Dear Friends,

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13) That is our prayer for all of you in 2025.  Biblical hope is the confident expectation that God is going to work in us and through us to accomplish His will in us and through us.  Biblical hope is rooted in the character of God. That’s why it’s a confident expectation.  The God of hope fills us with joy and peace as we rest in who He is and as we trust what He is doing.

We had a very busy but fruitful December.  For the last 15 years we have been mailing Christmas greetings and some type of Gospel literature to all the residences in the west end of our county.  In this rural area, that amounts to about 325 postal patrons, with delivery going out of three small Post Offices.  Our church ladies have a Christmas gathering and spend part of the evening putting the mailing together. 

While purchasing some items at our local farm/ranch supply store, one of the managers thanked me for the mailing, and said her daughter-in-law had read the book and told her it was excellent.  She was looking forward to reading it.  She also mentioned that she had really appreciated the mailings every year.  We continue to ‘hope’, knowing that God is always at work behind the scenes, touching hearts.

An elderly grandmother in Heart Butte, due to tragic circumstances, is raising 4 of her grandchildren. Through a gift from a supporter, we were able to help this needy family with some Christmas gifts as well as offering hope through some Gospel literature.

We were happy to welcome the choir from Temple Baptist in Great Falls again this year who came and performed their Christmas cantata for us on December 15.  We were absolutely packed out, with 110 people attending, including a few first-time visitors and a number of unsaved folks.  Our church ladies, as always, did a great job with the Christmas dinner following the cantata.  Our church attendance throughout November and December was excellent, with more than 10 first time visitors.  Of course, the numbers are not the focus, but rather the ministry opportunities that they represent.  All of you who have been following our labors here for many years know that this is a slow, low-yield harvest field, so we have been quite blessed and “filled with joy” with the attendance and the first-time visitors.

Larrie and a couple of our church men continue to go to a prison in our area on the second Monday evening of each month.  We have a faithful group of 15-20 men who attend each month.  We had a wonderful evening this month, unexpectedly longer than usual.  We are restricted by prison policy from publicly sharing any specific details of our visits there, but I believe I can say that due to a lockdown during our visit we ended up being with these brothers in Christ for over 2 hours.  After I preached my message, we discussed a number of Bible questions, sang several hymns from memory, and enjoyed some fellowship and discussion on a number of issues.  Most of our faithful group truly know Christ, recognize their mistakes, and have a desire to be a light for the Lord Jesus while serving their sentence in this dark place.  We certainly covet your prayers on the second Monday evening of each month.  We pray through the witness of the inmates and our opportunities for the gospel that others will come to Christ.

We are slowly settling in to our new location.  We are thankful for excellent help from several of our church folks during this process.  Our borrowed cargo trailers are still quite full, as well as our storage unit, and there are many projects yet to complete in order to be “back to normal”.  But winter has truly arrived, which slows the process significantly.  We “hope”, knowing that God will continue to orchestrate the details and provide what He sees fit, and we expect that in another 9 months or so it will look like home again.

We are planning on conducting two Bible clubs this summer, one in July and another in August.  Please pray as we plan and as our volunteer groups prepare.  Covid seemed to eliminate the many ecumenical groups who were flooding Heart Butte every summer for several years, so we are going to aim for two youth-oriented outreaches this summer. 

God is at work in interesting ways, and He continues to fill us with joy and peace in believing.  We know that, by His grace, we will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

THANK YOU for your faithful prayers and support.

Securely His,

Larrie & Carol Bunyan