Desert Streams Ministries

Note: You can download a printable PDF copy of this newsletter here:

Dear friends, family and supporters,

How have things been going for you? We have been enjoying this spring with warm weather and now a bit of rain. Actually, here in the mountains, April and May are the warmest months of the year. By August, we’ll be using our wood stove again to stay warm.

Anyway, I’d love to share with you a few things that we’ve been working on.

Online Bible School

Our online Bible School is going strong. We started out our spring semester with about 170 students enrolled in courses. Most of them have stuck to their studies throughout the semester and many have grown both spiritually and in knowledge of God’s word and in their ministries. Most of our students are either pastors, leaders, or serve in some capacity within their local churches.

We are working with a group of about 12 others who serve as course facilitators, editors, designers and technical help. We also have six Bible teachers who teach the online courses in audio and video.

History of the Online Bible School

The school started as an idea that John and Bill Brown had about 10 years ago. (Bill is a spiritual father to us, and John is his grandson.) John Brown worked here in Mexico for several years and brought many fresh ideas to the Advanced School of Ministry team. However, he returned to Canada before being able to develop the online school. I took the vision from there. I started by developing the software on which to build the school (I couldn’t find any free software that satisfied our needs), and then we launched the school just within our congregation, as a trial. After successfully developing and offering a couple of courses to a small group of our people here locally, we decided in 2015 that we would launch it nationwide through the Advanced School of Ministry. We grew from about 40 students during our first semester to about 170 now.

We are continually developing new courses. Each semester we offer at least one new course, and we have the goal of developing a complete Bible School curriculum.

At the present time, each student who completes a course receives a certificate of completion which counts toward the Advanced School of Ministry bachelor degree program.

Our Local Church

We have been meeting online with our church since March, 2020, when the pandemic started. The change was abrupt, but our congregation has adapted well. We meet in small groups on Wednesday nights for Bible studies, and our Sunday services are transmitted via YouTube and our church’s web page. As I have stated before, this has worked very well. However, we do desire to get together with the entire church soon. We no longer rent a building, and it’s still not the best idea to meet indoors here, so we’re looking at other options.

Our church owns a piece of property, and we’re currently working on plans to build a garden (or yard) in which we’ll be able to have some outdoor meetings. In the meantime, we’re starting to get together in small groups for outdoor meetings at our home and soon at the homes of others in our congregation.

We’re in the process of transitioning into a type of “microchurch” model, in which the teaching will continue to be centralized, but delivered via video simultaneously to the different groups meeting in different locations. In this way, online church will continue, but we’ll also be able to get several families together in a safe way. We’re excited to see what God will do in these meetings. I truly believe that He is about to pour out His Spirit in new and fresh ways!

Our daughter Anna has continues to lead a group of adolescent girls. The hunger that they have for the presence of God has been awesome! They’ve been meeting online throughout the year, but just recently they also began meeting in person outside on our property. Anna teaches a simple Bible lesson and leads them in worship. At these gatherings we’ve seen the girls break down in tears as they worship the Lord together. The Holy Spirit is doing some really deep things in the hearts of some of them.

Our Wednesday meetings (online via Zoom) also continue to flourish. I have been developing all of the teaching material in the form of Bible themes based on questions for discussion. Our Connect Group leaders direct the discussions and then pray and minister to the people in their group. It has been so awesome to see how the Spirit of God touches people during these Zoom sessions. The Holy Spirit isn’t limited by distance or technology!

Our Family

On May 15, Daniel and Elisa graduated from Portland Bible College. The next Thursday, May 20, we were privileged to attend Daniel and Elisa’s wedding. We now have a married son and a new daughter! We are very happy for both of them, and feel blessed to receive Elisa into our family. Elisa spent a good share of her childhood and teen years in Japan as the daughter of a missionary family, and Daniel was born and grew up in Mexico. Even though they are from different places and experiences, both had a very “American” upbringing (including Veggietales).

For the moment, they plan to continue to live in Vancouver, Washington, and work with Portland Bible College, as well as continue to serve in their local church.

Thanks!

