Marching through chapters

It seems time is going much faster than normal! The novelty of living in a new place has worn off for Tabitha who asked several times yesterday if she could go home. She is obviously fully aware of the changes around her and keeps asking if we can go in the aeroplane.

Andrew finished formal work this week. We were both invited to La Raza on Thursday evening for a special meal with the team and a kind of formal goodbye before the church service. Andrew spoke and it was a good time, though difficult emotionally. It was a foretaste of the difficult goodbyes still ahead and yet we are looking forward to being reunited with friends and family.



We mentioned last week that we have our house on the market and were looking for a car. Well praise God we now have a car and it seems there are a couple of viewers interested in the house. Hopefully something will come of that. We patiently wait for God's timing and continue to be amazed at how He blesses.

It was fun this week to go a pick out some games equipment for the new play area at La Loma. We have arranged that the first group to use it will be MOPS in a couple of weeks. We are so excited about how this simple addition will facilitate in the children's work and see families added to the church and to the family of Christ.

This week we will largely be focussing on packing and goodbyes and appreciate your prayers for our health and stamina. Pray too for the MEFI team as they start this new chapter of working together. Pray that they will continue to be unified and experience God's blessing in numerical and spiritual growth.

In Jesus' arms

We are in a state of shock and sadness having just heard that Miguel's grandson passed away this morning. Miguel is our pastor, the supervisor of the MEFI team and the president of our church movement (UNIFAM).

A couple of weeks ago we were told that little Jocsan was sick and last Friday he was admitted to hospital. He was just 16 months old. It seems that had pneumonia.

Please pray for this family. They are devastated as you can imagine. Pray particularly for Jocsan's parents - Isabel and Eliseo. Isabel is expecting their second child.

La Raza

Day by day we are seeing great things. On Monday we had one of our street kids from years ago come back. He needed to talk and is worried about the accommodation that he is one of the leaders of. It is a street home called 'Casa Cuauhtémoc'. The founder is a psychologist who just lost his mother last weekend. The kids fear that he will close the centre down. Andrew talked to the founder on the phone to express our sympathies on behalf of the team and Alex and Paty will be trying to meet up with him to see if we can encourage and also start a house church there. Pray for an open door and a time to minister to him. This man has done many wonderful things for street kids over the years.

In the evening we had 60 adults and 9 children to the Independance day party. 15 from our sister church about 10 minutes drive north of La Raza, and the rest La Raza regulars and locals. What an answer to prayer. Many of the regulars to Thursday night bible study brought friends and kids from the holiday bible club came with their families.

7 Haitains came again on Monday and again on Thursday night this week. we have spoken to our wonderful Spanish teacher Tania, who many have been praying for to be saved and she is going to give Paty and crash course in how to teach Spanish to the Haitians this Thursday morning. They are very keen to get help to learn.

Street kid work was very exciting too. Monday saw 5 kids saved through discipleship and on Tuesday the team sat to talk about motivation and discipline resulting in some good deeper conversations. Please pray for one young man from the La Raza group who speaks excellent English and to whom the teams from Oklahoma 'visited with' every time they came to work on the centre. He has had a rollercoaster time since the last time we had contact but is coming everyday again and we pray that we will finally watch God work in his life.

And so Andrew begins his last week in La Raza as part of the staff. Pray for him as he shares with the kids for the last time and preaches on Thursday night. Pray that he will share the Gospel filled with the Holy Spirit.

On the move

It's been a busy week! We've done a lot of sorting, packing and lifting and that's all before Friday when the movers came and took all our furniture into storage. It will stay there to be used by new missionaries coming to the field in the next few months.

Margaret and Andrew headed off with the guys to reload the furniture and boxes she and Robin had in storage which gave Robin and I a little bit of time to try and clean the empty space.

By Friday evening we were installed in our new accommodation for the next 3 and a bit weeks before we leave. We are in the seminary building in the apartment used by teams when they come here. It is an excellent facility and the kids seem to have transitioned well. They think we are on holiday as we are all sleeping in the same room so they are quite excited. With the extra dormitories we have extra space to spread out our stuff for packing. Though most of the sorting has been done we still have a bit of work to do to reduce what we want to transport home into nine suitcases that fit the weight and size requirements!!!!!

