June 29, 2008 

Dear Prayer Partners,

I wanted and ask that you pray for us and all the other missionaries serving in Kenya. The electric company is government owned and controlled here in Kenya. We have just been notified that they planned to raise the electric rates by 21 to 24% starting in July. With the devaluation of the dollar, this will mean a hardship on many in our missionary family.

Please pray that God will make the increase lower than predicted. Personally, we believe that we need three new churches to take us on for support to help with the price increases of almost everything in Kenya. We thank you for your continuing support and thank God for your prayers.

In greater news, there have been six salvation decisions this month and we were able to baptize nine just this morning at church. God is still at church and we are excited to see what he will do in the future.

God bless you all,
Bobby and Lisa Bechtel
Serving in Mombasa, Kenya

April 15, 2008

Dear Prayer Partners,

I wanted to write and ask for your to urgently pray for us as your missionaries and friends in Kenya, Africa. The value of the U.S. dollar dropped again against the Kenyan shillings. When we arrived in Kenya in 2002 you could exchange 78 Kenyan shillings for one U.S. Dollar. A few weeks ago, it reached an all-time low of 62 shillings per dollar. Today it fell again and the dollar is only worth 58 shillings. It is causing a terrible strain on our financial situation. We had worked it out and thought we can survive if the exchange stays above 60 and then today it went below. For those of you who don't understand exchange rates and the value of the U.S. dollar, this means that we lose money every time we transfer funds from the U.S. to Kenya even if our support from the states stays the same. If someone sent $100 last month, it was worth 6400 Kenyan shillings. But, if it was sent today, it would be worth 5800. Of course, we have to exchange money in order to live in this economy. The prices for everything have also skyrocketed because of the crisis. Bread went from 25 shillings a loaf to 42 this week. Gas was selling for $5.85 a gallon and now is $6.41 a gallon in just one week. Please pray because all of the missionaries are suffering.

Many of you know that we lost around $600 in ministry support this past January to March due mainly to the financial problems in America. We are desperately trying to make the ministries run with less money and now this exchange rate drop will make it even harder to cope. There is such a crisis that our BBFI Mission is sending out letters asking people to increase their support to missionaries all over the world. Please pray for your missionaries.

We are thankful for the fact that we have paid our bills for this month but are wondering how all is will pan out for next month. We pray that God will provide as He always has in the past. We are especially worried about our feeding centers and school as the price for all the food is increasing almost daily.

Thank you for your prayers,
Bobby, Lisa, Ethan and Conner Bechtel
Serving in Kenya