Dear Praying Friends,

Thank you for praying with us for our ministry here in Northern California! Allow us to update you on what God’s been doing, and brag on some of God’s blessings. We’ll share some prayer requests, too.

Fair and Summer Ministry

In our last ministry update, we were preparing for a fair ministry opportunity, which took place in May. We had a creation / dinosaur-themed booth at our county fair. That allowed us to get the Gospel into the hands of a lot of people very quickly. Thanks to Lighthouse Baptist Press, my friend, Dr. Bryan Gentry, our sending church in Cle Elum, and many others who helped, we were able to get out approximately 10,000 gospel presentations or invitations into people’s hands between a combination of John and Romans, Gospel Tracts, Water Bottle Tracts, Revival Invitations, and more – all in 4 days. All 8 of our church members did an outstanding job to pull this off!

We were able to talk to several people, give a complete Gospel presentation to all who would listen, and collect the contact info to follow up with about 160 others. We immediately went into a revival with Dr. SM Davis the next day, where we had several visitors. During the revival, we launched “Character Club,” a Wednesday-night character-based discipleship club to teach families to be conformed to the character of Christ by following the examples of Bible characters. These events led to three being saved, and two being baptized later in the summer, for which we are praising the Lord!

A young man who was the very first visitor that we had on the first Sunday that we met as a church in September of 2023 finally decided to receive Christ as His personal Saviour instead of depending upon his grandmother’s faith to get him to heaven. He also followed the Lord in baptism in August.

Another young man began attending Character Club this summer. He first came during the revival following the fair ministry. In July, he received Christ as his Saviour, and then was baptized in August as well.

A 6-year-old young lady is our most faithful member of Character Club. She comes with her dad, who is a member of the church. In September, her dad led her to the Lord after services on a Sunday morning.

Please pray for a lady. We have had some visits with her in her home and she has attended services several times. She has a testimony of salvation and has expressed interest in baptism. She speaks Spanish and has many contacts in the Hispanic community, which we have a burden to reach, as much of our county is Hispanic. Pray also for a related man who is a deaf mute who we have been praying about reaching for some time. Recently he has attended some services, and we have learned that he learned written English in order to obtain US citizenship and legally avoid deportation. This gives us something to work with in getting him the Gospel. We strongly believe that God has brought these two into our paths to be an inroad to reaching a lot of people with the Gospel to whom we would otherwise not have access. Please pray that God would soften their hearts and give us liberty and the tools to reach, teach, and disciple.

Current Urgent Project and Needs

Please allow me to tell you about our current urgent project, and to brag on God a bit in showing how God has answered so many prayers in getting us to this point in the project.

When we first moved down to California, one of our biggest needs was an affordable place to live. God met that need by allowing me to be the caretaker for a farm that previously had been destroyed by a drug dealer. Since moving on, we have run off the druggies, and rebuilt the house, which is a mobile home that was severely abused by the previous occupants.

The house was full of holes and rot. We redid the plumbing and electrical, the floors, corrected the framing, poured concrete pads under it to level it properly, and now we are working on closing things back in. We had hoped to have this done before the cold weather, because camping out is easier when it is warm. However, now we are facing very short periods of sun in between heavy periods of rain going into winter.

So, let me tell you what God has done. Last year, we were trying to put together the money for consistent power. God has provided that miraculously! Now we have enough solar for most of the time, and then about a month ago, God gave us an almost brand-new whole-house generator for $100 dollars! Power is no longer an issue!

God provided all the sheetrock that we needed for the house – absolutely free, because a big box store accidently counted the two sheets that were stuck together as one and delivered twice as many to a customer and then refused to acknowledge the mistake and take them back. So, that customer told me that if I’d haul off the extra sheets, I could have them – which of course was a direct answer to prayer and saved me a couple thousand dollars.

God provided most of the insulation we need for the house – probably about 80% of it – because someone had borrowed a trailer from one of our church members and when they returned it, it was full of insulation, and they just told them to keep it. They didn’t need it, and knew I needed it, so God provided the insulation.

