10/8/2007
Dear Friends and Family,
I hope that this email finds you well. I am doing well here in Bulgaria. It has
been unusually warm the last few days, and we have really enjoyed the delay in
winter. I have plenty of firewood now, but I haven't needed to use any of it
yet!
I mentioned that a young man, Jordan Green, has come from North Carolina to work
with me for the next three months, and he is settling in well. It is nice to
have someone here with me, and he is proving to be a great help. He is really
enjoying his time here, and loves Bulgaria. Since his arrival we have started a
youth ministry at the church, and the young people are really excited. At our
first party we had eleven, and some of them are not regular church goers, but
they want to come back to our next event. We played games, ate, Jordan did a
devotion, and then we ended with prayer. Everybody participated. Pray especially
for Desi and Daniel that they will make a firm commitment to the Lord.
I would like for you to be praying about a difficult situation in the church
here. Without going into the details two of the church leaders are in deep
conflict, and one has basically disqualified himself due to some rash, unwise
actions. Thankfully I am on good terms with both, and am working to maintain
unity in the church. I praise God that this did not cause the church to split as
was initially thought it might do. Pray that the Lord bring all parties to a
place of forgiveness, and that they would be able to work out all their
differences and work together in peace. Also pray that I might have the mind of
Christ in this situation that I would be a vessel of reconciliation. The Sunday
evening services stopped shortly after I went back to America, and we have not
yet started them back. There is an interest, but due to the present problems we
have not moved ahead on that.
I had told you that we had secured a large apartment of rooms to house our
community center, but when we started to do some work to prepare the place the
landlady refused to let us do anything. Every time we would go to the apartment
she would come, and stop us. She didn't want us to paint, to clean, or even to
air out the apartment. She would come behind us yelling, and closing the
windows, and undoing anything that we were starting. So we just had to let the
apartment go. It was obvious that it was not going to be a workable situation.
So we are looking for another place. We have a lead on a place right now, and
will look at it this week some time.
There is a very exciting development with the foundation right now. As a matter
of fact Jordan and I are going to Sofia to talk to the lawyer in the morning.
Reach Out America International is a non-profit organization that collects
millions of dollars of first quality goods that large companies have
overstocked. These items include medical supplies, building materials, paint,
clothing and many other very useful items. They would like to partner with
Obedient Life Ministries and Balkan Hope Foundation to extend its work into
Bulgaria and Eastern Europe. The head of this organization is coming to Bulgaria
possibly at the end of this week, and wants to start working with us as soon as
it can get organized. He wants me to become the director of Eastern Europe for
this organization. This is very exciting on many levels. First, it will open
doors with high government officials and give our ministry a high standing
before them. They will want to work with us if they know that we can supply them
with much needed, free supplies. Secondly, we will be able to keep half of all
the goods we bring in ourselves to distribute as we see fit. We will also be
able to sell some of these goods at drastically reduced prices on the open
market, and fund our ministry work here. This has the potential to speed up the
time line of our goal of having a community center, children's shelter, and
children's home!
Of course, doing all of this is going to take money to get started, and our
donations have been very slow since I returned. If the Lord lays it on your
heart to make a donation at this time it would be greatly appreciated. You can
send your tax-exempt donation to Obedient Life Ministries, P.O. Box 267,
Clarion, PA 16214. You can also use the convenient PayPal link on our website (www.obedientlife.org
) to make a donation by credit card. If you would like to become a regular
monthly partner with us you can sign up with our automatic withdrawal program,
and have your monthly donations automatically withdrawn from your bank account
by filling out the the document in the attachment on this update, and mailing it
to our office.
Be blessed in Jesus' Name,
Martin Sutton