January 2024
January 2024 Prayer Letter
We just want to thank the Lord for all the opportunities he gave us to serve him in 2023. God has been so good to us and to our people here.
This letter covers the second half of 2023; although we have shared several lengthy updates on Facebook, we never sent out our September 2023 prayer letter; I apologize for that.
In August, we took a group of 30 of our church members on a wonderful missions trip to Ecuador, visiting three ministries and missionaries supported by our Peruvian congregation.
Jonathan Ramirez, Dennis Melgar, Michael Lanchang and their families are doing a great work there. Ecuador is a dangerous place right now, with grotesque political violence and assassinations as well as wanton armed robbery. We are thankful that God protected us while there, and that he continues to watch over our missionaries in this difficult time. They are in our hearts and in our prayers.
While in Ecuador our team had the privilege to lead meetings for children, teens, women and adults, visit and witness in various communities and do project work in several churches. Several people were saved on the trip, and it was wonderful to see the spiritual growth in our own young people who went on this trip with us.
In September we hosted Pastor’s School with the missionaries from Team Peru, and also had several fellowship and outreach activities with our interpreters and Deaf at our church.
October featured a family day outreach for our ministry, and then our first Ladies’ Conference. Zulema worked incredibly hard with my mother Lisa and all the ladies in our church to prepare, host and teach several hundred women from across Peru. Many approached us after the teaching sessions and expressed how much the conference helped them personally.
In November we held our annual Bible Conference. It was separated into two tracks one for the hearing with Pastor Wayne Van Gelderen, and one for the Deaf with Deaf Pastors Bruce Kelly and Todd Reynolds. Each group was able to enjoy great preaching in their own language. It was a wonderful conference.
Throughout the past six months we have had many baptisms for both Deaf and hearing. We also continued teaching our hearing and Deaf students in the Bible College and Bible Institute.
December was very special as we had the graduation ceremony for my brother-in-law, Abraham Ramirez, with three other graduation students of our Bible College. What a blessing to see how God is using Zulema’s brother to reach the Deaf! Please pray for Abraham as he will be doing an internship for several months at our mission church in the jungle city of Pucallpa before returning to Lima to continue working with us here and around Peru.
Also in December, we traveled to another of our mission works, this one in Chancay with Pastor Henry Vasquez. There we were able to lead an outreach activity to over 250 neighbor children, sharing a clear Gospel presentation and presenting each child with a beautiful Christmas present.
We also hosted a Christmas dinner for the mission church family there, and preached the Sunday service. Here again we took almost 30 of our church members with us for this special trip.
For the new year, we hosted a watch night fellowship with our Deaf congregation. As we look forward to what God will do in 2024, we are excited about our upcoming Deaf Camp with Pastor David Peach (February 8-10), Fires of Evangelism Bible Conference, (February 26-29), and School, Bible College and Bible Institute classes (Beginning in March and April).
I returned this weekend from preaching a conference for the Deaf with Pastor Elias and Mrs. Ruth Garcia in Pucallpa a few days. This was a great blessing. Thank you for your prayers as we continue to work to reach the Deaf across Peru.
God bless each of you greatly
The Kotvas Family ☺️
Joseph and Zulema Kotvas,
JJ, Esther & Grace