This month has definitely been an extremely busy one. We have had many events and groups. We have also had a huge change in our life. It has been good to see how God has provided in all of the spiritual and physical needs during this month. It is truly amazing to be able to share your own stories of God’s provision.
Chloe Elizabeth Jean Gardner
Praise God that He gave us such a beautiful daughter on July 20th at 2:20am. She weighed six pounds 4 ounces and was born completely healthy. I am so thankful for our beautiful and healthy daughter. Katie started having labor pains on the evening of the 17th and by midnight of the 20th there was little progress in her labor. The Doctor finally decided that we should do a C-Section and go ahead and get it all over with.
Be praying for Katie as she recovers from surgery and is getting used to being a mother. She will be returning to language school very soon and finish the last part of that. Thank you all for your prayers for Katie and the baby. As I stated in other prayer letters, her health situation wasn’t the best and the pregnancy was a high risk pregnancy. We are so thankful he has been so good to us.
12th Annual Youth Conference
This month we had the opportunity of hosting and organizing the 12th annual youth conference here in Arequipa. Many of the churches banded together and contributed their support for the conference. Some churches were in charge of decoration, others of food, lodging, reception, etc. It was a great thing to see how great an event can be when people join together as a team. Our guest speaker was Pastor Jeff Bartell from First Baptist Church of New Philadelphia, OH. It was a truly great time and very biblical preaching. We had people all the way from Chile, Argentina and Bolivia attend this conference.
Please pray for the Pastors Conference that will be held in October. It will be a very similar event, but we will be seeing mostly pastors and church leaders coming from all around the country and continent to be helped and encouraged.
Thank you so much for your prayers for our family and ministry. It is our privilege to represent you and God’s kingdom here in Peru.
For His Glory,
David, Katie and Chloe Gardner
Missionaries in Peru
Macedonia World Baptist Missions
Thank you all for your continued prayer and support while we are here in Peru.
God is continuing to do a work in Arequipa with all of the ministries we are involved in.
Medical Clinic
Once again, we had the opportunity to host a group from Pensacola Christian College here in Arequipa. We held a medical clinic at Omega Baptist Church’s facilities. It was a great time and we were able to see plenty of people with so many needs.
We started on a Monday morning and ended on Friday evening. With a group of 30 volunteers from the U.S., and plenty more translators, counselors and helpers from Peru, we were able to give medical attention to 1800 people. Between the medical attention and receiving their prescriptions, we sent them to counseling where we had the opportunity of sharing the Gospel with them. We thank God that there were almost 700 professions of faith during the week.
I want to ask you to pray that we will be able to send workers from the different churches in Arequipa to meet with these people and follow up with the ones that made professions of faith. We are excited that God allowed us to share the Gospel with so many. But it is our desire to see these people that did accept Christ, receive discipleship and grow into mature Christians. We will be handing out their information to different pastors in the city and hopefully we will see some long lasting fruit from this wonderful event.
Youth Ministry
I wanted to ask you to pray for the youth ministry at Omega Baptist Church. It has become one of the most fruitful and fastest growing ministries in the church. I thank God that He is allowing me to head the ministry up, but feel a great responsibility to help these young people reach spiritual maturity. We are studying through the book of Romans right now and God is blessing tremendously. Please pray for a few things with us:
Spiritual growth
Unity
Growth in numbers (We want to see 100 in attendance by April of 2011)
Chloe’s Arrival
Our daughter, Chloe, will come into this world at any time now! The due date is around the 14th of July. Please pray that the delivery will go well and that the doctors will have the necessary wisdom to handle everything correctly.
Also pray that our support will continue to come in, as I am sure that many expenses will increase once she is here to consume formula and the many diapers that are required!
For His Glory,
David and Katie Gardner
Missionaries to Peru
Macedonia World Baptist Missions
It is so exciting to see all the great things that are happening here in Arequipa! We are getting established here with Language School and in the ministry.
One of the most exciting things that has happened in my personal life is that God has allowed me to lead my first soul as a full time missionary here on the field. Alex is a young man that I met a couple of months ago. We started spending a lot of time together and many opportunities came up to answer questions and speak of the Gospel.
I offered to buy him a Bible and start discipleship lessons. He took my offer and we started with the most important lesson: Salvation. That night he went home and accepted Christ as his personal Savior. There has been a great change in his life and he has been reading through his Bible extremely fast.
Please pray for him to be a good testimony to his friends and coworkers. He has already started impacting them with the change they have seen in his life.
God is doing great things at Omega Baptist (the new church plant)! We are seeing a great growth in the life of our people. We are currently going through the book of Acts and seeing how a true biblical church functioned. God is knitting our hearts together through this message series as we see the theme of unity so prominent in the book of Acts.
We will soon be moving to our new location in the middle of the city. Please pray with us about this. We need $10,000.00 for different set up costs, like chairs, audio, paint, etc. This is an extremely important need that I ask you to pray about helping us with.
We just concluded our 11th Annual Pastor’s Conference. It was a very exciting time and we saw many pastors encouraged and helped through the morning workshops and the evening services. My father and pastor, Austin Gardner, was our guest speaker and did an awesome job throughout the whole week. The theme was “Para Su Gloria” (For His Glory). One of the most encouraging things to see was the 100 person choir that was organized! So many people from so many different backgrounds coming together as the redeemed to worship the King of Glory! God truly used unworthy people to bring glory and honor to his name.
Thank you so much for all that you do to keep us here on the mission field. God is doing a great work here, and I have never been more excited about serving Him. These are exciting times we are living in.
For His Glory,
David and Katie Gardner
Missionaries to Peru
Macedonia World Baptist Missions
