Dear Christ Covenant Family and Friends,
It truly has been an exciting start to the New Year! There is much we would like to share and we pray it will be an encouragement to you. We want to start by thanking you for your continued prayers for the work here in Tegucigalpa. We truly are blessed to have so many folks crying out to our Father on behalf of us and the work here in Honduras! Also, please forgive me for the length of this update. My hope was to give a faithful account of all the Lord has been doing here with us!

Praise for provision
In our last update, we asked folks to pray that we would be able to find someone to help with the kids especially in light of the fact that the church plant is about to begin. We are delighted to tell you that the Lord has graciously provided someone through a connection with one of our supporting churches! She will be flying down at the end of February and we bless the Lord for this provision and thank you all for your prayers.

We had also asked folks to continue to pray for our team and our continued growth in likemindedness as we seek to serve Christ in Honduras. We were grateful for a rich time of fellowship with our teammates both at Christmas and the New Year. We have been able to spend much time talking about the future of the work in Honduras and what the coming months have in store. The last month has truly been a fruitful time of growth as a team and we look forward to what the Lord has in store for the work here in Tegucigalpa.

We also want to say thanks for your prayers about our family health. We know that it has only been a month, but we praise the Lord that the kids and Rachel have remained healthy over this past month.

Our first Bible study
Some of the biggest developments over the last month have come in the area of the church plant. We are looking forward to the fact that our first Bible study is going to begin the night of February the 5th. We are going to be doing a twelve week study on the “What is the Church?”. As many of you know, one of the things that we talked about in our support raising process was building deep roots and firm foundations. We would ask you to join us in prayer as we begin to lay the groundwork for planting reformed churches in Tegucigalpa. The first step is actually starting and we are absolutely delighted to begin in the coming weeks. We believe that about 20 folks will attend our initial study and we are praying more would be interested. Please pray that God would be glorified and the folks would be encouraged by the study.

The fact that we are starting soon brings me to the issue of some pressing needs! Last month we has asked folks to pray that we would be able to find a location for offices as well as a meeting place. As we began to search out options for offices and for meeting spaces, it became obvious that the costs were going to be too prohibitive. We could find small offices that were extremely expensive and meeting spaces that were small and had no place for us to grow or to put a nursery. Therefore, we gave a last ditch effort at calling on a house that was located in a very easily accessible area and would maybe have offices and meeting spaces. I had called on it about 6 months earlier and heard nothing. In God’s providence I was able to get in touch with someone and was able to see the house. The person who showed me the house was a nice guy and was willing to negotiate about prices in light of us being a new church plant. The night after I saw the house, Josue(our national partner) and his family came over for dinner and I told him all about the house and how great it would be. I explained that it had a dining room/living area that would seat up to 60 or 70 people comfortably. I told him it had a separate 2 room area that could function as a nursery and an upstairs that had room for 3 or 4 offices/Sunday school rooms. I finally told him it had the potential to be a place where we could do training and equipping of other pastors as well and double as the first church plant location. I could see that he was beginning to get excited, and, just out of curiosity, he asked who had shown me the house. When I told him the guys name without skipping a beat, Josue just looked at me and said, “It can’t be!” I was so confused by his response because I couldn't tell at first if it was good or bad.

In God’s providence, Josue began to tell me that he has known John since 2008 and that John has been part of a Bible study Josue has been doing for almost 2 years. He then told me that John had been coming to his house with some other folks every Monday night and praying for the new church plant and for an American Pastor named Aaron. When John showed me the house he had not put two and two together. A couple days later we went to visit John, and he had no clue we were both coming. He was blown away when we showed up together. He then began to work with us about the price of the house. He ended up giving us a free first month and a discounted second month. We are grateful that he gave us almost a 33% discount on the value of the area. Our monthly cost for the house to function as an office and church plant is $1500. We would greatly appreciate your prayers as I seek to raise funds to be able to cover the cost of our new office and meeting space. We are specifically in need of one time gifts to help us cover this cost. Our hope is that over time the church plant will begin to pay for the meeting space, but would greatly appreciate folks considering giving to this need as we get started! If you want to see photos of the house, you can click here.

Another need that is pressing for the church plant is in the area of seating. We currently do not have anywhere for folks to sit and folding plastic chairs in Honduras can be somewhat expensive. Our hope is that we would be able to have seating for thirty folks at our first meeting. After doing the math, to have enough chairs for everyone who attends and room to grow is going to cost around $800. We again would ask you to pray that the finances would be provided for us to buy chairs by the end of next week.

If you would like to give to either of the aforementioned needs, please email mail me at hondurandhalberts@gmail.com to let me know you are going to give specifically to one these needs. We can then earmark the funds for either the church costs or the chairs. We thank you in advance for even considering giving to these needs.

Finally, and we know this is last minute, we are looking for a short term work team that may be able to come down this Spring. We are hoping for a group who has interest in doing some work around the office. The office is in great shape, but is in need of a group who might be able to help us get it up and running specifically in the area of construction. It would include building furniture for the office, painting, and general set up around the church. If this sounds like something your church might be interested in please contact me directly at honduranhalberts@gmail.com and I would be glad to give you more information. We would again appreciate your prayers in this matter as well!

We pray this finds you all well at the beginning of this New Year! May the Lord continue to grant you grace as you seek to love and serve Him in the bounds of your habitation.

Gracia y paz,
Aaron, Rachel, Ford, Catherine,
Ryley, Anne Waverly, & Whitley