Expansion in North America: Strengthening, Broadening, and Enlarging
By Brian Thompson
Often overlooked in the rush overseas, North America has equally as needy unreached people groups according to the same standards we use for foreign statistics. Our seven Branch offices diligently share the Gospel even during a pandemic this year.
Beside the office in Madison, SLM has Branches in Canada, Kansas, New Mexico, Haiti, and Jamaica. At these locations, our Branch Directors lead the discipleship programs that reach many people all over their regions.
New Mexico
Darryl Evans heads up the office in Las Cruces, New Mexico, working with English and Spanish language students. They call their ministry, “Bible Studies by Mail” which began in 1979 in George and Mary Baker’s home. After significant growth, the ministry moved to a rented office space for over 30 years. In all, it has been 40 plus years of blessing upon blessing! Now they have an opportunity to significantly expand their ministry space and finally own their own office facility. This will give them around 1,000 more square feet to operate with. It is in a residential
area, so we need your prayers as city re-zoning regulations are worked through with a planning technician. We rejoice with them as they work with almost 2,000 active students.
New Mexico– Office Building Project: Pray for the needed funds, help, and planning it is going to take for the new facility in Las Cruces.
Canada
Joe Homontowski runs the Canada Branch out of his home/office in Saskatchewan. They have a thriving ministry especially with the children in Western Canada. They keep enough inventory of English and French lessons to facilitate their work and provide lessons to Associates, across Canada. This year they were able to plant canola in a donated field so that the proceeds from the crop could benefit the ministry. As it is harvested and sold, there is a good possibility that it will provide $25,000 for the work of the ministry. Some of the funds will be held to buy seed for another crop for next year. This has the potential to keep the ministry self-funded for years to come!
Canada– Pray for the harvesting of the crops that will pay for the ministry after they are sold in October.
Kansas
Leon Scott oversees our Branch in the Midwest. They serve to help many to know Christ and to follow Him in obedience. Their 4,400 active students are learning what it means to be a Christian and how to live for Him every day. This year they are working on upgrading the mission building. They will end up fixing the gutters, computers, the indoor lights, and the parking lot lighting. They need these upgrades to keep up the discipleship work they are doing.
Kansas– Office upgrade project: Between the indoor and outdoor projects, they still need $5,500. Please pray that God will protect everyone who works to remodel and upgrade the lighting and computers at the office. Praise the Lord for His provision for the supplies.
Madison
Brian Thompson supervises the home office School that has students in all 50 states and some even overseas. Over 100 salvations were reported in just the first half of the year! The staff works hard at perfecting a means to use the lessons and see an impact in lives for eternity. All the Branches in North America deal with inmates in prisons and jails, but over half of Madison’s student body are incarcerated. The new opportunity that they are taking on this year is to manage the grading of lessons on-line. This has a great potential to reach many more souls for Christ. They are also involved in reworking the grading keys, revising courses, and developing additional resources for counseling.
Madison– Pray for the Lord’s work in our students’ hearts and to bring in many new students through the online courses.
West Jamaica
Don Schiffer started Follow the Source after several trips that made clear the need to reach the school children in the western part of Jamaica. They called the ministry “Follow the Source” because the “Source of Light” name was already in use at the Kingston Branch. Now they are well-established with a national candidate being developed for future leadership of the Branch. The schools have given them an open door to share the Gospel and the lessons during the school year. They have thousands of children through using their teachers as distributors. They also host mission teams that go into the schools with programs and presentations.
Follow the Source– Security Project: Please pray that God would provide the needed $2,700 to finish the security fencing around the headquarters compound and for monthly funds for their national partner who will take over leadership in the coming months.
Haiti
Claudy Jean-Baptiste has made the most of wonderful opportunities in difficult times. He has Associates that are using the materials to evangelize all over the country. They are distributing 7,500 lesson books every month. The wonderful thing is that they have graduations for the ones that complete all the courses in French. Every few months a new class from one of the twelve Associate Schools holds a ceremony.
The country is experiencing great economic and political upheaval and it makes travel and daily life very challenging. They have not had any power for months. They need to put in solar power to the newly built headquarters near Port-au-Prince. With solar power, they would not have to rely on the government to run the electronics in their compound. More could get done and it would be sustainable.
Haiti– Construction of a solar power array: Please pray that the Lord would provide the resources for the solar array at a cost of $2,500.
SLM Lessons for North America: The current 2021 budget for printing for the entire region of North America is $27,000. It is our prayer that God would provide the entire amount so that we can fully provide what we anticipate being the needs for all Branches in North America for 2021!
