Metropolitan Missionaries

Update from OConnor in India — two weeks CP workshops –

OConnor — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:14:56 +0000

Dear Friends who pray:

Time is nearly done for my two weeks in precious India….

I have been to many sites during these 15 days, but mostly with my CP workshops here in JAIPUR (site of last month’s Al Queda terrorist bombing here in town of desert Jaipur!) (Ouch!)…

The 42 “Trainers of trainers” are not pastors, but overseers from various Indian states (coming from far away places like the Himalayas in the north and TAMIL NADU in the south…and other exotic places …

And I am a different man here… you would not know me to be the person you have known all these years…. joy abounds. An Irish/Texan/Honduran heart become one with others here.

Near the end of this week I will be home with Debbie and Kathryn in Honduras. Please pray for safe travels.

Themes this week for CP workshops:

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Reproducible Pastoral Training CP Workshop concepts here for INDIA …

Pray out more workers from within existing flocks..
SHARE authority with your apprentices.
Commission new workers & send them out in teams.
Keep instructions simple.
USE only imitable methods.
Help workers plan their work.
Have workers start house flocks — so as to reach whole families.
Encouraging workers to bond with the people & adopt their customs.
Anticipate persecution.
Proclaim the correct Good News.
Permit God’s miracles.
Listen to workers (as they bring reports).

——————————

Thanks for being with us in spirit, and for remembeinr us to the Lord.

Isaiah 40:29 — He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.

Patrick O’Connor

OConnor — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:12:16 +0000

Thursday, June 19, 2008
Hello from Honduras:
A few of our supporting churches have asked to get our PAPER prayer letter in paper version, but also as a PDF (email) version.
I have attached it our JUNE, 2008 paper prayer letter as a PDF file version.
Thanks!!
Patrick
PS – I fly to INDIA next week for CP teaching…. PLEASE please be with me in spirit….and shoot up a prayer, too

(Click the link below)

OConnor June Update Letter

Safe Return from Ecuador

OConnor — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:00:15 +0000

We had many good heart to heart times, the three of us did: Victor Almendarez, Ambrosio Cordova and myself.
We have known each other for 14 plus years and seen the Lord move us from young slender new fathers to graying middle-agents field soldiers.
We traveled to QUITO this past fortnight, and the audience of 250 pastors from Ecuador and 15 countries were surprised that I would share my CP teaching time with Victor & Ambrosio. Victor took the lions share of teaching, followed by Ambrosio.
We had a “just for fun” over-night in the highland, colonial town of Cuenca , where the Pope had once visited. But my design was to also see more of the country. Victor and Ambrosio led a pharmacist to the Lord in Cuenca, and now Victor has another entry and contact there. Shoot up a prayer for Miguel.
In southern province Loja, we spent 4 days with the CB work and saw a couple of rural needy areas…Ambrosio and I led a store owner in a prayer of faith, accompanied by lunch for the day (a can of tuna, an aspirin, three liters of water and two bags of chips!)
On the plane home…

Loja to Quito to Panama to Honduras:

· Ambrosio returned to Honduras with new and renewed sparks for heading up the Extension Bible Inst here.
· And all three of us gave ourselves “home work ministry assignments” for ministry application here in Honduras.
· Victor gets real happy when asked about Ecuador.

Let’s be clear: Ecuador has a massive need (1% evangelical in the southern province) and Victor may be the man of the hour. He was invited to do pastoral training in Quito at the end of the year, and so we hope that the Lord and life say YES. He was also invited for church planting in Guayaquil and Loja. And so Victor is talking with the Lord r/ that. For now, it is a wait and see.
Thank you for upholding us up to the Lord.
How can we pray for you?
Thank you, too, for the support sent toward this trip!

Patrick O’Connor

Retreat with the Lord . . . Scouting New Regions

OConnor — Thu, 01 May 2008 11:05:06 +0000

Wednesday, 4-30-08

Dear Friends:

Please shoot up a prayer for me, as I get to head south to Ecuador today - for 11 days.

My co-workers — Victor Almendarez and also Ambrocio Cordova — will accompany me for:

1) networking with a rather large cluster of Ecuadorian CP-er’s in QUITO, but also

2) scouting our new regions beyond our own Honduran borders.

NETWORKING…In QUITO, we have a ren-dez-vous with persons from 15 countries, who are brain-storming toward extending new CP movements from River to River (Rio Grande to Rio de Janero). Additionally, 200 local QUITO pastors are set to receiving training toward starting churches the best way possible way. I am to teach one session on CP-ing…pray that I don’t get to be too nervous, and that I can stay calm and in the Spirit! (And that I can have clarity of thought and speech.)

SCOUTING new regions…. we have time in the southern-most region of Ecuador (LOJA Province), with this crazy idea of trying to round up some couples from Honduras to go and make disciples (1% there are evangelical).

Retreat with the Lord… I am encouraging V and A to use these 11 days not only for CP stuff, but for long and extended and early a.m. and late p.m. personal times with the Lord, encouraging them to come apart for lengthy alone times with their Shepherd, as a time to reflect and renew. A “retiro personal”, I speak of.

And to encourage you, we close with this…… Jesus quietly told his men, “do this in memory of me”, as He took the bread and broke it and gave it to them. He broke the bread, but also his very life. And so all of us, too, are permitted to be broken - like the bread - as we give our very selves to others. Please pray for Debbie and I to voluntarily break ourselves for others and for our Shepherd. And we pray this for you, too!:-) And we are encouraged with Jesus’ eve-before-His death comment:

“Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life”

“ But make up your mind not to worry”

“ Be always on the watch, and pray that” (Lk 21).

Love from down here,

Patrick and Debbie

Serving with: www.missionsdoor.com

Rite of Passage

OConnor — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:38:51 +0000

Yesterday Sarah took her 1 am flight – San Pedro Sula to Florida to TX, en route to Oklahoma City (OKC), for her three month summer internship. She is en route to the rest of her life, and we enjoyed special family times this week — as she flew from our nest into her eager-to-be-arrived-to journey. We have encouraged her through the years to individualize her walk with the Lord, making it her own. We have drawn attention – through the years – less with specific behaviors, but more with inner values. Her time in Egypt last year complimented with her time in Peru the previous summer stirred and awoke within Sarah her an awareness of personalized identity and individuality. This last month, to our surprise and glee, she talked with her church (a CAM-mission church here in Honduras) that she wanted to be baptized before heading north. There was no “official” baptism planned for that month, yet she took the bull by the horns. She had no concern that no one else was also slotted to identify with Jesus publically. And so that was fun! She has blossomed. Please be with Sarah in spirit as she ministers in the inner city this summer (three months – MAY, JUNE, JULY) in OKC. And, too, for her trek to John Brown University in Arkansas in AUGUST.

Patrick & Debbie