On our recent trip up to Washington for the Yakima Home Missions Conference, God lead our sending church to pay for our siding for the house, and we have picked that up, and we are getting ready to install it.

We were planning to reuse the windows that were on the house, but when we went to remove them to start doing the siding, they were so damaged that they could not be reused. So, we went to the Lord. God gave me a project that I could finish same day and get paid, and then provided all matching windows and sliding glass doors that we needed – and exactly what we wanted - at the Habitat for Humanity Restore for exactly how much money I made on that project – and at a fraction of the cost of buying them new.

So, here’s the thing – God has gotten us all the way through this project to where we are now, but we have a little ways to go to finish it up.

We fund our ministry and provide for our family through graphic design, websites and small business consulting. We need a couple of good projects right away to fund the rest of this remodel. We have about a week to work on this before our next big storm. It is getting pretty cold at night, and these are the things that I need to finish funding to get the house closed in with windows, doors and siding:

• Some house wrap and flashing
• A little more wiring that goes behind the walls that have to be closed up
• Some miscellaneous plumbing and propane pieces
• A few more 2x4s for framing
• A little more insulation
• A chimney stove pipe so we can run our wood stove
• Our cook stove went out on us as well, so we are currently cooking cowboy style over a campfire

I know that God provides every time we go to Him in prayer, and we are just thrilled to see how he has answered prayer left and right for us, so prayer is the most important thing that you could do for us. Since we fund our ministry through our business, you could also be a big help to us by hiring us if you need graphics or website help or by recommending us to someone who might. Give me a call or text at 360-300-7635 and we can talk more about that.

I’m often asked to include a giving link for those who are led to help us. You can do so through our church website by going to giving.gatbc.org. Please choose “Watkins Family Support” from the ‘fund’ dropdown menu to designate it to help us with this project.

Thank you so much for praying for us! It means the world to us!

In Christ’s care,

Jared & Krysta Watkins

Enoch, Ezra, Ezekiel, and EdWord

Dear Praying Friends,

I’m excited to tell you about an exciting opportunity that the Lord has put together for us. Through a series of miracles, we have secured the last available vendor booth at the Tehama County Fair, and intend to use it to get the gospel to as many people at one time as possible. Approximately 1/3 of our county attends this fair, which means that we should have the opportunity to witness to about 20,000 people at one time. The fair runs Thursday, May 1st through Sunday, May 4th, 2025. We have put together a Creation and dinosaur theme for the booth with the intention of telling them that the God who personally created the universe, personally cares about every individual and offers them the free gift of salvation.

Immediately after the fair, we have scheduled an open-air, “Great Commission Revival.” Dr. SM Davis has made himself available to come and preach for it. The idea is to try to get as many people from the fair into the revival, where we can help them understand where they belong in God’s plan. Monday, May 5th, will be all about salvation, when Dr. Davis will preach “How To Tell if You’ve Been Saved.” Tuesday’s message concerns why a person needs to be baptized and join a Biblical church, and Dr. Davis will be preaching “The Unique Purposes of the Local Church.” On Wednesday, we plan to launch our ongoing mid-week kids and family program, “Character Club,” and Dr. Davis will help us understand why every Christian needs to grow in the Lord with his message, “What It Means to Walk in the Spirit.”

Please pray with us that God will move in a mighty way. Our small church of eight members if fully invested in seeing God work through this fair and revival.

We are humbled that many have given already to help us make this possible. Our sending church in Cle Elum, WA, sent us an offering to help cover the cost of the booth and some of the advertising. Lighthouse Baptist Press shipped us a pallet of John and Romans. Dr. Bryan Gentry in Florida, with the help of Mercy and Truth Printing Ministry in Kansas, is making sure that we have 2000 tracts and 1000 “dinosaur cards” for the fair. While there are many other pieces that need to come together, and expenses that need to be met in the next 7-10 days, I am confident that God will provide since He has already opened so many doors.