Thanks for being on our team. Your prayers and financial support make our work possible. We are thankful that you have continued to stand with us throughout the COVID storm!

Do you know someone who might be interested in what we do? Please go ahead and share this message with them. You may do this by:

• Forwarding our email communications to your contacts who may be interested in what we are doing.
• Personally telling others about us and asking them to contact us: dsm@desert-streams.org.
• Sharing this letter on your Facebook page or via Twitter using these buttons:
  
  

  

  

  

Blessings!

David and Sara Lont

Note: You can download a printable PDF copy of this newsletter here:

Hello, Friends, Family, and Supporters.

It’s great to greet you again from central Mexico. We want to share this update with you so that you will know some of the things we are working on.

What Does the Church Look Like?

Today our church looks very different from how it looked a year ago! Last March, unbeknown to us, we had our very last meeting in what had been our church building and meeting location since 2004.

With all of the restrictions and dangers of COVID-19, I began to study once again what the Bible teaches about the church and what the original church in the book of Acts looked like. It has been a very interesting study as well as one that allows us to see that the work of the Lord cannot be stopped by a pandemic, government restrictions, persecution or anything else. The church that Jesus Christ is building is unstoppable!

Here are just a few thoughts:

The House of God is simple. The first mention of God’s house in Scripture is in Genesis 28, where Jacob has his dream of the ladder going up to heaven. When he awakes, he calls the place “Bethel”, which means “house of God”. What was there? One man, the Word of the Living God to that man, and his answer to the voice of God in the form of a sacrifice.

Church is not about big crowds. Jesus said that where two or three are gathered in His name, there He is in the midst of them. This is so good to know since so many of us have been gathering in homes during the past year. Instead of gathering in a building, our church has been gathering in about 40-50 houses all across the city (plus a few in other states).

Church is not about buildings. While buildings can be useful to gather the church for meetings, church buildings are not essential. Most of the churches in the first few hundred years after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (and the birth of the church) didn’t have buildings, but rather, met in houses, outside town by a river, in public squares, or in borrowed locations.

The church tends to multiply when under pressure. We see in Acts that persecution caused the believers to be scattered, but wherever they went, they preached about Jesus Christ and the number of disciples multiplied. While the pandemic is not exactly persecution of the church, the fact that churches have had to close to in-person meetings has, in many occasions, caused true believers to walk closer to God and some unbelievers to begin to desire God. In our experience, we’ve seen several families come to Christ through our online meetings.

As we continue forward through this year, we definitely don’t know what to expect in terms of the pandemic and its effects, but we do know that God is moving in the midst of everything! Christ continues to build His church.

Bible School

Several years back we began designing and building a Bible School that pastors, leaders and others who serve in any capacity in their churches, can attend without having to leave their job, church, and community. We’ve designed it to function totally online. This was a great blessing before the pandemic, but now it’s more important than ever! We were able to continue with our classes without any interruption during 2020, and now, in 2021, we continue to make progress as we train servant-leaders to build up the church.

On February 17 we began our spring semester with around 170 students. We have a team of about ten course facilitators who attend to the daily needs of the students, check homework assignments, and personally encourage each student in their course work.

Testimonies

Have a look at what a couple of our students have said about the online school.

“Thanks to Fundamentos Ministeriales I have gained much knowledge, which has helped me in my personal life to effectively exercise the calling that God has placed on me.” – Francisco Bermúdez (working in Chiapas)

“I have been studying at Fundamentos Ministeriales for about five years and it has brought great blessing to me. I have received a better understanding of the Scriptures, and the best thing is that my teachers have shared their experiences with me.” – Nancy Chávez (in Mexico City)

Thanks For Being On Our Team

Remember, you are part of our team! Thanks to you, we are able to continue forward with our work, even during this difficult COVID season. Please pray for us over the next couple of months for:

1. Direction for us as we lead the church during this season of so much uncertainty, that we would be able to discern and do God’s will for the local church.
2. For the members of our church, that they would continue strong in faith, connected with God, and that they would keep sharing the Gospel with others.
3. Health and divine protection, as so many around us have been sick and some have gone before us to heaven.
4. Finances for the Bible School, the church and for us personally. Please agree with us in prayer for God’s continued provision!

