March, 2021

Greetings!

Hope this finds each of you well and exceedingly blessed by our wonderful Lord! Much has happened in recent months, but we will just try to give you some highlights here.

Last time we communicated, our churches here were still shut down as far as general services or the entire congregation meeting, but we are pleased to share that we have been able to go back to regular services on Sundays and some other meetings on weekdays. We are continuing to hold the cell groups in the homes as this strategy has attracted some new people, some of them unchurched, and we feel it is important to continue to reach out in this way. We still have the group in our home on Wednesday evenings and are really pleased at having some of our unchurched friends coming and participating.

Over the Christmas/New Year´s holiday, our children’s teacher for our cell group, Albita, heard that Samaritan´s Purse was doing a training for children´s workers who wanted to participate in receiving gift boxes for children in their communities. She attended the training, and was able to receive gift boxes for many children in our community. You will see a couple of pictures of receiving the boxes and the distribution here. The children were thrilled! We are now teaching these children each week with a discipleship program provided by Samaritan´s Purse.

We have also been able to begin doing some village trips again to offer medical brigades. On the first trip in December, we were able to offer some food distribution along with medical care in the Mixtec region of Ixtayutla, and on a trip in January to the same region, the Spanish School accompanied us and offered children´s ministry. Both were very fruitful trips!

We were blessed to have Ralph and Ann Classen with us for a month in January. As always, they accomplished numerous projects around the clinic — cabinets and shelves for consulting room sinks and bathroom sinks, a set of new dental cabinets, new curtains for several rooms, etc, etc! Ralph and Ann were accompanied by their daughter, Dena, and another volunteer, Leah. We were so blessed by having each of them with us! So glad that the pandemic didn’t keep them away! Thank you, Ralph and Ann, for your faithfulness through the years, your service, and your love. You are appreciated!

Also Rachel Wingbermuehle was with us for about 5 weeks in January as a nursing student volunteer. We appreciate your service, Rachel, and your sticking it out through lots of unplanned events! Rachel had to spend about 2 extra weeks in Mexico that she had not planned on, but made it through! Aren´t we thankful that God really does work for good in all things, even things that are totally unplanned and unexpected!

This month, we look forward to a group from Radiant School of Ministry from Michigan coming to serve on the mission base and on some village outreaches with children´s ministry, some hands on construction work to build a basketball court for our K-12 students, and in many other projects. They will be with us for about 5 weeks! There are several other groups planning to come in the following months, and we are very pleased to be able to be receiving these teams again.

We would appreciate your prayers for the people of our area. Even though the statistics on Covid cases in our area has gone down significantly, there are still some cases, and often the people here do not have adequate resources to deal with this illness. We treated a man from the village of El Mosco this past week. His name is Primo, and those of you who have visited El Mosco may remember him. He was the first believer in his town and the father of now a large family of believers who have done much to further the work of the Kingdom in El Mosco. He had to be referred to a private clinic in a nearby town to receive the care that he needed, and that becomes expensive. God graciously provided for his needs while receiving the hospital care, but he is now back in his town recovering and still struggling some physically, so prayers for Brother Primo are appreciated.

The Bible School, Music School, and the Christian Multigrade School on the mission base have all begun to meet presencially again, which we are very thankful for! The Bible School and Music School had to limit their enrollment in order to comply with the government’s request to keep attendance at 50% capacity, but we are thankful to be able to continue presencially, and it is much better for the students!

Dave continues to teach missiology in the presencial second year Bible School classes and to film online New Testament classes for the first year students. He also preaches about once a month in the local church, and recently was asked to speak at the “quinceaños” of Flor, one of the young ladies in our orphanage. The “quinceaños” is a very special 15th birthday celebration, like a “coming out” party for a young lady. She dresses in a very formal dress, and there is a special meal for the guests and a cake, and in the Christian celebrations a message is given which usually addresses themes like the beauty of purity and of serving God in your youth. Dave used a flower since the young lady´s name means “flower” and talked about the beautiful aroma of the flower and how we carry the aroma of Christ with us. It was a beautiful ceremony! You can see Dave speaking to the young lady and her guests in the picture on the right.

We are so grateful to each of you who has given so generously during this time to help us to continue moving forward. Your gifts have blessed many lives — patients, students, and the needy in our community as well as up in the mountains. Thank you so much for all that you have done!!

*A little but important note: Our mission base at Roca Blanca often looks for ways to improve our service to others, here in our region of Mexico and also to those who help us do what we love, serving Christ and His people, making disciples for eternity. We’ve made a few changes in the last several years, moving our USA office to Tulsa, OK, and now moving the administrative team and offices once again to Hutchinson, KS, where it all began 30+ years ago. For those of you who support us, please note our address change, and the necessary changes for us to continue receiving your kind gifts. The new address is:

Roca Blanca Mission Base
2228 Dover Drive
Hutchinson, KS 67502

In His Love,
Dave and Laura