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!