Hello everyone,
I'm really sorry to have this news to share with you. You probably are already
aware that we have been having some trouble here in
field. Well it is looking pretty serious right now. Here is some information that
we are able to share with you.
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On national television at approximately 3PM on October 12, President Chavez declared
during an act to distribute land grants to indigenous peoples in
Venezuela that "New Tribes" will be expelled from the country in an
order that he will be signing in the next time period not clearly
defined. He
stated, "We do not want New Tribes here . . . we are going to give them a time
table, so they can gather their things, we aren't going to rudely
trample them, but we want them out . . . of the country."
Our Field Committee is currently working to see what avenues we might pursue in
this situation, but needless to say a presidential decree is a difficult
complication for our ministries here.
We want to reiterate that the President did not indicate a specific time frame,
and that he did specifically mention that this will be an orderly,
civil exit with time given for the missionaries to collect their belongings
We have a lot of decisions to make regarding organizational planning and how this
entire process is going to function for us. Pray for safety, calm, and
wisdom for our leadership and missionaries during these times. Please
pray for the tribal believers and unbelievers as they prepare for the hard
reality of an exit from the interior. We want our testimony in all things
to be excellent, even in times as challenging as these.
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Please do pray! This has the potential of GREATLY affecting all the works here
in
that we have believers in this tribe who have a heart to reach out to their own
people. There seems to be so much more that we need to do... We do not
know all that will come of this but we do know that God knows. And we know that
we must trust him. We'll keep you posted as we are able. This is all
still "delicate" since we still don't know what all the fallout could
be.
Sandy and I are out in town right now and we don't know if we will be able to
go back into the jungle. We could end up leaving everything behind and
not even having the chance to say good bye to our Yanomamö brothers. We hope this
is not the case. Please do be in prayer. That is what we can do is be
before God.
As we have more information we will pass it on to you. We are feeling like we
are "in shock" at the moment.
All for now then, Please remember to pray for this
whole situation, for the leaders of the country here, and for us as we cope,
and look for God's will
in all this.
Thank you!
Bobby and Sandy