Dear Pastor and friends:  

I had charged up my rechargeable light for the Wednesday night service and we had replenished our supply of candles. We have been having blackouts every day and sometimes twice a day for several hours a day. Tonight the power was supposed to go off at the precise time of our Wednesday evening service, which is 7:00 PM. They have been telling us for months that the power plant is old and all the generators are running only about 40% of capacity. In addition to that there is not enough money coming in to buy the fuel necessary to run these outdated generators and give our Island the electricity it needs. We have been warned that unless the Governor can come up with some money to help the Utility Company buy fuel for these old, outdated generators we .will not have power for the rest of April. They said the fuel would run out by Friday. Which is two days. Our gas just went up again and it is just under $5 a gallon. Food prices have doubled and when the gas prices go up, so does the price of food. One gallon of milk is now $11.50.

Our Island is an economic depression. I drive from one end of the Island to the other and all I can see are for rent or for lease signs. Buildings are empty and the majority of the cars are not on the roads but parked along side the road with for sale signs on them. Our roads are almost empty. The newspapers tell us that the population has decreased from 90,000 to 65,000 in the past few months. The airport is the busiest place on the Island. All the garment factories have shut down and moved off Island and there are no jobs and we are having a mass exodus.

We have lost quite a few families from the church. Some have gone to other countries looking for work and some have gone back home because they cannot find work anywhere. Our song director got a work permit to New Zealand and took his family and went there. He called me on my birthday and told me how cold it was. He was a great help to us in the church and we miss him. But the Lord has given us another young man that we are training and he is doing great.

Even though our attendance has dropped and we have lost some of our families, the Lord is still blessing. We had 3 saved and baptized last month. We also finished putting in a baptistery for the church. The last couple of times we had a baptism on Sunday Morning the tide was so low that I had to go almost to the reef to find the water deep enough. We decided a baptistery would be good. We got a Korean man to put it in and a local artist to paint it and it is lovely. We are much happier. Please continue to pray for us and the work. Please pray that many more souls will be saved. Thank you for your prayers and support.

                                                                   In Him,

David & Dottie McClure

Taking God's Word to the Islands

SENDING CHURCH:  MASSILLON BAPTIST TEMPLE, 1219 OVERLOOK AVE. SW, MASSILLON, OH 44647

US ADDRESS: P. O. Box 13459, Arlington. TX 76094                           Field Address:  P. O. Box 506590 CK, Saipan, MP 96950