Our idea is to have that done as soon as possible so we can spend the last couple of weeks with dear friends.

This is Andrew's last working week. He finishes on Thursday evening preaching at the service in La Raza. It's really beginning to feel real now and time will fly by.

As we finish here we are also planning for our transition back to the UK. Our house in Coleraine is on the market and we are looking for a car. We appreciate your prayers as we trust God to work out all the details. Obviously we can't really start looking to buy in Scotland until we have sold our house in N. Ireland.

Our new ministry assignment is getting more and more exciting as God continues to move pieces and open doors before we even get there. We'll post more details about that later.

It's a strange time for us. Mexico has a piece of us and it will be difficult to say goodbye to people (permanently in many cases). We are also excited about what is ahead. By the changing circumstances the kids now know something is going on but they are doing well. Tabitha remembers some of the highlights from our trip home in April and is looking forward to reliving them. Apart from seeing everyone again she is looking forward to getting her Snow White dress from her cousins, new welly boots, a school bag and lunch box and visiting the farm!

What's happening at La Raza these days?

Glad you asked. We had a good week last week ending up with 19 kids on Wednesday. This is hard to handle and 4 of the kids had to be removed for bad behaviour. After that everything was good. We had a team visit us for the day on Monday from Kentucky and 2 kids started their discipleship with Alex. We have had another look at how to use the time with the kids and decided that everyone should be in Discipleship two days of the week apart from the teaching times everyday. We may go for more as we see how the groups respond to time with their mentors.

Thursday night was wonderful. 7 street kids turned up, 7 Haitians and then others from the community adding to a total of 27 people. We are so encouraged. Monday night is a 'Noche Mexicana' (Mexican night) to celebrate Mexican Independance from Spain and so we are teaming up with another UNIFAM church that started out a year before us. They are coming to us on Monday. It will be wonderful to share time with them and eat some the typical foods of the occasion.

So for prayer? We can only ask that you pray for powerful times with the kids in their discipleship times. Pray that Alex, Fidel and Paty will be filled with the Spirit and redeem the time.

MOPS

This is our MOPS team with some of our kids - between us we have 9!

We started on Thursday. There were about 9 mums and I finally gave that talk I had planned from ages ago. It was a good time and we're hopeful that the word that we have started again will get around quickly.

Work is advancing quickly on the little waste area that we are converting into a playground thanks to the gifts from home. We can't wait to see it finished. Please pray with us that we will find good prices for the play equipment and that this new facility will be a means to bring many people into the church and more importantly to Christ.

All means...

Once a month Andrew and the MEFI team join the other church planters for training. This week they learned how to make anti-bacterial hand gel among other things. So if you need your hands disinfecting Andrew's your man!

Actually it's an evangelistic tool. Since the outbreak of Swine Flu people have become a lot more concerned about personal hygiene and the idea is that by teaching people how to make the gel they will be able to establish contacts that may lead to people coming to know Christ.

In and Out

Robin and Margaret have been staying with us for about 3 weeks since they got back from HMA (deputation) in the US. They have been busy looking for a house in that time and we are delighted that they finally found one... ours!!! Our owner reduced the rent and so they have found a great place to stay.

Here we are at work. As I take our stuff out of the cupboards Robin is filling them up again with their stuff!!
One thing we are really excited about is that they will have ongoing contact with our neighbours. We have built up such great friendships with some of them over almost 3 years.

Our plan is to move all of our furniture out at the end of this week and move up to the seminary where there is an apartment we can live in. We'll also be able to repack our suitcases as we seem to be running a little over our allowed weight - no surprise there!! We appreciate your prayers in transition time, especially for Tabitha. She seems to be doing well so far and is excited about seeing her relatives in Northern Ireland.

Flood

It's raining outside. It was raining outside when we wrote the blog last week as well. Just after we finished the electricity went off. It didn't come back on until 17 hours later!

It was later on Monday evening that we got a couple of calls from friends asking if we were ok. We decided it was time we looked at the news and found that there has been some severe flooding about 5 minutes down the road from us.

