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Dear Pastor, Church Family, and Friends, I trust that you all made it through the holidays and are basically recovered; although I hear it is still pretty cold for some of you. We are doing great down here, and the weather is about perfect right now. It has not gotten as cold this year as usual; we are hoping that does not mean an extra hot summer. I’m sure it will be fine. The church is doing well; our attendance dropped a little bit during he holidays, but it seems like we are back up to about 140 or 150 people on Sunday mornings. The institute has started back up for the spring semester, and I am finishing up my business math and finances class. There are a couple of new students studying this semester; hopefully we can be a blessing to them. We have some new kids in the orphanage; we are now up to seven. It finally feels like we are moving in the right direction again. For a while, it felt like we were just spinning wheels, but we were doing everything God was allowing us to do. Our newest set of two kids, a brother and sister, are six and seven years old respectively. There names are Antonio and Adela, and they are quite the handful; they hadn’t had much adult supervision, much less any love and attention. They had also not received any discipline; their stepfather beat them sometimes, but there was never any proper discipline. When they first started coming to church, we could not control them; they would run all over the property and in and out of the church during services. We still have a few kinks to work out, but they have come a very long way. Along with all this, we are in the process of starting a school that, for now, will include an elementary school and a junior high. Those classes should start this next week (February 16th). God has been good to us, and we have been very busy; thank you all so much for keeping us in your prayers. Also, I wanted to mention that we need to raise some more support, so I am setting up some meetings over this next year. Right now, we have plans to be in California and Arizona In late June and early July. Also, from the middle of September on through November we are going to be in the south and the midwest. If anyone could have us in during these times or know of a pastor I could contact please let me know; you can e-mail me at markieandchristy@yahoo.com. Thank you for you help in this area. In Christ, Markie Bullock December 2008 Dear Pastor, Church Family, and Friends, I hope this letter finds you all having a great time with friends and family during this holiday season. We are doing well down here in Mexico; it does not feel much like Christmas though. I have had to put on a jacket maybe three times, but only in the early morning or late evening. It’s all short sleeves during the days. Actually, the weather is just about perfect right now. I know we are supposed to be suffering on the mission field, but God gives us this for a couple of months to help us make it through the heat of summer. We finish the fall semester for the institute in two days; I am giving my math final tomorrow, and I don’t think they are looking forward to it. I am not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. The semester does seem to have been a good one. We had some new students, and even some of the students that have been coming for a while seem to have grown spiritually and as people in this semester. The church just celebrated it’s third anniversary last Sunday, and we had a big day to celebrate it; we called it friend day. Bro. Lyons, a pastor from Texas, came to speak, and we had dinner and a pinata. Our average has been around 120, but on this day we had 338 people. It was a lot of work, but it went well. I am in charge of the Sunday school program, and I counted 108 kids in just the seven through ten year old class. One amazing thing is that there weren’t very many first time visitors; probably about three hundred of them come, used to come, or at least visited before. One of my old neighbors even came for the first time. We pray and hope that many of these will continue to come. As far as the orphanage is concerned, we are still waiting on the paperwork. To be honest, it is a little discouraging, but there is nothing we can do about it. The government is in the process of changing all their personnel around, and we are just having to wait for them to get everything going again. In fact, one of the lawyers we have been working with has moved because he works for the government. All we can do is trust God; he knows why we are having to wait. After our paperwork is done, we can take it to all the different agencies that will be bringing us children. We have been told about an eleven year old girl that they are going to bring us, but we also have not heard from them since the governmental changes took place. We know that God has His perfect timing and are excited about what He has for us in this next year. Thank you again for your prayers and support. We wish you all a Merry Christmas! In Christ, Markie Bullock October 2008 Dear Pastor, Church Family, and Friends, Wow! What a couple of months we have had. About a month and a half ago, we had a flood come through. It rained for several days straight which filled the reservoir and also gave us about a foot and a half of water on our street where we rent a house; people living around the corner from us had their front and back doors open, and you could see the water flowing through their houses. Eventually, they had to let water out of the reservoir, which overflowed the river. The water from that basically came to the front of the property where the church and orphanage are, and then a canal wall broke behind us. That gave us about two feet of water on the property. Thankfully, a man in our church came and warned us about the canal, so we were able to raise everything off the ground. Water came up to the top of the platform in our church and onto the porch of the orphanage. God was good to us and protected us, and the church is doing well. Last week we had three people get baptized, and it seems like every service someone is going out to get saved during the invitation. We have also divided up our Sunday school classes to smaller age groups so that we can each focus on one group of kids and get to know their needs, both spiritually and physically. One Saturday, we were all out visiting and a couple of our young people came across a lady who said she had been praying for two weeks for a church to go to, and I don’t think she has missed a service yet. We have had our workers living in the orphanage for a little over a month now, and now we have two kids in the orphanage. We have been waiting for this moment for a while now, and God has answered our prayers. Mario is fourteen years old, and his sister, Laura, is thirteen (I have included a picture of them). They are very sweet kids; our prayer is that they will accept Christ as their Savior, if they have not already, and then develop a desire to love, know, and serve God. Also, there is an orphanage about forty minutes from us that is thinking about shutting down. They have six girls right now from the ages of ten to eighteen, and there is a possibility that they could be coming over to our orphanage. This is not a sure thing, but we are praying for God’s will in this situation. A lot of exciting things going on right now, and God is really blessing. We are praying about and working on starting a school within the next few weeks; please, pray for us as we seek the best way to go about this. Thanks again for all your prayer and support. In Christ, Markie Bullock |
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