We also continue to pray for you, that the Lord will sustain you, uphold you in His perfect peace, give you health, and that you may grow in Him.

Your Help Wanted

Do you know someone who might be interested in what we do? We could really use your help spreading the word that we are looking to grow our partner team. This includes our mailing list as well as our prayer and financial support base.

How can you help?

• By forwarding our email communications to your contacts who may be interested in what we are doing.
  
• Personally telling others about us and asking them to contact us: dsm@desert-streams.org.
  
• Sharing this letter on your Facebook page or via Twitter using these buttons:

Blessings!

David and Sara Lont

As I write today, it is the last day of 2020. I know that many people are happy that 2020 is over because it has been quite a year! As we begin 2021, all of us hope for something better for this next season. Even though 2020 was a difficult year for most of us, it definitely hasn’t been a waste of time in God’s calendar. In His sovereignty He has been calling the attention of the nations to change their hearts and place their hope in the Lord. This present world, with its pain, affliction, grief and difficulties, continues to be under the care of a loving Father who sent His Son to redeem it and bring His people back to communion with Him. How thankful we are for Jesus Christ who makes it possible for us to live in peace and harmony with God, even in the midst of the chaos!

This past year was full of challenges for us, but at the same time, it has been a good year. The Lord has allowed us to continue ministry in several different but interesting ways. Here is a little of what has happened with us and our family during 2020.

In March, all churches were shut down across Mexico and many nations of the world. We immediately moved everything online, which was a challenge but at the same time an interesting change for us and many of our people. We began prerecording our services in more of a “studio” style and delivering them simultaneously to our people via YouTube, using Facebook and WhatsApp as our main ways of keeping our congregation connected on Sundays. During the months of June/July, Sara did an online parenting course, and Anna and I also prepared weekly devotional material for each family to use during the week. Then, a few months into the pandemic, we also started small groups on the Zoom platform on Wednesday nights. Those groups went over really well and allowed our group leaders to continue to minister more personally to each member of their groups. At the same time, these small groups began getting involved in helping others in our church and community with groceries, small offerings, and other little blessings. God allowed us to reach several new families in the midst of the pandemic and we’re thankful to see some of them now growing in their relationship with the Lord and they now consider our church their home.

A couple of weeks ago we did a larger Zoom meeting on a Wednesday night, and just under 50 of our families connected online. It was great to see so many of them all together for that meeting! It was also wonderful to confirm that many of those who considered themselves members of our church before the pandemic have continued with us through this very different time. Each Sunday morning we try to engage in the chat with the families who connect to our services on YouTube. We’ve been able to minister to several this way, praying with them for certain needs that they have. We’ve also done counseling using video calls and have been able to reach people outside of our local area.

We are now officially a church without a building. We have been renting for many years, but during this past year we only used the building for three months. This next year will be very interesting and is full of “unknowns”, but we believe that the Lord will direct our steps as we move out into new experiences with our congregation. During this year we have been constantly reminded that the church is people, not a building or a piece of property. Where will we meet once the pandemic is under control? We don’t really know yet, but we know the One who is in control of the future.

Our Online Bible School has continued to move forward through the year of 2020. We developed and recorded three new courses and had an enrollment of around 170 students during this last semester. Our homiletics course was a new experience for us, as we taught on principles of preaching and then had the students practice preaching online via Zoom group video calls. Their final exam, a message recorded and placed on YouTube, was a challenge for many of them. Almost all the students did very well.

As a family, it has also been a very interesting year. Our son Daniel, who is in his last year at Portland Bible College, is now engaged to be married to Elisa Kaylor. He and Elisa came down here to Mexico for Sara’s birthday in September. Our oldest son David, who is studying at Western Michigan University, is currently with us. He will be going back in a couple of weeks. Anna is here with us in her last year of high school and plans to continue her studies online next fall. Our family is doing well.

We pray that the Lord will bless and keep each of you. He is faithful and His Word will never fail!

Thank you so much for your love, prayers and support during the year. We appreciate each of you and all you do for us!

Blessings!

