La Iglesia Restaurada de Jesucristo (la Restauración)

Newsletter- September 2005

 

From the Family Outreach Board:

Greetings in the name of the Lord. We apologize that there hasn’t been a Family Outreach newsletter sent for several months. Things have been busy, but the work is going forward and the Sperry family continues to be actively engaged in sharing the gospel of Christ in Latin America. This newsletter contains testimonies and reports that they have sent during the past several months. We would solicit your prayers for the doors of the gospel to be opened, as well as for the ongoing financial needs of this ministry.

The Sperry family typically visits the States every two years to see family and friends. They will likely make their next visit in Spring of 2006. If anyone knows of an economical means to obtain boat or air transportation from Honduras to the States, please contact us. They are hoping to avoid the long drive through Latin America if possible.
 

Reports:

 

2/8/05
Things are going fine here except for Tikva's and my infections. I am still taking medicine for it and she will probably have to take a third regimen starting next week. The couple from Guatemala left for home yesterday and are supposed to call me today or tomorrow to set up a time next week for me to go visit them there. I would appreciate your prayers about that because it appears that the young lady is very interested, but he is possibly just interested because she is, though he says that he is really interested and wants me to visit them.

I have visited with some of the ministers and people in Meambar. It went very well. They want us to return as soon as we can. I will probably visit them the week after I return from Guatemala. There is a young lady who has just graduated as an industrial engineer who will be staying with us for a couple of
months to learn English and to help Regina polish up her Spanish. She is the daughter of Juan and Doris Argueta from el Progreso. She is the sister of the young lady who is living in Guatemala at this time.

I have felt that the Lord is calling us to a slightly different emphasis in missionary work, but both Regina and I feel that we are still supposed to be here in Honduras. I feel that the Lord is calling me to visit people here in Siguatepeque once a week, (which I am already doing), once every couple of weeks visit one of the other congregations already established. I feel led to once a month as a family, minister in one of the other congregations already established, and regularly visit Meambar, probably once a week. We would also be very interested in helping to plan medical brigade visits for doctors and chiropractors who are church members. Charles and I worked as translators for a brigade a while back and we saw lots of doors open to us that would have been closed otherwise. I can see that it would be a way for doctors from the States to serve in their area of expertise while at the same time opening doors for the preaching of the gospel into new areas. Don ́t believe for one minute that the work here is saturated. Except for myself, Socorro, Moncho Leiva, and
Antonio Orellana, none of the other ministers visit other congregations other than their own.

Que Dios les bendiga.
En Cristo,
Carlos Sperry

 

3/22/05

Dear friends and family,
I wanted to touch base with you to let you know how things are going here. As some of you know, Chuck and Christina are in the States for medical reasons. They flew in on March 10th, and will return to Honduras April 30th. It has been interesting since they left. We have had several mechanical problems with the truck. Good mechanics are hard to come by here. Our boys are in the middle of a Scout project that involves the schools in the
community. We have put in 28 hours of service since March 11th. The project happens to end the day before Chuck is to come home. I am visiting and having classes with two different ladies on a weekly basis. These ladies are not members of the church. I ask for your prayers on their behalf.

Our oldest son Charles is involved in giving scripture classes to a couple who lives down the street from us. He will also be given the responsibility of being in charge of a church service this coming Sunday. We ask you to please pray for him. The two ministers that live here in Siguatepeque will be gone this Sunday. Charles is the only other male church member in our congregation whom they feel is able to have this responsibility. The other members are women and young people.

Lastly some of you have heard of a legal problem that has occurred since Chuck left. Last year a neighbor man attacked Chuck and cut off his finger. The
guy was put in jail for three months. Two days after Chuck left for the States (March 12,2005) this young man showed up in front of our house at 9pm. He was on drugs. He tried to climb up the gate to our driveway. Then he took a rock and tried to break the lock to the gate. After this, he climbed the eight-foot fence, but jumped back down. I called the police. He was arrested and put in jail for six days. He was released on Monday afternoon. If there are any more faults against him he will be sent back to prison. Thank you for your prayers. I would ask you to please continue to uphold us in prayer and also pray for this young man and his family.