We have been asked to setup a registry on Amazon.com to list the things that we still need to purchase. That registry can be found here:

 Amazon Registry

You can also find it by searching for “Jared Watkins” on “find a registry” on Amazon. If the Lord impresses you to help with some of the needs, we are very grateful. You can also help by donating through our church’s giving page, which is found at giving.gatbc.org.

If the Lord leads you to take a spur-of-the-moment soul-winning missions trip to Northern California to help us, we would be thrilled to have you! Please call or text me at (360) 300-7635 to work out the details.

Most importantly, please help us bathe this in prayer. We have a HUGE opportunity here to reach a lot of people with the Gospel.

In Christ’s Care,

Jared & Krysta Watkins

Enoch, Ezra, Ezekiel, and EdWord

Dear Praying Friends,

In this update, I’d like to share some of what has been going on in our ministry, some blessings since our last update, and some prayer requests and needs. I am very passionate about reaching Northern California with the Gospel, and doing it God’s way. I hope that you will join us in prayer.

Blessings of God’s Provision

In October of last year, the Lord provided for us to attend the Home Missions Conference at Yakima Bible Baptist Church in Yakima, WA. There, I was graciously encouraged to give an update and present a couple of needs that we had. Through the generous giving of others, including church planters and pastors, the Lord provided a vehicle that was an exact answer to our prayer, and about one-third of the need for electrical power. I’ll share more about this need in a moment. We are very grateful that God used his people to meet these needs. Outreach In November, we had a Thanksgiving-themed outreach – An Old-Fashioned Day of Thankfulness. We had several visitors, and were able to present the Gospel to some new faces. One family that came had received some of our invitations on their door, and the dad told me that he had been watching us meet in the park for over a year, but wanted to see if we would stick around before he visited. We continue to make contact with most of these visitors.

Our theme in December was giving, in this spirit of the great Gift (Jesus Christ) that we celebrate at Christmas. In conjunction with each service, we had a special outreach focused on giving. One Sunday, the Lord lead us to a homeless encampment, where we gave some baskets of food that we had prepared, along with a gospel presentation in each basket. Several were eager for prayer and we were able to visit with several of these forgotten people. One elderly man told us that he worked all his life, but his retirement barely covered food now, and he lost his house due to taxes. Now he lives in the homeless park in a tent. Some were there because of poor choices or drugs. Many were there because the fires have wiped out everything they had. Without a home, they were fired from their jobs for instability. Without a job, they lost their place on a waiting list for a home. Regardless of the reason that they got there, Jesus is the solution. Without hope that is only found in a personal walk with God, drugs and alcohol often take over, perpetuating the problem.

Around the end of the year, we as a family, and also some of the men in the church, helped an elderly couple with some much-needed repairs on their home to get them through the winter. We did this in obedience to Matthew 5:16 (“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”). The wife has a salvation testimony, and tells all she meets about the Lord. The husband, however, was raised in paganism, and was not open even to a conversation in the beginning. The last day that we were there in January, I was able to overcome some of his barriers, and pray with him. Hopefully soon, he will receive the Lord as his Saviour.

Please pray for those we visited with through these outreaches: Les, Pam, Allen, James, Philip, Pancho, Liz, Derrek, Harleen, Sarah, Aiden, Ezekiel, Clarence, Carla, Dani, Jason, Jason Jr, Shawna, Lupe, Alex, Luna, Raynna, Rose, Mindy, Treasure, Harmony, and Shane.

We have had some bad storms and flooding that has wiped out one of the mobile home parks that adjoins the park where we meet for services. Dozens had to be rescued from drowning with the flash flooding. Several moved their trailers to an area of the park to wait out the flooding. The flooding has given us the opportunity to reach out to more people, especially some we had met through previous outreaches. We also took the time to knock the doors of the trailers on Sunday, trying to encourage those affected by the flooding and look for an opportunity to share the Lord with them.

