** As you read this story, you have to put into perspective the fact that we still don’t fully understand Spanish so the language barrier made this situation more difficult to discern. **
This morning, Bobby & I left the kids to play at a friend’s house and we headed to Quito to teach a children’s ministry workshop. On a busy street not far from our house, several different people on different sides of the road – different blocks kept pointing fervently at our tire and trying to tell us something was wrong. We pulled over and were looking at the car when a man approached us dressed in mechanic’s clothes and said he saw the tire wobbling badly. He began to look at the interior side of the tire and pulled out a plastic part that was broken. He told us he was a mechanic and could fix this for only $2 but that it was a very urgent and serious problem.
So he got into the truck with us to take us to his shop. All the way he kept telling Bobby to drive slowly and carefully (furthering our panic over how “dangerous” this problem was with the car). He took us to a place about 4 blocks away from where we started out but it wasn’t a business, just a spot on the side of the road that wasn’t so busy. He ran to the corner to get his tools and another person to help.
They lifted the truck with our jack and the new guy started working under the truck. He had Bobby turn the engine on and keep turning the steering wheel different directions, etc. After a couple minutes, he had Bobby get out and look at the problem. One of the bars for the steering system (connecting the tire to the main bar) was loose. They kept asking us if we’d hit a pothole or something. Well of course, you can’t drive 2 feet here without hitting a pothole so that was a rhetorical question. The new guy said the whole bar needed to be replaced and showed us the problems, etc. He said it should cost $20 and he would go buy the part and show us the receipt, etc. Now we were sitting without any ability to drive away because that bar had been removed – so we agreed.
The man returned with an “engineer” from the parts store who was dressed REALLY nice – his coveralls had all the appropriate logo patches, etc. This man had with him a box with the new part we needed. He showed us every little part … the bolts, the washers, the whachmacalits… all had the stamp showing they were made in Japan, etc. He gave those to the guy who was doing all the work and that guy began putting the new parts on our truck. During this time, they kept telling Bobby to keep the brakes pressed and told me to sit in the car also to balance the weight. The “engineer” began talking to us and writing up the receipt. He wrote down each little part of the apparatus and then began saying each little piece was like $80 … totaling up to $800!!!!
Well, of course, we knew that was insane so we began fighting with the man (all the while the other guy is finishing the repair work). He eventually gave us a “discount” to $600. At this point we called a taxi driver friend to see if he could come and help us. We didn’t know what street we were on so we asked the men to tell us. They told us an incorrect street name sending our friend to a completely different section of town.
The man finished the work and we were still fighting with the engineer. We were asking one of them to go with us to our mechanic that we know and whatever price our guy said was justified, we would pay. But we were not going to pay them anything without verification. The engineer tried to get us to leave a deposit with him, etc.
Eventually, I walked ahead a little bit and saw a street sign and realized we were lied to so we called our taxi driver friend and got him pointed in the right direction. We continued to maintain our ground and not pay anything. One by one, the men walked off to do this or that and when our friend arrived, the 3 men were nowhere to be found. Our friend informed us that we had been tricked. They didn’t change ANYTHING on the car. We looked underneath and sure enough all they had done was clean up our parts and put grease all over them. So we just drove away and went to our regular mechanic. In all of the banging to show us the damage, they actually DID damage something, but it is nothing major and can be repaired for $20.
We were very blessed that God protected us in that these men were only scam artists and not more violent criminals who would harm us and/or take the truck.
Of course, looking back, we can now see the whole elaborate scheme and cannot believe that we fell for it – but we DID. We thank God for protecting us in our ignorance. I think if we had fully understand the language we would never have fallen for this – but we did! This group was VERY organized with at least 5 different people in on the scheme and VERY well dressed.
Eventually, we made it to our workshop – 2 HOURS LATE – but everyone had waited on us and we ended up having a great day.
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.
Our family has really been under fire from the enemy these last couple of months. Each of us has experienced various illnesses and other physical and emotional attacks against us personally. But I stand in the midst of trials to say that our God is triumphant through it all. I won’t spend time here explaining all the various events we’ve endured recently, but I would like to talk about HOW we’ve made it through. Hopefully this will bless someone today.
Remember God is WITH us through this.
Get up and FIGHT! So many days, I’ve wanted to just hide under the covers. And, in honesty, some days I HAVE! But overall, we have to continually remind ourselves to NOT PANIC, NOT HIDE, but to put on our Godly armor and STAND with Him.
Let go and Let God! (yeah I hate clichés but this one fits) When we are praying and listening to God in the midst of trial, we have to HAVE FAITH that He will see us through in His own way. It may not look like the ideal in our minds, but we need to have faith that He knows what is best for us. I heard a really cool speech by Phil Vischer (the Veggie Tales dude) where he reminded us that we have to let go of OUR dreams and ideas and plans and give it all to God and let Him make what He wants out of them. Sometimes we have to kill our dreams to do what God really has planned for us.
Lean on someone else! As Christians, we are called to bear one another’s burdens. Don’t try and go through this alone. We have found great help from the friends and family we’ve shared our struggles with and received so much help and love from them.
Don’t get stuck in the mud… think ahead! Try to remind yourself that these struggles are temporary and that there will come an “end to the tunnel”. You WILL make it through this. We learn to endure things we never thought we could before. God strengthens us in ways we never expected. Remember that He can change our sadness into joy in His time.
Keep laughing! Now I’m not saying to put on a phony smiley face and pretend like life’s OK when it’s not. BUT, for our family, laughter is a big part of who we are. Even in the midst of the most frightening situations, there are things you can laugh at. So work to find those and enjoy them for the fleeting moments that are possible. Laughter is healthy
Keep your eyes on Jesus! Remember Hebrews 12 and fix your eyes on Jesus.
Guard yourself! The Bible tells us to always be on guard … to not give the enemy a foothold (Eph 4:27). How do we stay on guard? Stay spiritually READY! Don’t let things slide like prayer time, studying the Word, etc. Take it from ME … when we do let things slide, we are hit harder when things start going wrong.
God is bigger! Back to Veggietales … I love the episode where they sing “God is bigger than the boogie man… He’s bigger than Godzilla or the monsters on TV… oh God is bigger than the boogie man and He’s watching out for YOU AND ME”Does it get any better than that? *giggle* God’s Word clearly states that all authority belongs to HIM. The enemy is NOT sovereign… he is NOT more powerful… GOD IS!
So if you find yourself in the midst of troubles and trials cling to these thoughts and keep on walking with God. Here are some verses that will help: James 1, 1 Corinthians 10, 1 Peter 4, Job.
Thank you for everyone who has been lifting up our family in prayer. Even though it’s been tough, we KNOW you are praying for us and we know that God is with us. It is evident that His hand is upon us when we see all the ministry doors He has opened for us just this year. (More about those below)
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!
PRAY for our ministry