All in all we are doing well. We are excited to be sharing God's word with others. I am grateful that the Lord has blessed me with children who are willing
to work for Him. We are praying for each of you.

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May God bless you,

Regina Sperry

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3/23/05

Hello, I do not know when the last newsletter was sent. Here are a few things that have been shared with me in church on Sunday morning during the last month. Thanks for all your help and prayers. Regina.

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A MOTHER ́S TESTIMONY

My name is Briselda Mejia. I live in Siguatepeque, Honduras. I am married and have five children. As a small child I remember the spiritual example my mother gave to our family. My father was an alcoholic. Because of his drinking there were times that we had no food in the house. My mother always seemed to know what to do. She was a woman of prayer. One morning we woke up with no food to eat. Mother went into the bedroom, closed the curtain, and knelt to pray. When she was finished praying she walked out with confidence, picked up her sweater, and told us she would return. By early afternoon mother came home with her arms full of food. We asked her where she found all this food. Her answer was simple. "The Lord gave me direction and provided for our needs".

 

Sundays were enjoyable for me as a child. Mother tried her best to make sure we were at church. She would prepare everything on Saturday. Sunday mornings she packed some food in a bag and we would walk a long distance to church. After church we would find a tree to sit under and eat our lunch, then we would walk back home. I remember one morning about a year ago, I decided that I did not want to go to church anymore. I was tired. It was too hard to get my family to church. That night I had a dream. I saw two paths. One was straight and narrow. The other was wide and long. My mother stood before me. She chastised me for my decision to not return to church. She did not want all that she had taught me to be in vain. I woke up nervous and sweating. I had to ask the Lord for forgiveness. I often think of Mother's example. Now that I am a mother, I too want to be an example for my family. I want to do more than just teach my children to pray and go to church. Many times because of sickness and living so far from church we do not go. My oldest son, who is ten, reads to us out of the scriptures. We try to do this every day. Please pray for my family. My husband is not a member of the church. My heart's desire is that as a family we can worship the Lord together in His church.

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I would like to share another testimony with you about a woman whom we have been sharing with. Her name is Doña Elba. She has two sons who have
been attending church for three years. This lady has done things in the past that have kept her from making a commitment to the Lord. She has felt that her sins were too big to be forgiven. In the last few months she has made some major changes in her life. She desires to have a closer walk with Christ. She has been attending church now for a month. A few days ago she shared an experience she had. "I had a dream. I saw my father who died a month ago. He asked me why I had a toad in my house. The toad was hopping around. I picked up a broom in order to kill it. I could not hit the toad. My father began to help me shoo the toad out of the house. As the toad left, it turned into a bat and flew away."

 

A few days before this dream she had her house dedicated and blessed by the priesthood.

"I feel like the Lord is telling me that I am doing right by throwing out bad things in my life and home. I am happy that God spoke to me in this way."

 

Thanks for all of your prayers.

Yours In Christ,

Regina

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4/13/05
Hello Everyone, Many people have been asking how my arm is coming along. I thought I would take this time to let you know what is going on with us.
April 14, 2005 will be a year since the attack in Guatemala. Here in Honduras our family will be having a praise service in the evening. You might think that we would want to forget what happened that day. However, it is something that we will remember for the rest of our lives. Our faith in the Lord has greatly increased due to that attack. I have improved, but we know that there is more therapy to be done. I have 25 degrees straightening and 130 degrees of bending at the elbow. My hand and wrist are working at 100%. I can do all the daily things I need to do. Sometimes my movements might be a little  different than everyone else who has normal elbow functions. Chuck says that each time he sees a movement that is not normal he is reminded what the Lord did for us. We are all grateful for our lives and pray that we will always be willing to do the work of the Lord wherever we are. Our lives are not our own. They have been given to the Lord Jesus.

Chuck and Christina will be coming home on April 30. We will be at the airport to meet them. It has been a long time to be apart. From the airport we will go to el Progreso and spend the weekend with a church family. We will share with the church people there. Chuck will be home for a week and then head to Guatemala.

We would ask for your prayers for this trip. He will meet up with another elder there.

God bless each of you. Keep up the good work for the Lord. It is an exciting thing to be doing.

