Thursday, March 28, 2013

The last of our Palm Sunday goodies...

I told you earlier how we had a meeting before church with the church leaders and how they voted to use the offering money to help a family purchase land where they could eventually have a home built.

Well, during that meeting a man rushed into the church and yelled, "A house is burning"! We leaped to our feet and raced up to the smoke to find the 'stove' inside the bamboo home of the above mentioned family had caught on fire and was about to ignite the bamboo. (The entire family was away at the time and would never have known a fire had started until it was much too late.)  If that happened the entire home would be gone in minutes! Fortunately God had us assembled close to the house and right beside a water faucet...with spare buckets sitting there empty!!! We all filled a bucket and headed to the house, and as you can guess we were able to extinguish the fire with no damage to the home.

God has a target on this family and it clearly looks as if He's telling them; "despite the fact you got evicted from your previous home, despite the fact that your husband is out of work, despite the fact that it looks as if you will never survive; I'm watching over you!!!"

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

More Palm Sunday news...

I recently told you of the Lord calling Eduardo to salvation on Palm Sunday. Now, here is some more good news from that same day: Usually our church service in the village begins at 3:00 p.m., but this day we needed to have a meeting with the church leaders and so I arrived in El Doradito at 1:30 to meet with Marina, Cynthia, Armando, Inez, Carlos, Avellino, & Liliana. We had to make some decisions and I didn't want to make them for them, I want them to begin to talk through their options and then decide together what course they will take.

Our options this day would be how to best utilize the offerings we had collected. I presented two choices for them.

  1. we need benches or seats in our church so we don't have people standing around the sides of the building. Previously we thought we might have a team coming to purchase the lumber and build them for us, but it looks as if they may not be able to come, so...we must do something.
  2. recently a new family moved into the village and constructed a bamboo house. They have 6 small children and the recent rains came through their patch-work tin roof and soaked all their beds. Joyce and I purchased a tarp to cover the house and some of the villagers helped us to get it up and secured.   While working on that the Lord planted the idea of trying to make it possible for them to get one of our homes. This family relocated here because the husband/father was out of work and they were evicted. They were squatting on this land. I asked Inez to inquire of the owner if he would lower his price for this small piece of land (about 1/3 the size of a normal lot) so we could purchase it for the family. He agreed and gave us an incredible price. I told our committee about this and then asked them  to discuss the two options and decide which they would like to do, or if they had other options to present them.
The church had 6049 limperas in their offering...that is incredible; remember this is the poorest of the poor who have given this to the church. I propose that Wellspring of Life pay for 1/2 of the land and the church the other 1/2. Their cost to purchase the land would be 5000 limperas. After some discussion they agreed unanimously to purchase the land for this new family and welcome them to our 'family'! This is huge! Here newcomers are seldom welcomed, but now our new believers were clearly seeing the needs of strangers were greater than their own!

I think they even surprised themselves with this decision. They knew something was different; normally they would've looked only to their own needs, but now, with no coaching, they reached out to someone else without consideration of their own needs. They said, "we can make seats another time!" 

There is more, but ....it's for another post! It's just so neat to be able to stand back and watch God do His work!

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Our Palm Sunday gift...

God blessed us mightily this Palm Sunday. We have many blessings to share with you, but this must come first. Andrea, the older sister of Fabi, Mauricio, and Angel, who accepted Jesus on Christmas day at our house invited a friend of hers to our house this morning to hear more about Jesus and God.

Her friend's name is Eduardo and he knew of God, but was confused as to whether or not he even believed in the existence of God. However, God had been working on him; he came with a desire to learn more. This morning Joyce, Fabi, Mauricio, Andrea, and myself all sat down with Eduardo and 1st talked about nature and how the perfect fit of everything together had to point to a higher power...someone had to put all this together. Eduardo was able to agree with that and we called that higher power God. From there we went through the gospel starting with Genesis 1, creation, the garden, Adam & Eve, the fall, and the resultant curse upon the earth and the sin nature in all of us. We talked our way through the sacrificial systems of the Old Testament and finally came to Jesus and His work on the cross and the following resurrection. We told him of the free gift of Jesus and that it could be his if he chose it, if he ask for it, if he could confess it and believe it. After quite a few questions he decided that gift of the cross sounded like something he wanted in his life.


And so today, Palm Sunday, Eduardo was ushered in through the Lamb's gate, his name was etched in the book of life and there was a grand celebration in heaven for one its' newest members! Thank you Jesus for this precious gift!



Eduardo is now one of us!!!



Sunday, March 17, 2013

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Emergency room run...

Yesterday afternoon I spent 3 hours in the emergency room with Fabiola. She came home from school complaining of pain around her heart. She said she'd been playing soccer and after she stopped if she breathed heavily the pain increased. We decided we better be safe and headed to the E.R.

After an EKG, a Chest X-Ray, and complete blood work-up most everything is fine, except muscle inflammation around her ribs and heart cavity. She has some meds and topical cream to apply, and is off soccer for the next 5 days, but other than that she is fine. We're grateful for a non-serious report.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Another great Sunday in El Doradito...

Sunday we had an awesome church service in El Doradito. We've been talking with the people about changing their way of life "paso a paso", one step at a time and Sunday we got to see how some of them are taking that to heart. We've been encouraging them to step out of their comfort zone and to begin to take part in "their" church services!

Sunday we had two original songs performed by two different individuals, we had a new praise and worship leader (his first time), we had an ad lib "thank you" delivered for Will, and we had a skit performed by our youth to say good-bye to Will.

This was Will's last Sunday in the village and the people went to great lengths to let him know he'd made a difference in their lives, that they will never forget him, and that they will miss him. They even prepared snacks and drinks to help celebrate at the close of the service and that's no small effort for a village that is far below the poverty line.

God is growing His people and we are seeing fruit coming in bunches. Now it's our responsibility to see that the enemy doesn't 'pick' any of this fruit. Please join in prayer with us to set a hedge of protection around the people of El Doradito as they grow "paso a paso"!