June 12, 2009
Dear Praying Friends:
Thank you so much for your prayer support. Because of your support in prayer, we can see progress here in Suriname. We are partners together.
A soulwinning gift from the Lord: In Suriname, we have some “die-hard” members of the EBG church. (Evangelical Broeder’s Gemeente, otherwise known as Moravians). This church was the first in Suriname, and initially were Bible believers and strongly evangelistic. The same liberalism which effected most mainline denominations in Europe and the USA also effected them. I would consider the majority of both pastors and members unsaved, with some wonderful exceptions. However, many are of the mind: Once an EBG, always an EBG.
Liz has been working especially with some women in the church. One has a sister who fit into the above category. However, she has been impressed with the change in of her saved sister, and has wanted to meet us recently, though she had been very negative before. I started thinking about how do build bridges for a good relationship. I asked myself how to approach her in soulwinning. Normally I bring my big Bible with me and a soulwinning chart. After all, I am Dominee (pastor), and people are not surprised. However, I decided to take a lower key approach to her. Both Liz and I prayed for days that her heart would be open, and that the god of this world, who blinds the eyes of the unsaved, would be bound.
So with anticipation and mixed emotions, we drove to her home yesterday with her saved sister. After a little small talk, she sat up and said: “I am waiting for the message Dominee Patton is going to bring me.” I almost fell off the chair. It turns out that she has been listening to both our radio and TV programs for some time. So I gave my testimony first of how I was saved. I too had thought that my good works would take me to heaven. Thus I could relate to her background. Then I explained how the Lord worked in my life to reveal my need of Him. I spoke about the need of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and not just a religious ceremonial performance. Then I was able to go in detail through God’s plan of salvation.
It was a joy to hear her prayer asking the Lord to forgive her sins and come into her life. We were able to encourage her in Christian growth as well. But the biggest joy was to see her sister take her Bible and counsel her with appropriate verses about a question she had about praying. We pray that we will see this lady and perhaps her daughter and granddaughter, who stay with her, attend church in the future.
Marriage customs: In many ways, the Bush Negro culture is against the Biblical pattern of marriage (so is modern Western society as we become increasingly secular and pagan). We have seen this problem for a long time. But now our own people are voicing the same story. After our 50th wedding anniversary, one of the things we were hoping to do was to have a marriage seminar. The Lord worked above our hopes. Our own people are organizing it next week on Saturday. There will be two men speaking on the Bush-Negro culture as it is today. They asked me to speak a bit on western culture - primarily to show that the Bible is above all cultures. We western missionaries can be blinded by our own worldview to think that westernism = Christianity. This is absolutely untrue, and we are moving farther and farther away from what the Bible teaches as we secularize. Then we will show what the Bible says about a variety of topics.
We are thrilled that after preaching and teaching these truths for years, we are seeing fruit. We are thrilled that our people have taken the initiative, and are willing and wanting to put Biblical truth before their old customs. We hope that this will be the beginning of changes in the family structure among our believers. It will be a tough fight, because the culture is set against Biblical truths in this area, and family really does not want their members to get married in the church and through the government legal channels, because this diminshes the power of the rest of the family. We do see a number of our couples married legally trying to apply Biblical principles. Please pray that the Word of God will come out clearly. Pray that the god of this world who blinds from the glorious gospel will be bound. And pray that those attending will be willing to live Biblically.
Change in format: A few persons have requested that we do not include the PDF attachment when we send the prayer letter. Others have asked us to be certain to use the PDF form. If you would prefer not to receive the attachment, would you please let me know? I will try to get you in a couple distribution lists which will not include the attachment, and remove your name from our distribution lists. Please be patient. We have about 450 names to sort through on our distribution lists, and they are not totally alphabetical, so it takes time to find names to remove.
Prayer requests:
1. Our spiritual growth - I would ask for special prayer for growth in prayer itself
2. Our health and strength for the task. This week we both had good reports from a urologist, and last week, I had a good report from my cardiologist here
3. Souls saved and discipled
4. Independence of the churches
5. Spiritual growth as well as outreach in the churches
6. Special seminar on marriage next week
In Him and Content:
Bob and Liz Patton
Missionaries to Suriname
