New Evangelistic Home Bible Studies

This weekend we just completed a 3 day training seminar on how to use Bible Storying in evangelistic home Bible studies.  Jon did the teaching and our primary students were three couples from our churches in Jefferson and Salem.  Our plan is for Jon to teach three Bible studies – one in Salem, one in Jefferson, and one in Albany – with one of the three couples involved in each one.  The idea is that after teaching them how, they could watch him do it in a real life situation.  As weeks pass they will have opportunity to teach parts of the Bible study until, by the end of a 37 week progression of Bible stories they will be well equipped to lead Bible studies on their own.

Our goal is to teach the same seminar in 10 months, next time with each of these three couples having their own learners watch them as they lead new Bible studies.  Hopefully, next year we will be able to identify 6 new couples that want to teach Bible studies.  We can take three couples and our current three couples can take one couple each under their wings.  That is the plan now.  We will see how God leads and blesses.

Right now we are in the process of finding homes to have these new Bible studies.  Two new studies are on the calendar.  On Wednesdays we will be in Albany with co-leaders Juan and Remedios.  On Sunday evenings we will be in Jefferson with co-leaders Baltazar and Herlinda.  We want to find two more homes to have Bible studies in.  We want one in Salem with co-leaders Luis and Jessie.  We also want one more in Albany or Lebanon that Juan and Remedios will teach on their own.  Juan and Remedios were in a Bible study Jon taught for a year and a half in Lebanon and Juan also taught that Bible study when Jon was not available.  So… we actually want 4 new Bible studies.  Jon will teach three and Juan will teach one.

In the next few days, Juan will be visiting prospects in Lebanon and Albany and Jon will be visiting prospects in Salem.  Pray that we can arrange these two Bible studies quickly.  Pray for us as we teach them; and pray for the people that are going to be attending these studies.  If you would like to pray for these people by name Email Jon at sousaj@bauercom.net as we do not want to share their names here for privacy reasons.

Just a brief note on Emanuel’s condition (see previous posts):  We have been taking Emanuel to dialysis three times a week.  He is slowly getting better as he is learning to eat the right kinds of foods.  Emanuel has had to spend a night in the hospital from time to time because of high blood pressure.