Welcome to the website of Jonathan and Holly Boyd, missionaries to Colombia. We plan to update our site on a weekly basis, so check back to see what God is doing!
“The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit (James 5:16-18, ESV).
I remember that three months ago we were praying earnestly that it would rain in Santa Marta. As you can see from the photo, God has abundantly answered our prayers. I know that what we have experienced is nothing like our family and friends have experienced in Ames with this year’s flooding, but we wanted you to see something interesting about Santa Marta. I call it the land of extremes. I thought it was a desert when we first arrived, but now I see that it can also be very tropical.
Our back patio flooded with the downpour yesterday, and water started pouring through the back door. We spent a few hours mopping and cleaning out the house, and today some furniture is still drying out. The biggest blessing was that of the boxes that got wet, one contained the Bibles that I had thought were lost.
We have decided to stay in our current house because our other option fell through. I talked to the owner, and he is willing to make a few home improvements so that we will stay. I realized that we had not been thinking of this neighborhood very missionally, since we were planning to leave it. Now that Eduardo has become a believer, both he and I are excited about starting a Grupo de Impacto in this neighborhood. Please pray towards that end.
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Our missionary team has been meeting on Sundays to celebrate the Lord’s day together. We started out working through The Story of Hope Bible study, but after about three months we decided that it would be better for one of us to preach each week. Alfredo started out with the preaching responsibility for the first month, and this month I’m preaching.
I have been enjoying preaching a series on idolatry. Last week we studied Psalm 115 (Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory…), and this week we’re going to look at Jeremiah 17 (Cursed is the man who trusts in man…). I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the study time, and I think that preaching is something very special because the preacher always learns more and meditates more on Scripture when he’s preparing a message than at any other time.
I’ve also seen how changing locations and cultures allows me to gain new insights into God’s Word. For example, in Jer. 17:6 the LORD talks about how the person who trusts in man will be like a shrub in the desert. Now, we don’t live in a desert, but for the first three months it barely rained here. I’d never lived in a drier place. Most of the vegetation was brown. I had several occasions where I walked a long distance without drinking water, and those experiences help me understand what the text is saying.
The other blessing has been to see how the preaching is such a vital part of a missionary team. I hadn’t thought about it, but you really miss hearing the Word “preached” on a regular basis if you don’t have that opportunity. The preaching has been a good way for God to encourage us in the struggles of daily ministry in a new area.
We’re looking forward to recording the messages too, so that more people can hear them on Internet. We’ve had several people write us with spiritual questions because of our presence on the web, and there really isn’t near the quantity of good resources in Spanish on the Internet. If you have any Spanish-speaking friends, please direct them to the site of impactobiblico.com.
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