Our Needs

I am constantly amazed to see how God answers prayer in every aspect of life. I am absolutely convinced of the need in California, and am passionate about doing whatever it takes to establish well-rooted, Biblical churches here. The fact is that it is an expensive endeavor, and here are some of the most important needs that we would like to ask you pray for us about:

Electrical power – one of the great blessings that God has provided is a farm on which we live and for which we are caretakers. This presents many opportunities that cut our costs of living down tremendously, as well as give us the ability to reach out to others. And, it is the direct answer to prayer in many, many respects.

The farm is in a very rural area, and completely off-grid. This alone saves us thousands every year in power and water bills in the most expensive state in the country. However, it requires a combination of solar power and a generator. Part of the agreement of us living on the farm is that we rebuild what was destroyed by the drug dealers who lived here before us. Part of what they destroyed was the electrical setup. I have some experience in solar power, and so I am able to rebuild at a much lower cost since I can do the installation and configuration myself. We raised about one-third of this expense at the Yakima Home Missions Conference, which has allowed us to have most of the power that we need during sunny days.

At night, however, and during the long storms of winter, we require a generator. We have had some trouble with our generator, mostly due to sabotage from the aforementioned druggies who keep coming back to cause trouble. I’ve rebuilt it a number of times, but this last week it has broken down beyond repair. I have put what “band-aids” I can on it, but it desperately needs to be replaced.

Having reliable power would go a long way to accomplishing what God has called us to do here. It is also essential to my business. To complete the power projects (solar and generator), I need to raise about $8000.

Consistent income – we did not go on deputation and do not receive any regular monthly support. God has put on the heart of several individuals and churches over the last couple of years to help us from time to time; most of the time these gifts have come in when we did not know how to move forward. God is faithful.

When I moved down here, I had a ministry-related job offer which fell through when I had to take a Biblical and ethical stand (with the prayer and counsel of my sending pastor and others). I also had some long-time clients in my website, graphics, and printing business. The economy has tightened spending everywhere, and I no longer have sufficient client income.

While God has never ceased to care for us, and has made it abundantly clear that we are ministering where we need to be, I am praying that God will provide consistent income to keep going.

If you need graphics, website, or printing work, I would love to help you out. For local church ministries and bi-vocational pastors, I offer my services at steep discounts.

Safety – When we first moved onto the farm 1 ½ years ago, we helped to evict a drug trafficker. We have since done extensive cleanup (we have removed over 25 tons of garbage and destruction). The drug dealers and their clients have not gone away peacefully, and we still face regular threats and sabotage. We have lost two guard dogs, four pigs, about forty chickens, and four rabbits due to poisoning and strangulation from these guys. We have had to rebuild our solar and generator countless times and repair destroyed water lines. I have been in the hospital due to poisoning. We have had our well tampered and gas lines cut. Our brakes have been tampered with, and our vehicle has had multiple instances of cut tires and other sabotage. In the last couple of months, we have come home on three occasions to our door kicked in and every bit of food we had emptied into the middle of the living room. On two occasions, those who destroyed our water and power then called in the police and child services, telling them that we had children out here without adequate power and water (thankfully, I had just finished the repairs when they showed up to investigate and nothing came of it – Praise the Lord!)

Drugs have a strong hold in our county. The state police told me that it is the poorest county in California, and the one with the least police presence. The particular area where we live in the county is known for its manufacturing and distribution of drugs.

It is understandable why many ministries have packed up and left. Here is the reality – there is a huge, ripe mission field. Never have I been a place that is so receptive to hearing the Gospel. With prayer and God’s provision, we can make a difference in this difficult place.

Attached are some pictures of our events and outreach over the last few months.

If the Lord lays on your heart to help with some of the expenses, or if you have a graphics or website need, please contact me. You can give directly to our family, or through our church website. Please contact me for a giving link. Either way, you will receive an appropriate receipt. Most who have helped us prefer to give through an electronic link that accepts debit / credit / ach. I can provide you a link or send you to the online giving page of our church website. You can mail a check to us or our sending church if you would like, but the mail here has proven very unreliable. Thank you for praying for us!

