This newsletter is a little bit late, but … WOW! April was a really busy and blessed month! Here are some quick highlights and photos.
Tamitha’s Mom came to visit
We had a beautiful time together enjoying Ecuador.
Easter procession
We learned a lot about the Catholic traditions here in celebration of Easter. They host a huge procession with people carrying crosses and beating themselves as a way of paying penance for their sins. It made me REALLY thankful for the freedom and grace in Christ that we embrace as evangelicals.
Thanks to a donation of fantastic materials in Spanish from Charles & Mary Hollifield (Timothy Ministries & Services), we have been teaching children’s ministry workers in how to understand personality traits. They have enjoyed discovering insights about their own personalities and those of the kids they work with and understanding how best to work together.
Resurrection eggs
The indigenous churches in our area were so excited to receive this awesome teaching tool to use in their children’s ministry to teach the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. City of Refuge (the ministry we worked with in Atlanta) donated as many sets as we could get in our luggage. This type of resource is something these churches have never imagined having for their own use. We have heard many reports of how this made such a difference in their services and in helping to disciple these precious children.
Teaching session in Latacunga
We began teaching indigenous church leaders in a new district this month. The people are so hungry to learn how they can better reach the families in their communities. We’ve already heard from one pastor who left our training session re-inspired to build the church who has now grown their children’s ministry to 80 kids!
As you can tell, God has richly blessed us with ministry opportunities in abundance. These things are all in addition to our regular work at the seminary! We are thankful for each of you who help to make this possible through your prayers, encouragement and financial support. We send lots of hugs and thanks to the folks at Harvest COG who worked so hard to host an amazingly successful fundraiser yard sale on our behalf.
It all began with teaching about family devotion time while we were in one of the rural Indian villages.(read about that here)When we realized that none of these families had Bibles but that they DID have a huge passion to learn more about God, we knew what we had to do.
Thanks to so many of you who contributed to this event. We were able to distribute a beautiful, illustrated Bible in children’s language (most of the adults can’t read past an elementary level if at all) for EACH FAMILY in this village!
The day we distributed the Bibles, we brought Vicki along with us. She is a student of Bobby’s at SEMISUD who has a passion for those often forgotten. We gathered the community together in the church and explained the gift we had for each of them. As we were explaining how to use the Bibles, etc. we realized that these precious folks don’t even know things like the Bible has an Old & New Testament!They are really starting at level 1.
But you should have seen the looks on their faces as they admiringly stroked this beautiful shiny Bible that was now their very own! This is a treasure they will cherish.
Vicki will be returning to this community bi-weekly to continue teaching them about God’s Word, how to use the Bible in their own homes and even will be teaching many of the women how to read!
We look forward to continuing this Bible distribution in more communities as funding allows.
Thank you to everyone who made this possible!
Watch this fun video from the distribution day
Click here if the above video does not appear http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8149074589524175592
The first weekend of March, we were blessed to attend the Church of God FOCUS conference for children’s ministry leaders. This is a conference we have attended in the past and has always been a huge inspiration to us.
This year, we had a booth to promote our mission project where we sold lots of crafts made by the Indigenous people of Ecuador. Of course, we almost didn’t get to sell them because the airline lost ALL of our luggage for about 1 day!
We also taught a conference about teaching our church kids to be “mission minded”. This was a LOT of fun! We saw lots of children’s leaders with a true passion for helping their kids reach outside themselves to help fulfill the Great Commission.To follow up with this, we have created a website for all those who work in children’s ministry…. check out www.missionmindedkids.com… register to stay up to date as more ministry ideas are posted.
One night of the conference, the speaker was Phil Vischer (the dude who created VeggieTales). It was such a hoot when he introduced himself and then went into all his various voices (like Bob the Tomato). The crowd went nuts as if Elvis himself had just entered the building!
I have a new project! I’m tutoring one of the girls who lives at the orphanage where our kids attend school. Grace is an amazingly bright and hard-working 11th grader who has lived with the Stiff’s for 9 years now since her parents died.
She has worked as a translator with many of the visiting medical teams and because of this; she is passionate about becoming a dentist! One generous family in Atlanta has agreed to sponsor her to come and study in the US. In August, she will be moving to Atlanta to finish high school and go on to college and medical school.
My job is to help her with her writing skills, SAT prep and whatever else is necessary to make sure she has a smooth transition to her new school. This girl really challenges me though, she is so self-motivated and DETERMINED to reach her goal. It is really inspiring!
PRAY for our ministry
