Financial Update

We feel that we need to share a little info about the state of our finances.

Related to that, the first thing we want to say is how grateful we are for those of you who have been supporting us for the past 6 years. We are honored to represent you as ambassadors for God’s Kingdom here in the Laguna, and we praise God for the sacrifices you’ve made to allow us to be here. As you well know, God has done a lot through you, and is doing more every day.

We also want to apologize because we haven’t been at all clear or open with you, our team of supporters, in the area of our finances. After talking to various friends and family members we realized that this was really a disservice to you, because it keeps you from knowing our real needs and from being a part of what God’s doing here. The truth is that being open and honest about our needs is not at all easy. We have justified ourselves by thinking that we’re supposed to go to God for our needs and trust Him alone to provide, but the fact is that He calls us to put aside our pride and share our needs so that as a body we can fulfill His work.

The truth is that the regular financial support we have been receiving has not been enough to cover our basic needs and the needs of the ministry. We want to reassure you that we have closely examined our spending and are living as simply as possible while still being effective in ministry. In our desire to be totally open, we’ve published an estimate of our normal expenses. Anyone interested can see it on our Financial page. The summary is that in order to maintain a simple Mexican lifestyle and to be effective in ministry we need about $1850 in regular monthly support. This is in addition to the small amount we’re able to earn working part-time here in Mexico ($600 a month) and does not include extra expenses for having kids.

To give you an idea of the amount of support we’ve been receiving, here’s our regular support income over the past few months:

• January $1050
• February $725
• March $777
• April $774
• May $1076
• June $1419
• July $838

On average, that’s about $950 a month, which is $900 short of what we need in regular support. God has been really gracious and has provided some very generous special gifts so that we haven’t gone hungry or anything, but we haven’t been able to do the things the special gifts were intended for. We haven’t yet finished the repairs on our house, for example, because we’ve actually had to live off of significant portions of the construction donations. Unfortunately, not finishing those repairs is inefficient because it incurs extra expenses and causes us to be “straddled” between two houses, a state we’ve been in for over a year.

Would you, the people who care about us and believe in what God is doing here, help us to raise the financial support that we need?

• Would you really pray for God to provide for us?
• If you’re able and haven’t already done so, would you commit to supporting us regularly? Even something like $25 a month would be a big help!
• Would you help us to broaden our base of supporters?
  • Could you share what God is doing here in the Laguna and our financial needs with a friend or family member?
  • Could you give us the contact info of somebody that might be interested in getting involved in our ministry? We could then contact them and see if they were interested.
  • Are you a part of a Sunday School class or Bible study or other group that might be interested in being a part of what we’re doing? Would your church be interested?

We would really appreciate your help so we can continue with our ministry. Here’s what you can do:

If you feel led to be a part of our ministry by supporting us financially, please let us know by filling out our commitment form. We’d appreciate you doing that whether you’ve been faithfully supporting us for a while (for which we can’t tell you how grateful we are!) or whether you’d like to start supporting us now. Then we’ll know how to plan. We’ll also be able to let you know about ways to give automatically each month (which we’re working on), since we know that would probably be more convenient.

If you would like to give, click here:

I want to start or continue supporting your ministry financially.

If you could help us to get more people involved in our ministry, we would really appreciate that too. All we need you to do is to fill out our referral form. [There you can let us know about any individual or group that you think might be interested in being a part of what God’s doing here in the Laguna…]

If you would like to refer someone, click here:

I want to help you broaden your team of supporters.

And of course if you’d prefer to contact us directly, we would love that too! You can actually call the U.S. phone number 713.589.5886, and through the marvels of technology it will ring in our house here in Mexico!

Many thanks! We’re so amazed at how faithful God has been to use us as a channel of His love to transform people’s lives here in Mexico! Raising support and administrating finances is not something we’re naturally gifted at, but we’re confident that God will provide everything we need to be effective in serving Him through His people! 🙂

God’s rich blessings on each of you and your families!

in Christ,
Larry & Kim

P.S. As we mentioned above, we still have a need for one-time donations to finish the construction on our house. This has also been another complicating financial factor. Please stay tuned for more specific details on the little bit that’s left to finish the project… It would be a great help to us to be able to live in our house again!

Thank you for all your support!