Some major changes are coming for CHM’s ministry.  As you know, one of our earliest projects for Hispanic Ministry is the Instituto ALMA leadership training institute.  In that program we offer classes that are specific to effective church leadership and I have served as its director from the beginning.
     Now, God is answering our prayers to expand the Institute program as a new director joins our CHM team.  Jerry Clarkson has experience as a missionary in Bolivia, in leadership training, and in church planting.  Now, he and his family are answering God’s call to make a move to South Texas.  I look forward to working with Jerry as God uses him in the Institute and also in our church planting effort in League City.
     This is a step of faith for the Clarksons - and for CHM.  We are all stretching our faith in expectation of God’s blessing.

Jerry Clarkson, New Instituto ALMA director writes:

     God works in many amazing ways. He prepares our hearts, our paths, and our very lives in ways that we do not expect, do not foresee, and often do not understand. We were very aware of God's preparing the way before us as He lead us to Bolivia several years ago. We were also aware of His leading and preparation as he took us to Dodge City, Kansas over five years ago. As God prepares us to follow His next steps in ministry we are again seeing the years of preparation that God ha s worked in our lives toward His purpose and glory.

      As a child and as a teen having opportunity to begin learning Spanish in grade school and high school and having an opportunity to travel in Mexico and Guatemala I had no intention of long-term missionary service or use of those language skills. God knew what he was doing. When computers broke down in Bolivia and we had to learn to fix them, God knew what he was preparing. When He developed our teaching skills and administrative skills he knew where he was taking us. When young pastoral students in turn taught their teacher programing and web design skills, God knew what he was doing. When God took an Idaho mountain boy, trained him in Portland, Oregon and sent him to the larger cities of La Paz and El Alto, Bolivia,  He knew how that would be further preparation for both urban and rural work.

      So, what should a bilingual teaching Pastor computer tinkerer be doing for God that involves both urban and rural settings? God seems to have prepared Instituto ALMA for us just as he was preparing us for Instituto ALMA.

   I thank God and praise Him for Kerri, my wife, also. Kerri's art talents, her hospitality, her congeniality, her reasoning and drive, and many other gifts, talents, and skills are the perfect addition and balance for the ministry in which God uses us. Over and over again we see how God has prepared us for one another and to work together.

 (--See a previous newsletter--)
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