NEWS FROM HQ

Ministering for the Lord in Brazil, Cameroon & USA

October, 2022

 Dear Friends,

              We have a command to go out and give the gospel to strangers in the highways and hedges.  How can we do that?  The best way is with gospel tracts.  A good tract has a complete gospel witness and plan of salvation.  It is a good Presbyterian witness as there is no human pressure as the Holy Spirit works privately in the heart.  A tract opens the way for a verbal witness as well.  We can witness to people we meet casually in the course of our day’s activities and even to people we never see.

CAMEROON

              The pallet finally arrived in Cameroon after a difficult nine month journey.  It had 1,500 pounds of books, tracts, equipment, and a few household goods.  We have enclosed pictures of the seminary director in his house opening the boxes and another of a pastor taking some boxes in his car.  It ended up that we had to spend $1,300 on customs to get it out of the port.  Together with the other costs, the shipping ended up being $3,000 besides the cost of the tracts (12,000 of them) and the items themselves.  That is a real bargin compared to shipping boxes by post.  The pallet ended up costing $2/ pound whereas by post it is over $10/pound.  Praise the Lord and thanks for all your prayers that got the pallet delivered to the Christians in Cameroon.  

              Below right is also a picture of the seminary students in their uniforms going out on an evangelistic trip with the tracts we sent with the pallet.  The tracts have the name of their church printed on them.  There were 25 students going to a village 20 miles from the seminary, giving out 300 tracts that day.  


BRAZIL
 

              In our last letter we mentioned the closing of our bank account in Brazil and how we had been getting nowhere fast trying to get our funds back.  Praise the Lord and thanks to your prayers that this problem has been resolved and we received all of our money.  

              We had been getting nowhere on the phone and on email.  Finally, someone suggested we try Facebook.  Ken had to open a Facebook account for this, and immediately upon complaining over Facebook, the bank told us how we could get our money back using a Power of Attorney.  Our niece in Brazil helped us, as she is a lawyer, and prepared the document.  We had to go to the Brazilian consulate in Washington DC to get our Power of Attorney officially stamped (the trip was not a complete loss as we visited the Museum of the Bible while there).  We sent the document to our niece by Express Mail. She went to the bank, withdrew the money, and then transferred it to our account in the states.  In God’s providence, we received our funds from Brazil on practically the same day we had to pay the Cameroon customs on the pallet!

              The Spring Edition of The Fundamentalist was sent out in September, which we will talk about more in our next letter.  Suffice it to say that we put an article on the front page entitled, “Vote with Discernment.”  There is an important presidential election in Brazil on October 30, between a conservative and a communist (he does not use the label “communist,” but the symbol of his party is the hammer and sickle).  Pray for this election.

USA 

                   Ken continues to preach and teach at Marcus Hook and Kingsville and likewise have a door-to-door tract distribution ministry in those areas.  Marcus Hook hosted our Faith Presbytery on September 30, which went well.  We also spoke at the Fall Missionary Conference in Collingswood.  

ICCC CONGRESS

              On October 4, we had a planning committee meeting for the upcoming ICCC Congress in Collingswood, June 21- 28, 2023.  Ken volunteered to head up the travel and lodging arrangements.  If anyone knows anything that might be helpful or would like to help in any way, let us know.  

              Please stay in prayer for Leah, that her cancer will go away completely.  She is doing well and the cancer is not spreading, but the radioactive iodine continues to work on the remaining cancer.  Pray also for our son Luke as he consults with doctors concerning a needed heart operation, which will probably be next summer.  

              We thank all of you and praise the Lord once again for the answers to our prayers with the pallet and the Brazilian bank account.  You make this ministry possible.

                                                                                                                           In Christ,

                                                                                                                           Ken and Ira Olson