David and Sara Lont and family

You can download a copy of this letter in PDF format here.

Dear friends, family, and supporters,

It’s a joy to greet you once again from the autumn fields here in the mountains, just outside of Tulancingo. Summer has gone by, and now it’s starting to get cooler again. We’ve have several nights of hard frost in our area, changing the beautiful green fields of corn to a dry, brown color and slowly transforming the luscious green pasturelands into varying shades of yellow. It is the cycle of life, the turning of the seasons, the very way God created nature to function. As the writer of Ecclesiastes says, “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11, NLT).

Everything is beautiful in its own time. Even during this season in which a plague of disease and death has come upon the earth, causing the lives of many to suddenly wilt away, God continues to reign above it all. He continues to be beautiful, faithful, true, holy and good. We can continue to place all of our hope in Him, for He still cares for us. Yes, there is nothing that can separate us from His love! We have eternity in our hearts, even though we cannot fathom the entire scope of God’s work within the affairs of our lowly human existence. Yet we trust Him who created us, because eternity has been planted in our hearts. We know that even when the oceans roar and the mountains crumble, our God remains the same, and when we are planted upon Jesus Christ, our Rock, we will continue to stand steadfast.

Nothing Can Stop The Kingdom of God

It is just amazing how many things can be done from the home today! So many of us thought that we needed a special building or an office to get “real work” done. However, combining the pandemic with technology, we have suddenly realized that many tasks once considered almost impossible to accomplish without leaving the house, today can be successfully carried out right from our homes. Since March, we have been leading several weekly Bible studies from our home, recording Bible School classes, transmitting our church services, doing counseling, praying for people, and just about everything else from home. It has truly been an interesting season, and something I would have never imagined. Yet, we’ve found that most aspects of ministry continue to be just as effective or perhaps even more productive than when we were able to constantly meet in person. And although we long for the day when so many limitations on personal and corporate gatherings won’t be necessary, still we realize that history has in some ways taken a bend in the road, and that the world we knew before March, 2020, may never be the same. How should we respond? We simply need to adapt!

One of the more interesting aspects of ministry since August has been with our Online Bible School. We began our fall semester in August with around 170 students. About 40 of those students are studying homiletics – the art of preaching. After receiving lectures on the subject during August and September, we moved into the more practical aspects at the beginning of October. Each student must prepare and deliver three sermons live, using a video conferencing platform. Their facilitators and classmates join the live stream to watch, listen, and evaluate their sermons and delivery. When they finish, we give them time to make constructive comments, and then send in an evaluation form, which is delivered to both the student who preached, and the course facilitator. What a varied group we have! Some are pastors with years of experience, yet they have never studied this topic. Others are young people, college students, older church leaders and even children’s church teachers. It has been a joy to see them, hear them preach, and give them direction as they continue to hone in on the skills required to effectively communicate the Word of God to an audience, be it in a church service, a small group, a classroom, or an online setting.

Our church continues to meet online. Although technically it is possible to meet in a very reduced capacity at this moment in our area (and some churches are), we have made the decision to continue for the time being mostly online. Legally, we would only be able to have in-person services with about 25 people in our building, and no children or senior citizens would be allowed to attend. I felt that it is much more practical to continue to invest our time and resources in online and remote ministry, as we are reaching many more of our people in this form. We know of other churches that began in-person meetings, but they were only able to do it for a few weeks, and then had to go back to online-only, because of an increase in COVID-19 cases in their areas.

Can the church continue on its mission to extend the Kingdom of God and make disciples during this season? I definitely believe we can! After all, we are the church; we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. The true church of Jesus Christ has never been a physical building. It has always been a group of people who have been redeemed by Christ and who gather in His name, working to make disciples and to extend His kingdom. This is something we can and should continue to do, whether we’re in the middle of a pandemic, a natural disaster, or persecution. The Word of God will continue to flow forth and the Kingdom of Heaven will continue to expand!

I want to thank each of you who continues to pray for us and support us. I know that things have been difficult just about everywhere during the past half year, but God continues to be faithful. And Sara and I wish to express our most sincere thanksgiving to you.

