Children's Christmas Outreach

Our Christmas children’s outreach event was a huge success.  Thanks to everyone that donated to make this special day possible!  We hosted 80 children and their families.  Each child and their family received a simple lunch and enjoyed games with a clown.  They all heard a simple presentation of the gospel, and each child went home with a small gift, bag of candy and cookies, and a piece of Passover bread (a Christmas tradition here.)  (Passover bread is sweet bread with raisins and sprinkles.)  There were a lot of happy kids!

It was also a blessing to see the people of our mission serving the Lord eagerly.  They helped to decorate, make and serve the lunch, organize gifts, and pass them out.  Then they all stayed to help us clean up afterward.  It’s exciting to see our friends serving their community gladly.  We also discussed our plans for Christmas Eve.  Everyone from our mission will be gathering at our house to have Christmas dinner together.  What an incredible honor to be able to have more than 30 Ecuadorian friends here to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, after being here for only 3 short months.  God is good!  May you focus on the greatest gift at this time of year – Christ gave us himself!  Merry Christmas!

First Worship Service

The Sunday before Thanksgiving, we hosted our first worship service here in our home.  We had 13 people here plus our family and our good friends, Christie and Preston Burton, and their children.  We sang a couple of Spanish worship songs together with the help of Youtube, and Trevor preached a message about the atoning work of Jesus.  He also translated it into English for our friends.  At the end, two people, a brother and sister, both committed their lives to Christ.  Their mother is already a believer, and we are praying fervently that their father (who regularly attends our Bible studies) will also place his faith in Jesus.  It was an exciting time here at Misión Bautista de Santa Ana de Los Cuatro Ríos. 

After our service, we put up our Christmas tree (our friends had asked to help) and decorated it.  It was interesting since Christmas lights here do not have outlet plugs at both ends, so we had to figure out how to get the end of each strand plugged in to a power strip on the floor!  Afterward, we all sat down and had a big meal together and enjoyed visiting. 

It is also exciting to see our people taking an active role in ministry.  Two of the men in our church here met a young lady at the market whose family had fallen into very difficult times.  They initiated and planned how and when to help this family.  Yesterday, Trevor went with them as they delivered grocery items to the family and one of our men was able to share the gospel with the family.  We will be visiting this family again soon.

The coming weeks will be a busy time for us.  On December 21, we have a large outreach planned to distribute gifts, candy, and cookies to needy children here but most importantly, to share the gospel with them and their parents.  Please pray that God would use this time to help us serve the community and to be able to meet more people here.