Your sister in Christ,
Regina Sperry

 

5/2/05
Dear friends and family,
I wanted you to know that Chuck and Tikva have returned home here in Honduras. We spent the weekend in el Progreso sharing with a church family. We had a great time. Chuck and Tikva both seem to have been blessed with better health. We are grateful to the Lord for this and thank each of you who have
been praying for them. Please continue to remember Chuck. We ask you to pray for the work in Guatemala. Chuck will be going to Guatemala in two weeks. There is a church and another family that we have been praying for. He will be visiting these people. There is one church member who lives in Guatemala. She is in el Progreso, Honduras at this time. We were able to talk to her while we were in el Progreso. She will be spending the month of May here in Honduras.

 

We just ask an interest in your prayers for the Lord's work here and in all the parts of the world. We will also pray for your families. We pray that the Lord will bless the work which he has called you to do. Be strong and of good cheer, always doing good work for the Master. These are exciting times. Put on the whole armor and keep going forward. Let us not do things for our own self-gain. Let everything we do, be done to glorify the Lord.

Your sister in Christ,

Regina Sperry

 

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5/17/05

Hi everyone, I am writing to you from Xela right now. I just arrived today at about 1pm after an overnight stay in Guatemala City. I have already visited a little with Rolando and Nora. We will be discussing doctrine and the gospel tomorrow afternoon at about 4pm. I would appreciate your prayers. I will be going to Almolonga tomorrow morning to visit with people there. I hope that I can find Arturo. I was able to call Luis Beltran in Guatemala and he invited me to stay with their family when I come back through the capital on the 23rd. I will leave the capital on the 24th at 5am and should be in SPS atabout 3pm. So, I should be home by about 6pm on Tues the 24th. 

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7/9/05
Dear Brothers & Sisters in Christ,

I greet you in the holy name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I have been very busy for the last few months. In March of this year I traveled to the States
for the Elders’ Conference with my daughter Tikva. Both of us stayed in the States for two months to take care of some medical problems. 

 

MEDICAL PROBLEMS
Tikva has had some type of gastrointestinal infection for the past year-and-a-half. She has seen a number of doctors here, but no one could really figure out what the problem was. Some said that it was a helicobacter-pylori infection and others said that it was something else. Even after seeing a couple of doctors in the States, we are still not quite sure what she has. She is gradually getting better though, for which we are thankful.

I had a very bad urinary tract infection back in October of 2004 which was resistant to all the antibiotics that I took. The doctors finally found an antibiotic to which the bacteria was only somewhat resistant- ciprofloxacin. I took it four different times for anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months, but it still didn’t get rid of the infection. As a result of the prolonged infection, my prostate became infected.I saw various doctors while in the States. The final prognosis was that I would need to take a natural antibiotic, querecitin, for 8 months to a year because none of the others seemed to be working.

CUBAN PASTOR
During our stay in the Independence area, Brother Charles Zerr introduced us a Cuban émigré who had been imprisoned by the Castro regime in Cuba for preaching about Jesus Christ. He and his family were expelled from Cuba after he was released from prison and now live in northeast Kansas City. He is pastoring a non-denominational church there. We were able to share with him and his family about some of our experiences as missionaries in Latin
America. As a result, he invited us to come and share in his church. It went very well. A few days later, he invited Arturo Gomez to share in his church also.
 

Please pray for him, his family and Brother Zerr who is continuing to visit with them on a regular basis.

VISIT TO GUATEMALA
During Elders’ Conference, I visited with Arturo Gomez from Belize about our contacts in Xela. While we were talking, he mentioned that he had been invited to visit an evangelical pastor in a town in central Guatemala. He told me that the name of the town was Almolonga. When I heard the name of the town, I was surprised. It is where all the pastors in the town came together in prayer and fasting asking the Lord to clean up their town. Now, about ten years later, they don’t have any cantinas or major crime. Almolonga is only about five minutes from Xela. We decided that we would meet in Almolonga on the 17th of May and do some joint missionary work there and also in Xela for the next week.