In Christ,
Jared & Krysta Watkins
Enoch, Ezra, Ezekiel, and EdWord

EDIT:

I was asked to make it clearer how to give. If you want to give directly to our family, here is a link:

Donate to the Watkins Directly

If you want to give to us through our church for tax purposes, use this link and choose "Watkins Family Support" from the fund drop-down at the top:

Donate through Grace and Truth Baptist Church

Old-Fashioned Day of Thankfulness

A church work day helping an elderly couple.

Flooding

Dear Friends,

I thought that I would take a few minutes to give you a family and ministry update.

Meeting in the Park

When the Lord burdened our hearts to move to California and plant a church, we “got all of our ducks in a row” – so we thought. We had a place to meet, a place to live, and work lined out to support the ministry. Things did not work out that way, as each of those provisions had hidden “strings” attached – strings by which I could not Biblically abide.

Yet, as each of these “ducks” fell out of line, the burden that God had given us grew stronger, and the need for a Biblical church here grew more evident. I spoke with my sending pastor (Steven Harper, Grace Baptist Church in Cle Elum, WA), and we determined to continue, while seeking the Lord’s direction and provision.

These circumstances led us to search the Scriptures more, and we found again and again how that Jesus’ ministry was carried out very much in public – the seaside, the plains, the mountain – places that we might call parks. We began meeting weekly in Mill Creek Park in Los Molinos, CA, and have had the opportunity to meet and work with about two-dozen families who have shown interest in growing in the Lord with our new church. They don’t all show up at once, and some are elderly shut-ins to whom we go and visit regularly. We have been meeting as a church every week, and Grace and Truth Baptist Church became an autonomous church on September 17th, 2023 (nearly one year ago).

We have been told that if we meet in the park, the weather will shut us down. Yet, even through the rainy season, we did not get wet even once. On more than one occasion, God held off the rain until immediately after services were over.

We were told that a building is essential for a church (Jesus evidently did not know this) and that our ministry would be limited without one. Yet, we have had all sorts of opportunities to reach the folks who live in the mobile home park next door, whom we would not otherwise have met. We had the opportunity to reach a group of Hispanics who played volleyball next to us every week for several months. In spite of a language barrier, they were receptive to receiving Spanish Bibles that we gave them, and instructed their children to listen and interpret for them several times.

I believe that one day, God will give us a building. We almost had one a few times. Renting a building has proven unsuccessful, because public halls have told us that they cannot rent to a church in California because of “separation of church and state.” Privately-owned buildings that are available have also declined to rent to us, because, as they put it, they have “no desire to rent to a church.” Until God provides a building, however, we will continue to meet publicly in the park; and, so far, that has not hindered the ministry at all.

Baptism, Salvation, and Baptism

One of the advantages of meeting openly in a park, and baptizing in the nearby river, is that sometimes people end up in church without realizing it.

One of the first folks to begin attending is a man by the name of Randy. Randy grew up Greek Orthodox, but trusted Christ as his personal Saviour as a boy. While in the Army, he jumped out of an airplane with a broken parachute, and decided that it was a great time to get right with God. He survived the fall, and has spent some years recovering. He has been attending church faithfully since we began meeting.

Due to his religious background, we spent several months going through what the Bible has to say about salvation, and then baptism, to make sure that he understood the truth outside of his religious upbringing. He became convicted that he needed to be Scripturally baptized, which we did in the river near the park. That baptism allowed me to present the Gospel to several families who “just happened to be there.”

One man who was there was a friend of Randy’s. He began attending services the following week, and trusted Christ as his Saviour the week after that. His name is Marcos. As I began to work with him on the subject of salvation, and later baptism, I came to find out that Randy had already began to witness to and disciple Marcos. Unknown to me, he had been taking my material on salvation and baptism that I had shared with him, and began teaching it to Marcos outside of church services. What a blessing this was!

