Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 11:14:32 -0600
Dear Friends and Fellow-Laborers December 2010
What a year this has been. We have counted this as our furlough year and have been with many of you as we visited our churches. The Lord has been good and we have enjoyed clear sailing and secure roads. We have appreciated all of your letters and concern for us. Teresia and I wanted to take this opportunity to express our hearts desire that you and your churches enjoy the celebration of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. As with some of you I am celebrating His birth for the first time without my mother here to speak with. However, knowing that she is with Him and comforted in His presence makes heaven all the more real and the expectation of our sure hope gives us peace beyond measure. Praise the Lord for His goodness and the surety of His promises. Many of you know that my Dad has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He has gone through the first group of chemo therapy and has done extremely well. His “blood marker” of cancer fell from ‘9’ to ‘2.2’. I really don’t know everything that means but the doctor seemed to be very pleased. The tumor did not shrink however. His appetite has remained very good and he has gained weight instead of losing. I praise the Lord that He has chosen to show Himself strong on my father’s behalf and glorify His name. We will finish our furlough year spending Christmas with him and many of my sisters, children, and grandchildren.
We have spent the last six weeks in Mexico getting ready for the Institute that will begin again on January 17, 2011. I am doing some work on the property, moving books and book shelves around, and getting materials ready for study. We want to thank some who have given good study books in Spanish, new hymnbooks, and have expressed a strong interest in the Oasis Bible Institute. We are expanding the schedule of the Institute this year. We will have two hours on Mondays finishing the book by Bancroft on Basic Theology. Our students have really seemed to grow in their understanding of fundamental doctrine and their lives are showing the change. On Sunday afternoons before church services we will be teaching a class on directing a congregational song service.
We want to thank the Lord also for a clarinet donated to a young man here to further our ability in the field of music. Here let me suggest to you a book written recently by Dr. Dana Everson on parameters for creating a Godly philosophy on church music. The title is SOUND ROOTS. It is a tremendously well-written book and develops philosophies for almost every area of christian living if applied. We want to teach this parameters as well as express the great importance of the presentation of music in the congregation. We believe that true worship is participatory. That is to say we are not putting on a show with the best musicians in the church but we are incorporating the participation of the congregation in order that they may express their worship from their hearts through their lips to the glory of God. This class will be held at the Trinity Baptist Church (La Iglesia Bautista Trinidad) in Aguascalientes.
The Pastor’s Seminary in Tabasco is being planned and should take place in the month of February. Tomorrow I will be speaking with Brother Nacho who is the head of the work there in Tabasco. Last February we were at a new location for the Seminary and will probably be returning to the same church for the 2011 session. This has proven to be a great blessing in our lives, our ministry, and to the churches in the state of Tabasco. Because we have normally doubled our efforts with conferences while there we have seen souls saved, and lives changed. Please pray with us that God would continue to use this time that we are investing in the state of Tabasco to greatly increase His work and His church here in Mexico.
I have in this year expressed to many of you my burden for writing. I have shown you some of the things that I have written and spoken of the things that I still want to accomplish. Part of this has been in response to my Master’s degree program. As per a recent phone conservation I was told that I have finished all that is needed and should receive the degree in May. Praise the Lord! Recently I have written a new study on salvation taking John 14: 1-6. The title of course is “El Camino” (The Way). I, even more recently, have written “La Esperanza Biblica” (Biblical Hope). I printed 50 of each the other day and have them ready for distribution. My desire is that in January we begin to cover San Pancho where I live with this material and then to continue with my series on La Salvación del Hombre. This is a six part series on six different people in the Bible who accepted the Lord as their Savior. Actually the sixth is Felix (A busy man) who never did and serves as a warning. I have been asked to create a study book on church planting. I have a series of six sermons on the subject of the church and the planting of a church. I will be trying to put this in book form in order to teach it at the Bible Institute and at other Institutes around the country of Mexico and possibly in Spanish to some in the USA. I have finished the study book on the Pastoral Epistles and have used it many times. I also finished a curriculum on Fundamentos de Teología Bíblica. I have also used this many times. I mention these because I want you to pray for this area of our ministry.
I spent all day with Pastor Edgar Naranjo yesterday. What a blessing for me. When I started the Trinity Baptist Church some 16 years ago I expressed over and over that my goal was not primarily to have a church of 500 in attendance but that it would train 500 workers to reach their Jerusalem, but also their Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the world. Pastor Edgar expressed the same goal. He wants to see the Trinity Baptist Church grow to whatever the Lord wants to give but also to see families saved, trained, and sent out to pastor other churches and to be missionaries around the world. He is a participant leader in the Oasis Bible Institute and encourages his membership in the church to prayerfully consider surrendering their lives to the Lord’s work. Amen!
There is a great possibility of a missions medical team coming to San Pancho in 2011. I had the opportunity to meet with them and some of the government officials last week. Please pray that this great open door will materialize.
I have written at length and I trust that it was informative. We do pray for you to have a very Merry Christmas and that the blessing of God will be abundant in your lives and in your churches.
In His Service
Tim and Teresia Hendricks
Thank you, Tim. Lots of good news PTL. Praying for your Dad. So glad you had Christmas together. – Eva & Charlie