the Riggs Report

We've been visiting lots of groups and answering lots of questions. Some questions are so popular that we thought you might have them too!

How did you become missionaries? Mike answered a call to missions in church as a teenager, but became alienated from a graceless church and wouldn't darken a church door until after Mike and Tammy's first child was born.  After they both started following Jesus, they became youth leaders, and then Mike felt a reactivation of the call to be a missionary.  Tammy's response: NO! If we do that we will never have matching furniture!
Their pastor advised Mike to not push this issue. If the desire was from God, then Tammy would feel it too.  Sometime later, she was reading a book about worldviews to review for the youth group. She realized that God had saved her from the futility and hopelessness that most people are experiencing, but that she was more concerned with having a nice middle class life than helping others experience that hope…

In March, while we were up in Iowa, the team in Peru was doing an evangelistic campaign and training pastors in evangelism. They were rained out one day but were given an hour on the radio to make up for it.  A ministry that heard the program is interested in providing radio transmitters if we will broadcast solid teaching for rural communities.

We analyzed the story presented in the Bible for our Bible conferences, and it profoundly affected how we view things. Mike’s emergency eye surgeries for glaucoma have certainly put physical vision in the limelight. And we’re glad to report that his vision is stable in the right eye and his actually improved in his left eye. This has been a wonderful answer to prayer. As we start a new year another kind of vision has been on our minds. The vision of our ministry. Planning for another year of ministry is a good time to check on our ministry vision, and how it lines up with God’s vision. The source for all missionary work and vision is God’s vision as presented in the Bible. A few years ago we analyzed the story presented in the Bible for our Bible conferences, and it has profoundly affected how we view things. Reduced to its bare bones, the story of the Bible is this: The main character, God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) always existed. God created Man 1, the other major char…

We've got plans!  And we're gearing up to go do them! View this email in your browser January 18, 2016 View this email in your browser

This is the time of year for making plans, and especially in our case.  We are finalizing our plans for our next term on the field, and getting ready to go back to Peru in February!

Many of you have already heard about our plan that we're calling 2020 Vision. We now have expanded that plan and added details.

Peru is a large and diverse country.  Like the United States, it is multicultural.  One big difference is that many of the ethnic and cultural groups are native to Peru.  Many Peruvians would identify themselves according to their region or tribe or language.  They would not identify themselves as Peruvians.  Any nationwide strategy to train leaders must adapt to different regional cultures. We are planning to establish regional training centers. Each one will have local ownership and its own distinct regional flavor.

That’s why we are calling this 2020 vision. We want to see 20 Biblical training centers – Bible Colleges - established in 20 locations throughout Peru by the y…

November 2015 Gomez mission View this email in your browserThe Riggs Report