July Update

Dear loved ones,

Greetings to y’all from the jungle in the Name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The only one who is true One hundred percent of the time, and the One who cares more about us then anyone else in creation, because He is the One who created us!
Giving y’all an update is what’s on my mind, but where do I start? So much has happened in the last few month that it will be impossible to cover everything, but I’ll try to hit on a few.
Our trip to the States was good! It is always interesting to see how God works things out while we are there. Besides the normal going to our regular churches and sharing, it seems that God always has a special task for us to do besides. Different from last year when the Spirit prompted us to make an unexpected trip to southern Colorodo to minister to one of Leah’s cousins, who ended up surrendering her life to Christ, this year was no less interesting. We made an unplanned trip to southern Arkansas to minister to a group of people who had been enslaved in a cult. The cult had just fallen apart, and many of the people scattered in all directions, but there were many families who are still meeting there trying to figure out what is really true about God and what is not. It was incredible to be able to share with them and lead them through some of the same struggles we had when we were excommunicated from the Amish cult we grew up in.

Things here in our village are far from pleasant the last few month. The crowd that has been trying to stop the work of the gospel in various ways finally got enough people stirred up to come against the good leaders of the village that God had raised up to help us. The leaders finally got overwhelmed with it all and stepped down from leadership, which is exactly what to trouble makers were trying to do. Then they immediately took control of the situation and tried to get themselves put in as leaders, which didn’t work out for them that day.
But after a week, and forming a self made committee,  they put themselves in as the new leaders. They had everything already planned out before they became the leaders, how they are going to put pressure on us and require us to pay a monthly fee to them for the right to stay here in KrinKrin, and many more things of how they were gong to put laws into place and require us to shell out money to them. They had everything figured out and there was going to be no way out for us.
If I would not have had confidence in God, I would have been sure that this was going to be it for us here in KrinKrin. But I knew it was God who brought us here, and it was God who is still in control, so I knew He would somehow make a way, even though I couldn’t come up with plan or an idea of how it’s going to work.
And did God ever have a plan! A plan I would have never dreamt of. A couple days before these trouble makers put themselves in as leaders, a troop of military guys who is stationed upriver a ways to keep the peace, came through our village. They stopped at our house for food and a place to sleep, which isn’t unusual. As we visited, the captain asked how things were going in the village for us. So I told him a little of what was going on, and he immediately became unsettled and said, “no, we will come back the day they will have that meeting to make sure they don’t do anything bad.” I told him that I didn’t tell him with the intent to have him get involved, but he insisted that he will be here, so all I could do was thank him and leave it at that.

The morning of the meeting the whole troop of military guys walked for three and a half hours to our village. They didn’t actually go into the meeting, but were around our house and walking around close to the meeting. The captain talked to several people during that time and found out that what I had said about their plan was true, so after the meeting the captain came to our house again to talk about the whole thing. After a short discussion he sent one of his men to bring the new chief (judge) to our house, and had me explain to him how our ministry works as far as the money, and that any kind of pressure will not produce money for them, because all the money we have was given for a purpose, and we can’t do something else with it. Then the captain also talked to the chief and told him that he had given me his personal number, and if they try to put any kind of pressure on us, I have orders to call him right away and he’ll come quickly and take care of the matter. Because everybody along the river knows how much we are helping with the fiscal needs and teaching the way of God in many villages, so they are not going to just stand by if someone tries to cause us any harm.
With that God put a fear into the heart of the new chief and his clan, and they dropped all the plans they had so carefully crafted on how to get rich off of us. We were just in awe of God! He has saved us out of many traps and evil schemes since we’re here, but this was the ultimate plan with every escape route covered by the enemy.

But as far as preaching opportunities,  God has done some amazing things, and made it possible to get into churches that were closed off to our teaching before. And the people are starting to pay more attention to our teaching, since they have seen and heard about so many things God is doing through this ministry, and how He has delivered us from every evil thing that people have tried to do to us, physically and spiritually. They have never seen anyone who could just keep on going unharmed, even with the most powerful witch doctors (in Nicaragua and in Honduras) casting their spells on us, and the best hit men on the river being hired to take me out. They are starting to believe us that it is God’s Spirit Himself who is protecting us, and not just some bigger and more powerful evil spirit.
With them starting to believe that, it is opening their minds to receive the truth. But even the idea of living a sexually pure life itself is so foreign to them that they can’t seem to wrap their minds around it. It’s a pretty regular thing that a young man or woman comes up to us and says, “I want to become a Christian, but I need some of those pills that yall use.” And even after explaining to them that we don’t use any pills, and its only by the power of the Holy Spirit that lives in us that makes us able to live a pure life, they think that God must favors us more than them.

Ministry is hard here, but we praise God that He has sent us here to feed them the truth, however slowly it might be, because I am convinced that there will be a breakthrough and a harvest. Thank yall for your continued prayers for our perseverance, and for understanding in the minds of the Miskitu people. There are some big decisions ahead of us as far as one of the churches that I will try to give some details later, but this is getting too long,  so I will close it down for now. I will try to do a better job of keeping yall updated than I have in the last 8 or 9 month. We appreciate yall a lot! Eli Lee and the team.

We updated the needs list for the ministry on our ministry needs page @  https://religiontorelationship.org/ministry-needs/ for those of you who want to know how you can help financially. Thank you!

2 thoughts on “July Update”

  1. saloma hershberger

    Hi Eli & Leah, I just visited my friend Jude Gaither in Licking Mo, I have heard a lot about u alredy, and I just wanno encourage u for the work u do for the lord,,,,i live in Summersville mo,.and I was hopeing to meet you somtime,,,but I am planning to move to Minnesota this coming Saturday,,,so I don’t know when it may happen,,,,god bless

    1. Yes! Judy wrote us a message about your visit! We have been praying for you for years, so it seems like we kinda know you. We really want to meet you too! If you have an email address, we can put you on our update list and then you will receive the emails that we send out. You can send your address privately to religiontorelationship@gmail.com We can also send a paper copy to a mailing address if you would like. I hope we can meet up with you the next time we go to the states! Thank you for contacting us! Eli

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