I don't think we have ever been this close to such flooding before. A sewage pipe burst and many people have lost varying amounts of their possessions. We do have friends who live there but thankfully they weren't the hardest hit. We have heard some sad stories of people who had to swim out of their houses and over roofs to get to safety.

As we pray for those affected we give thanks for all the effort, local and international, to try and help these people. We are also so grateful once again for our protection.

We're not sure why we have all this rain. It's pretty cold and quite overcast a lot of the time which is unusual for here but perhaps it is a good way of breaking us into the weather we are about to travel to in a few short weeks!

Here are some photos from the flooding...

La Raza

A great bunch of kids coming to the centre are enjoying their time, talks, and play. Members of the team were commenting on how much easier this bunch are, but it will be sure that the team are more used to the set up, so the kids find a much more experienced team who are better equipped to cope with the problems that the kids throw at them.

We went through the statistics of the last wave, so here they are for your prayers and praise.

We had 76 kids come through the door since the end of March. Of those 33 came once, maybe twice to check us out or get some free clothes. 24 came 4 or 5 times and 4 came for 2 weeks in a row. So we had 15 steady attenders. Wonderfully 16 kids prayed to accept Jesus as their Saviour and 9 left the streets 3 of whom returned after a few months. We have no contact with the others except that they come and visit.

So are you as encouraged as the team is? We hope so. Praise God that He is molding the team and as they sat down this week to think about the next 'year' ahead there was a wonderful unity of purpose and determination to keep working and praying for fruit. This week, apart form ministry of course the team will be refining the day program and weeks activities to maximize their time.

Thursday night had 19 people come two of whom were kids. Praise God that even though we had to cancel the service for the general assembly, we still had our regulars and others come for the teaching time. Can we still count the 3 Haitians who came just as Fidel was finishing the sermon? They came in and stayed for coffee and a chat.

Escuadron 201

Today we were down in the south of the city. Andrew was preaching. What a privilege to be able to communicate with such dear people. We were also asked to lead the worship at the start. Andrew sang of course and I played the almost four octave casio keyboard with no sustain pedal. It crossed my mind that it would be funny to hear what more accomplished musicians than me would sound like if placed in a similar situation. I would love to see the video...

Over the last couple of years Andrew has had regular meetings with the pastor, Cesar. We just love his family. His mother-in-law was recently admitted to hospital. She was released but later suffered four mini-strokes at home. Thankfully we heard today that she seems to be doing much better. She is finding it hard to walk but will start rehabilitation this weekend. Pray for Cesar and Irma in particular at this time. They are keeping Irma's mum in their house. They really have a full plate with lots of services and ministry during the week. We are thankful that this lady is a Christian and hope that she will quickly regain her strength.

Ministry @ home

A few months ago we were blessed with the visit of a ladies' ministry team from the US. It was a particular privilege for Robin MacKinnon and I to sneak some time with a MOPS mentor mum. Amidst all the great advice she talked about the blessing as mums of being able to minster from our kitchen table. Admittedly it is difficult at times to get too involved in ministry outside the home. The work seems unending never mind fitting in with different sleep routines and over here the time it takes to get anywhere.

Well, Saturday was definitely a home ministry day. We started off with the MOPS La Loma leadership team. Between the four mums we had 9 kids. While the kids played I gave a pizza class. We hope that the girls will be able to raise some money to help support MOPS after we leave. The pastor has also told them that the church will be able to help financially.

The pizza passed the first test - our kids. Now we need buy-in from a few others...

After lunch we had a big planning session. We plan to start this Thursday and I will be giving the talk I didn't give last term. Of course we would appreciate your prayers if God brings it to your mind. I will be helping to organise the speakers up until Christmas. There is a huge need for help with MOPPETS, the kids' group. The girl who leads at the moment is involved in church planting and may have a house church opening up on Thursday mornings. In any case we really need a team of people to help there. Please pray.

On Saturday evening it was a lot of fun to have Joe and his host family come over for dinner. Margaret and Robin have also been staying with us while they look for a house. As the house empties of furniture, toys and nick-naks it is great to fill it up with friends and laughter.