I arrived in Xela on the 16th of May and found a place to stay in a hostel run by a Lutheran pastor. On the 17th, I took a bus to Almolonga. It is a city of about 20,000 inhabitants. What a surprise! I was expecting a small town. I went to the two largest churches there and asked if they had heard of Arturo Gomez. One of the pastors said that all the pastors pretty much know if there is going to be anybody from outside the town preaching in one of the 18 churches that are there. He told me that no one from Belize was expected. I talked with a number of different people there about the experience which the town had a few years back. Everyone confirmed what we had heard that the pastors got together and began praying and fasting with their congregations for the town. The town was a cesspit; bars everywhere, drunks laying in the streets day and night, etc. Now there are no bars, no jails and the only police in the town are traffic police. I did see one drunk man coming out of an unmarked house though. I would guess liquor was being sold there. Some of the
produce is a little larger than usual, but they also have a lot of the normal-sized stuff. In fact, in talking with some of the people, they told me that they prefer the smaller produce because it tastes better. I think that a lot of the large size is caused by the use of fertilizers. That would explain why the smaller
vegetables and fruit seem to taste better. I saw a nice fertilizer store while I was there.

 

To summarize: The town is cleaner, quieter, and safer than any other town its size here in this area of Guatemala. According to one of the church offices
here, only about 90% of the people from Almolonga are Christian, not 100%. The produce is not really any bigger than produce that I have seen in the
Independence area where the ground is good and it has been well-watered and fertilized.

Later, on the same day I called Arturo ́s home, but could never get through. I tried calling him at least ten times over the next three days, but could never get through. I finally found out that the Belicean government had gone bankrupt, so apparently none of the phones in the country were working.

While I was in Xela, I visited a number of times with Rolando and Nora Herrara. They are still going through that fog that she saw in her dream. One of the times that I visited with them, I asked them if they thought that the dream and the interpretation were of God. They told me, “absolutely yes”, but then proceeded to deny the validity of the Restored Gospel. When I asked them about the contradiction, they had no answer. The result is that they are satisfied right now with where they are at and are not interested in knowing whether or not the Book of Mormon is true.

Because Arturo never showed up and because I had bought a round-trip bus ticket, I had a lot more time to visit with people in Xela. I was able to share with the Lutheran pastor and his family a couple of hours each day. Because of our conversations, he invited me to preach in his church on Sunday morning. That afternoon I preached in the same Pentecostal church that Dan Norman, Bill Barrett, Charles and I shared in last year. Probably the most important contact that I made, was with a young atheist man who lives beside Lake Atitlan. He had come to Xela to go dancing, but instead spent hours upon hours talking with me about Jesus Christ, God, the Book of Mormon, salvation, Christ’s visit to the Americas, etc. We averaged about four hours a day talking about Jesus and His Restored Gospel. He came up to me on the last day that I was there and said, “I think that God had us both stay here in this hostel so that you could share with me about Him.” He now believes that there is a God who is the creator of the universe, that Jesus was His Son, though
at the time of the writing of this letter he has not yet accepted Him as Lord and Savior and he believes that the Book of Mormon is probably a true history of Christ’s visit to the Americas. Please pray for him. His name is Clark.

TRANSLATION OF THE INSPIRED VERSION
After my trip to Guatemala, Phil and Cheri Tandy invited me to return to the States to help in the translation of the Inspired Version. They were gracious
enough to pay for my plane ticket so that I could be there. Those involved in the translation process during the week were: David Cromwell, Phil and Cheri Tandy, Gary Metzger, Mara and Dalia Castillo, and myself. We worked from 8 to 6 every day revising a preliminary translation made by Mara and Dalia  Castillo and Phil and Cheri Tandy. Frank Frye was also able to come late in the week and discuss the translation.The preliminary translation was based on previous work done by Ron Quick, Frank Frye, and others. The final translation will include, but not be limited to Genesis, Matthew , Mark, Luke, John,
and Isaiah 29. We are continuing the translation and review process by email during the next 10 to 12 months. Sometime at the beginning of the summer of 2006 we will be meeting in Oaxaca, Mexico to finish the translation process. We would like to be able to begin printing the Inspired Version addition to the Spanish Bible sometime toward the end of 2006. If there is anyone who would like to help defray the printing costs or help in some other way in the translation process, please contact Phil and Cheri Tandy.

May the Lord continue to bless each of you as you seek to build His Kingdom here on the earth. Que Dios les bendiga.

En Cristo,

The Sperry’s