Dear family and friends in Christ,
Answers to prayer requests of our October 2022 letter were so profound that even unfortunate delays in thanking you could not detract from our gratitude or our gracious Lord’s rewarding your part in this native work.
“For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which we have shewed toward His name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister” (Hebrews 6:10).
To God alone be the glory for making our November 21-23 annual Native revival the best attended and most spiritually enriching one to date. Maranatha Baptist Church’s provisions of 40 plus meals a day together with your enormous gifts
for housing and fuel for some 25 out of state Navajo preachers and church people brought many floundering or lost Cocopah back to church and face to face with eternity.
Nightly temperatures finally dropped into the 40’s in early December causing citrus to ripen and allowing us to make 200 “Gospel Fruit bags” of tracts, peanuts, and fruit. These gained otherwise restricted access to almost every Cocopah
home to personally witness and invite them to our church Christmas party and ministries. THANK the LORD and each of you for the dozens of souls of every age who heard the gospel and received thrilling Christmas gifts as tangible
illustrations of God’s “unspeakable gift” at our December 21st Christmas party or at special services on Christmas and New Year’s Day.
Despite no new salvation decisions, we are thrilled with the return of the largest family’s children to all weekly services after months being kept at home by their parents. All the Golding children are also faithful; the Browns are probing the gospel; but the May’s joined many teens in turning from the grace of God to tradition and pleasure.
P.T.L. and PRAY for the spiritual and personal needs of the many tweens and juniors who come faithfully from all three reservations despite often appalling conditions at home. The joyful, emotionally charged faces filling our bus and van mirrors on the long rides to church testify better than words could to the value of your prayers and sacrifices or the genuineness of tears of gratitude to you and our Lord for the grace to serve Him this way.
The miraculous restoration and glorious thousands of miles’ 2023 use of our 94 minivan and 82 bus for senior and small group pickups evoke constant gratitude on our part, as both vehicles had been declared irreparable by Yuma’s best AAA auto center.
The fruit of your faithful prayers and provisions are too fresh and real to take them for granted or fail to request them for opportune upcoming ministries or needs.
PRAISES:
• Your untold kindness, prayers, and blessed provisions despite our infrequent updates.
• Adults, Brian, Daren, Edward, and Millie’s faithfulness despite huge physical needs.
• Valerye and her foster children’s return to church.
• Dawn’s improved diabetic meds and Michael’s January skin cancer surgery.
• Miraculous recommissioning of all essential vehicles and the clearance of Michael’s annual
C.D.L. physical.
PETITIONS:
• No loss of life from excesses of this month’s giant annual casino payouts.
• Men’s retreat at Bill Rice’s West Branch, March17&18
• Ladies and Girls Devotional and Craft Day March 25th
• April 15 special Resurrection Sunday Services.
• June 19-23 and July 17-21 Bill Rice West Branch Camps.
• Neighborhood Bible Time (our VBS) prior to or between camps.
• Salvador, Lorie, and the children of their blended family’s enormous spiritual, physical, legal, and mental health needs.
• Health and personal needs of Daren, Edward, Karen, Lorie, Millie, Salvador, and Samantha.
• Health and Strength to go beyond the few North Reservation’s saved teens and begin a regular Bible club for all.
Gratefully Yours In Christ,
Michael and Dawn Veldhuis