A blessed and prosperous New Year to you all. I thank God that we have another year to serve Him, and take the world for His Kingdom!

---- IN THIS ISSUE -----

• Motorhome Update

• Citywide Prayer

• Accident

• Spiritual Warfare Conference

• Bible School

• God Appointment

• Web Site Update

----- MOTORHOME UPDATE -----

A quick update on the motorhome. I've finished repairing the engine, and it runs the quietest that it ever has. Praise the Lord for His help! The day I took it apart, we received the money in the mail (unexpected) to buy the parts. I love the Lord's provision!

----- CITYWIDE PRAYER -----

The city has changed the date for our first citywide prayer gathering in Reynosa, Mexico twice. First they postponed it a week, then another week. So, now we're scheduled for 22 January. They've also limited us to three hours, 7 - 10 pm, instead of the whole day. However, the mayor of the city, and the city leaders have promised to come! We've also received a promise from all three radio stations to carry the prayer rally live! So, we're believing that these delays are for God's glory.

We had a meeting yesterday with 7 Mexican pastors who are the core group organizing the prayer in the plaza. We're purposely keeping the group small, so that we don't have a bunch of people throwing their two cents worth in. We want to keep purely on the vision God's given us, not changing to everyone's opinion.

We've received several spiritual attacks in the last couple of weeks. First, we had the problem with the engine, then Deborah received some attacks, and yesterday we had a small accident with the motorhome in Mexico (more on this later). One of the key pastors we're working with says that the Mexican's need to increase their prayer for us, because without us, the prayer movement won't be able to go forward. God's been using us as the catalyst to start this, so we need His continued protection.

Another attack that just came today was against one of the key pastors we're working with. His three year old daughter came down with a high fever and died. She was fine yesterday, and today she died. This is obviously an attack against the work of prayer.

This whole work of prayer is an attack against the work of the enemy. Reynosa is a stronghold of darkness, and we are going into war against it. Of course this causes the forces of the enemy to fight back, but WE ARE MORE THAN CONQUERORS THROUGH HIM THAT LOVES US AND DIED FOR US! ! ! ! ! ! !

We need your prayers for protection of us, and those who we are working with. Please ask your prayer partners, your church, and any intercessors that you know to be praying for this prayer movement. We need a prayer covering over our core group especially, and we need prayer that more people catch the vision to pray for the city.

----- ACCIDENT -----

Yesterday, we had a small vehicle accident with our motorhome in Mexico. As we were turning right at a major intersection, a car went to the right around us. There wasn't enough room for him to go around us, and he shouldn't have been there, but he was. Fortunately, I wasn't moving fast, and we just rubbed against each other. The only damage was paint, a couple small scratches on his car, and a broken marker light on the side of the motorhome.

The problem comes in with Mexican traffic laws. We were basically detained (politely) until we could pay for the damage to his car. He was a lawyer, and had a nice new sport utility vehicle. Since there weren't any witnesses, and the damage to his vehicle was on the back of the side, while on the front corner of ours, we were the ones liable.

The police expected us to get someone from our American insurance to come into Mexico with some sort of a guarantee of payment. That's not the way we do things, but it's the way they do. Fortunately, the damage was small enough that it was less than our insurance deductible and we were able to pay cash for it. Unfortunately, we didn't have that much cash with us. I gave the other man what cash I had, and wrote him a check for the rest.

This was just another attack against the prayer movement. Satan did it to steal our money, and discourage us. We won't be defeated though! God has given us the victory, and we will stand in it!

By the way, through this, something happened in Deborah, and she's got more joy than she's ever had before (part of the victory).

----- SPIRITUAL WARFARE CONFERENCE -----

The pastors and believers here know very little to nothing about Spiritual Warfare. I'm not just talking about deliverance, but the more general area of warfare. A couple of weeks ago, a pastor asked us to come with him and pray for a man who was probably the most demon possessed person we've ever seen. None of the Mexican pastors would go pray for him, because they were afraid.

We've scheduled a Spiritual Warfare Conference for the two days after the citywide prayer rally. Unfortunately, we couldn't do this before the prayer, but this will be good training for before the next time.

Please pray that we get a great attendance for this conference. We've got advertising on the radio, and in the Christian newspaper, but the most important advertising is prayer. We haven't always had the turnout we want at our conferences, but we really need it at this one (or, they really need this one). Since the prayer movement is an act of warfare, we need the Mexicans to understand this important area.

As of the last Monday in January, I will be teaching in a Hispanic Bible institute here in the Rio Grande Valley (on the U.S. side). I was asked to teach a class on the Old Testament for six weeks, three hours a night. I guess they thought a Jew would know how to teach on the Old Testament.

This should be the most exciting Old Testament class they've ever had. I'm looking forward to showing these Hispanic pastors that there's valid teaching for New Testament believers in the Old Testament.

As with our other classes and conferences, we expect to be able to produce cassettes and videos of these classes. Eventually, we'll have enough teaching recorded in Spanish to really help the Latin American church.

We had a "God appointment" happen a couple of weeks ago. We were at one of the churches we've been working with a lot in Reynosa. We weren't supposed to be there, we had other appointments, but they were canceled.

As we were sitting there, a man came in and asked the pastor if he knew the Murphys. He had come over from Matamoras, another Mexican city about 40 miles away. This man, who runs a sizeable Bible School, had recently received a Word from the Lord that God was going to take his ministry in a new direction. When he woke up that morning, he felt that God wanted us to contact him in regard to this.

He didn't know where to find us, except Reynosa... so, he came looking for us. When he got to Reynosa, he found a flyer for one of our conferences in a Christian bookstore. He called our contact people, and nobody was at home. Finally, in something close to desperation, he went to the church we were supposed to have the conference at, hoping to find the pastor... and there we were.

We talked together and he said that he believed that God wanted him to co-labor with us in some way. Neither him, or us, are sure in what way yet, but we're praying about it. God obviously had something to do with it, otherwise we wouldn't have met like that.

God gave me a wonderful teaching on Vision, Direction, and Obedience for Christmas this year. Click here to see this teaching. I wanted to have it ready before I sent this letter, but the death today made it imperative that I get this letter out today.  

We've also just recently created a web site for one of the churches we work with down here in the Rio Grande Valley, Living Cell Church. You can see their site by going to:

     http://come.to/LivingCell

If you know any missionaries that have web sites, please let us know. I'd like to put a directory of worldwide missions somewhere on our web site. I'm not talking about big missions organizations, I'm talking about individual missionaries.