrounded her heart. I prayed that they would be broken down. After I finished praying for her, the Lord said to me, "Does she believe me?" I asked her, through Jorge, "Do you believe God?" She replied in Spanish, "Yes, I believe God."

As were about to leave I felt like the Lord was telling me to tell the mother that she needed to sit down every morning with her family and read Scripture with them. There was a Bible on the couch. I held it up and asked whose Bible it was. The mother told me it was hers. Since it was hers, I felt maybe I was wrong. I didn't want to risk insulting her since we had had such a wonderful time in prayer.

As the deacons and I were saying goodbye to the mother and children, Jorge took a moment to speak quietly with the 18-year old daughter alone. After many minutes, he came out of the room, "She doesn't believe." I want to pause and say something very important here. Unbelief is deadly. Unbelief is what caused all of the adult Israelites (except for Joshua and Caleb for they believed God) who followed Moses through the desert on their way to the Promised Land to die in the desert. They didn't believe God could defeat the giants who lived in the Promised Land.
Let me say again, unbelief is deadly.

As Jorge was climbing into the car to join me and the two deacons, the mother called him back to speak with him. After about ten minutes, he returned to the car saying, "Wow."

The mother had wanted to know how we had known about her father. Jorge didn't know what she was talking about. "How did you know about my father?" Jorge asked her what she meant. "My father abused me when I was a little girl," she told him. I felt terrible when Jorge told me this because we had prayed for her in front of her children and I guess she didn't feel comfortable telling us about this in front of them. I had made a mistake, but I won't let that happen again in the future. The mother then told him how she really felt like she needed to spend more time praying and reading Scripture with her family. Jorge told her to gather her family together each morning and read the Bible to them. That's exactly what the Lord had told me to tell her earlier, but I didn't follow through so He used Jorge to give her the message. God is sovereign!

Jorge, the deacons and I praised God and thanked Him for using us. God is teaching us new things as our ministry begins in Guatemala. Things that we never dreamed God would use us to do, but how grateful we are that He is. Jorge spoke with the mother of the woman we prayed for that afternoon. Her daughter had called her shortly after we payed for her saying she had never felt so full of God in her entire life as she was feeling at that moment. Praise God from whom ALL blessings flow!

In Christ,
Steve

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Please feel free to contact us at: stephen@theLORDwillprovide.org