Marcos had planned a time to be baptized when his kids and mother could be there. However, he called me one Sunday night and told me that he had read in the Bible about the Philippian Jailer, and how that he was baptized at midnight after getting saved. He told me that as much as he wanted his kids there, it was more important to him that he obeyed the pattern of the Bible, and wanted to know if I could baptize him the following day. So, we had a service that Monday, and had some more unsuspecting visitors in church.

One young lady who was there began asking questions about salvation and baptism, almost faster than I could answer them. By the time we left there, she, her mom, her siblings, cousins, and aunt, committed to coming to services, and were inviting other strangers at the park to join them. I believe that, in time, this group will grow as folks get saved and baptized and added to our church.

Pray for John and Mary

Another challenge that we needed to overcome was finding a long-term place to live. As we began to pray about it, the Lord laid on our hearts the idea of a farm for many practical reasons that have to do with the cost of living in California, as well as family and ministry-related reasons. Yet, it seemed impossible. We took it to a God who does the impossible, and He opened an opportunity for us to become the caretakers of an 80-acre farm that meets all of our needs and desires. God loves to answer prayer!

One of the first times we drove up to the farm, we met a neighbor (named Mary) who greeted us by saying that they “don’t want a preacher up here.”

Soon after this, a man (named John) got a cattle-grazing lease from our landlord, to bring cattle on our property. As the caretaker for the property, it was my job to make sure that John was following his lease, which did not set well with John. John began stealing from my landlord, and invited me to help him. I refused, which started a bit of a war. John was removed from the property, and he sued us (and lost on all counts). In retaliation, he has caused a lot of grief – from sabotaging the property, to poisoning our well tank, to vandalizing our vehicle, and more.

John and Mary became good friends, with a united vision of seeing us move off the land. Mary let John move onto her property, which gives him practical access to ours (not legally). We are praying for the salvation of John and Mary’s souls, which is the real solution to the problem. Please pray with us for this, and for the protection of our family and farm.

Laborers, Not Leaches

Jesus prayed for laborers. There are so many ministry opportunities here in California for whoever God will call, if they will determine to be laborers, and not leaches.

Dozens of churches have packed up and left California for various reasons (some economical, some political, etc.). Others have “given up” and gone in an unBiblical direction in order to draw a crowd and pay the bills. As a result, there is more ministry here than we can ever accomplish on our own.

Regularly, I have people seeking me out concerning Biblical and spiritual needs. One man came up to me in a park where I had taken my family for a picnic. Even though that is not the park where we meet, he said that we looked like ‘church people’ and that we might be able to help him. He told me how that he had trusted Christ as His Saviour, but the church that led him to the Lord had packed up and left, and he wanted to know if I knew where a church that used the King James Bible could be found. I could tell you story after story like this.

The job of planting a church in California will not be accomplished with college text-book solutions. I have been told that “if you are not running 200 or more in 6 months or less, then God hasn’t really called you there.” This won’t work for the small farm towns where God has called us.

This is one of many reasons that we did not go on deputation before coming here. To spend 2 or 4 years on deputation to get 2 or 4 years of support will net us nothing, when what is necessary is to put down roots, work, struggle, and pray with people on level ground with them, and build long-term relationships with folks who will eventually listen to the Gospel.

We have been convinced over and over that God will provide. He has directed some to support our work here from time to time, for which we are grateful. We have many needs and goals, but the same Lord Who instructed us to pray for our daily bread, delights in daily meeting our needs if we but ask.

If you know anyone who needs graphics or website work, please pass my name along, as we use such work to support our ministry. More importantly, please pray with us that souls will be tender to hearing the Gospel, and that God will raise up obedient laborers to reach the many spiritual needs that surround us.

In Christ,
Jared & Krysta Watkins
Enoch, Ezra, Ezekiel, and EdWord