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John
and Rebecca Hawkins
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Dear
Pastors and friends.
Rebecca
and I would like to thank you for your continued prayers and financial
support in these hard times. We know that things must be hard, and our
support is reflecting those hardships. The Lord continues to supply our
needs. The
end of the calendar year was busy as usual with the Bible institute
graduation on the fifth of December. All of the students are back in
their home churches except for one family. We are down in numbers for
next semester, but I have received a few calls from prospective
students, so we may have more that we expected. We do not advertise the
institute and depend on the Lord for sending us our students. Continue
praying that the Lord will send us laborers. The
Church at Campos Sales had their annual business meeting, and almost
voted me out as pastor. That means that we are close to having our
prayers answered. The Lord is preparing the church and us to move on. We
will be staying for a The
church is in preparation for Our
adolescent camp is coming up next month, and we have already started
preparations for that also. We will continue to limit the adolescents to
one hundred campers. It will be held on the Institute compound, and
there are several national pastors who are helping us execute this work.
We thank the Lord for these men! Rebecca
is doing Ok and we are both anxiously awaiting the end of May when she
will be done with her treatments. We will probably have to return to the
infectious disease clinic in John
9:39 “And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that
they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made
blind.” This is a sobering thought considering the blindness that is
inferred and what the results are and will be and how WONDERFUL it is to
see! For
the last seven and a half months I have been working on the release of
over twenty tons of Bibles and materials that are detained in customs. I
have said to myself and to others many times over “Its just Bibles,
they have no commercial value!” “Why would the people in customs
even care?” “The shipment cannot be taxed, because it is
‘Religious Literature’.” “No one stands to benefit financially
because nothing in the two containers can ever be sold.” “If it was
contraband, it would have already been released” and many other
quotes, well knowing why I have encountered this wall of opposition. I
could have taken the easy road in the beginning and paid the customs
officer the $3500.00 like my lawyer told me to do three times already,
but I could not bring myself do that even knowing that if I didn’t
pay, I would be condemning
myself to heart ache and trouble. These
two containers are full of the Word of God. The men who are in charge of
the release “meet with darkness in the daytime, and grope in the
noonday as in the night.” They can do nothing unless it is given unto
them of the father. They are blind in their heart! If they decide to
release the containers, it will be God’s doing, because an unsaved man
will not do right unless God is in it. In
the midst of this battle I have responded like the two blind men on the
wayside in We
pray for all of you often. Continue to pray for us. His
for Brasil Sending Church: Oak Trail Baptist Church - 4501 Peppertree Rd. - Granbury, Texas 76048 - 817-279-6430 |