With love,

David and Sara Lont

You can download a copy of this newsletter in PDF format here:

Hello, friends and family!

We hope you’ve had a good summer. I’m sure it’s been a bit different than a “normal” summer, since we’re in the middle of the pandemic, but summer is always a wonderful season. Here in our area, this is the rainy season, and we’re enjoying cool weather, sunny mornings, and rainy afternoons and nights. We’ve had around seven inches of rain since the month of August began, and the fields are a beautiful shade of green.

Online Bible School

As you probably know, our Online Bible School is one of the projects we spend quite a bit of time on. The last time I wrote to you, we were finishing our Spring semester. Now, we’re about to start our Fall semester. Enrollment is currently open, and we will begin classes on August 19.

Over the last couple of weeks I taught and recorded the material for our new homiletics course. (For those who don’t know, “homiletics” is a fancy word to describe a course on how to preach.) I taught 18 lessons on the subject of how to write sermons and preach, and these lessons will cover the first 7 weeks of the course. The remaining 8 weeks will be used to have our students practice what they have learned by preparing messages and preaching in front of their peers and facilitators live via Zoom. The students will be evaluated both by their peers and their facilitators, and will be receiving constructive feedback. It should be a very interesting experience!

We will also be offering several other courses, including Old and New Testament Surveys (4 courses), The Life of Christ and Systematic Theology.

We’re looking forward to starting once again! Several students have already signed up, and I’m sure many more will register for their courses over the next week or so.

It is such a blessing that we had prepared this Bible School several years ago to be totally online. We don’t have to worry about canceling in-person classes, and we can accept students from just about anywhere around the world!

Local Church Ministry

Since the middle of March, we had to cancel our normal church services due to the pandemic. We immediately moved everything online, using a combination of YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Zoom, WhatsApp, and our own website to reach our people. Our state is still basically under stay-at-home orders, as the Covid-19 numbers continue to rise. We can only drive our car 3 days a week: Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The local hospital here in Tulancingo is completely full and is sending patients to seek medical help in other cities. It looks like we won’t be going back to in-person services at our church possibly for the rest of the year.

However, online ministry has given us the unique opportunity to reach people that normally wouldn’t be reached by our church, including the extended families of some of our church members, some of which live in other cities and states.

We had a good series of classes on parenting in June and July, connecting with parents using recorded teaching on YouTube, then question and answer sessions using Zoom.

Besides our Sunday services, we are also doing small group ministry on Zoom and Google Meet, with a special emphasis on growing in love, unity, communication and personal ministry. We start with a group activity, move into Bible Study, then finish with a time of personal ministry. We are calling these groups “Connect Groups”. We started last Wednesday, and our congregation is really excited about participating. We currently have seven different groups, and each group has between 10 and 20 members.

Our Family

Our son, David Jeremiah, has been working at Lowe’s during his summer break. He will be continuing with his last three semesters at Western Michigan University. Daniel is in Portland, Oregon, where he is studying at Portland Bible College. He has been working in the school offices with their online Bible School program, and he took a second job at Amazon. During this summer, he sometimes worked over 70 hours a week!

Anna is doing well here at home with us. She has been a great help in ministry, sometimes singing and playing the piano for our services, writing devotional material and teachings, proofreading our online Bible School material, and more recently, doing graphic design. She will be starting 12th grade in about a month. Anna is a great Bible teacher, and she has her own Connect Group on Wednesday nights.

Sara continues to work with me as a team. Sometimes we teach together; at other times, she helps by participating in our online services, proofreading material for the Bible School, and helping in so many areas. She is such a big blessing for me and for the church! She is also hosting and leading probably the largest of our Connect Groups online.

Life is busy during this pandemic, but we are enjoying it. We’re working pretty much 100% from home and have converted the living room of our cabin into a video recording studio. I am writing from one of the bedrooms where I have my little office. Who’d have thought? Remote ministry from a cabin!

Thanks for your prayers and support!

We are so thankful for those who continue to pray and support us each month. It is wonderful to know that we have a group of intercessors and partners who stand by our side and help us to effectively reach many people each week with teaching and ministry from God’s word. Thank you!