CUBA COMMITMENT

CUBA COMMITMENT

This week God has supplied more materials for Cuba. Brother Mike Ridge brought 3000 copies of John and Romans and has delivered a host of materials already. Brother Russ Hanson sent word this week that he is also going to be delivering, or we pick up, materials in Spanish for Cuba. The Lord is bringing people together for a work that needs to be done. This has brought constant affirmation to my heart that we are doing the Lords will in this. Our hope this year is that God will open many doors for us to ship materials into Cuba without any harm to our commitment or to the materials themselves.

It has been reported that the pressure the Bush administration has put on Cuban-American families about trade and travel may effect his reelection. More than 80 percent of the 400,000 Cuban-Americans who voted in 2000 backed Bush, helping win the election. The White House strategists have made important notes once again of Florida's 27 electoral votes. Bush made a series of promises in October to crack down harder on communist Havana and show his opposition to Castro's rule. This step has made our president apparently more popular among the Cubans in Little Havana, Miami. More interesting is their high disregard against Fidel, although the older Cuban-Americans are not so against him. When the older class left Cuba it was in an uproar and the country needed reform. Fidel at the time looked good to them. They have never had the full taste of Communism as it is there. Please pray for God to ease tensions that will make it very difficult to move materials when Communism falls in Cuba. These that are distained at Fidel may flood Cuba and demand their land back. If so it will be mass chaos and shipments will be haulted or impossibly found. Please pray for this future outcome to be handled by God and not angry Cubans.

TRIP TO SOUTH EAST ASIA

This is lengthy – I am sorry, but you will be so blessed by reading it. This is as short as I could have made it. My portion of the trip to Asia was shorter than our Missionary Bro. Tom Gaudet. He is presently in East Timor as I write to you. In this trip I found myself eager to want to surrender to many different countries because of need, or the people. We flew from LA to Jakarta, Indonesia. >From there Brother Tom met with Brother Tambunan, a Pastor with a burden for Timor and many other mission fronts on that side of the world. The only way to evangelize a country with 200,000,000 Muslims and 20,000,000 Roman Catholics, is to do it by developing relationships and establishing discipleship through those. Door knocking could cost you your happiness or life. In his school he has 40 men enrolled in ministry training. After fellowship in their services, we flew to East Timor and met with many different contacts and missionaries. One, Brother Ferdie Florez is a Filipino missionary to Tetum speaking Timorese. He was a blessing. He has not had a grip on the language that long and there are two works started and a man being discipled and trained for the ministry. I was amazed – the man he was training looked Cuban! Brother Ferdie could use your prayers. He is under heavy persecution from the Roman Catholics in the area. He stated “they are raining rocks on us each service.” He has a vision for the country and doing a good job. We made another contact that Brother Tom had developed a relationship with. This was a way for us to renew the friendship and see what the possibilities were with him – he is unsaved. After talking to Francisco we found that he is a member of their new Parliament - a very influential man in politics. We found ourselves not extremely effective because we do not know his heart language, although this man is very sympathetic to Gospel ideas. From there we left Timor and sought to go to the Philippines and were extremely blessed in that trip. Our first Sunday there we met with the Pastor of Ferdie Florez in Timor. He was encouraged to hear what we had to say and was thrilled for Brother Tom to speak to the Church these blessings at the close of their mission conference. God had worked it out for us to be there the last service of the last day of their mission conference – and to report on their home missionary. They have decided to organize the work in Timor into a Church in April of this year. We then traveled two hours to Iligan where some men are in their 4th revision of the Cibuano New Testament translation. They are doing the best they can and doing a good job. They have fallen under attack for their stand though and many are against this. It is a giant step into the enemy’s territory and Satan does not like that. They have a burden for other languages and dialects to learn how to translate in their own languages. They want to multiply their efforts using the guide book from Baptist Bible Translators Institute in Bowie, TX. >From there I left for home. Coming home and praying for the men I left there burdened me for Mr. Francisco in Eats Timor. Brother Tom then went on to other countries. From those he went to pick up Brother Tambuban in Indonesia to make a trip with him back into East Timor so that he can receive a clear vision of what the possibilities are there and how his Church can get involved. Through their journey they went back to Mr. Francisco’s house and Brother Tambunan with understood language skills witnessed to Francisco. You guessed it – He received Christ as his savior! This marks a significant step for God in Timor. DO NOT TELL ME GOD DOES NOT ANSWER PRAYER. I will have more updates in the future on how God is still at work in these countries.

In HIS Service,

Travis A. Jones

travis@metrobc.org

cuba@metrobc.org

Metropolitan Baptist Church

6051 Azle Ave.

Ft Worth, TX 76135