Sunday's Visits

This is the creek that we have to cross to get to the second town.

Are you sure about this?

When this creek floods, it becomes impossible to cross by car, never mind on foot.

The only other life that we saw crossing the creek: a heron

Sunday was a busy day. John preached in the morning. He did an excellent job talking about John 21 and "Follow me." I think this was his best sermon. Our prayer is that the Lord will use His Words to impact people's lives. We were very happy to see the other family, who is a little upset at the pastor, in church. The wife is ill and needs surgery, but with socialized medicine here, she has to wait for two months before a bed is available. I mentioned before that they had both lost their jobs, so the husband was at the capital working with his brother who is in the air conditioning business. They are both electricians by trade. He still hopes to find a job around here because living away from his family is not a good solution to their problem. They hope that this is just temporarily. Please pray for this situation.

After the service, we took some people from the other town home. One of them, a man, is the owner of the property where the church in this little town meets, the one with just a tin roof and four poles. This man is a cabinet maker. The other day I was telling John that it would be nice to have a bench by our front door. Our front porch needs some decoration. So we told him this, and he suggested that we stopped by his house because he has some books with pictures of furniture that he uses to show customers and get a better idea of what they want. We sat on his front porch and asked him about his testimony. Wow! He has been a Christian for a short time. The Lord brought him out of a life of addiction. One night he was in a fight and somebody split open his head with a machete. He was not expected to survive, but the Lord gave him another chance. He had heard the Gospel before and in the middle of his ordeal, he reached for the Lord. This happened in December '09. He started attending church and during the revival in June 2010 with the dwarf from the Dominican Republic (See June 2010 blog "Revival"), he went forward. Last month, a year after the fight, he was baptized. Now he has a church meeting on his property. He considers himself extremely blessed by the Lord, beyond anything he even dreamed about. Every time we talk to somebody from one of the churches we are blessed by their testimony! Anyway, he is going to gives us an estimate on a bench and two rocking chairs.

After our visit with the cabinet maker, we drove to the pastor's son's house. It is near the big church. His son, an only child, is married with two children, a three year old boy and a one month old baby girl. We had lunch and talked about possible candidates to head the work in our town. The guy we like, who leads the music occasionally, does not want the responsibility of visitation because he works full-time and comes home late. It is a 45 minute drive just to get to town. There is another possibility, but there are doctrinal issues, and we are not sure that is the Lord's will. Keep praying that the Lord will bring the right man to take on the ministry at our town.

We got home at around 3:00 pm and had to take a nap because we were going to meet another family for dinner. These are also good friends, but not believers, although we have shared with them, and even last night we shared. He works here in the Hacienda and is of great help setting up the couples' event. We went to the same restaurant for the 3rd time this week. There are not too many options around here. We got home at about 10:00 pm. Today we are resting. A friend from the capital was supposed to come see us today, so we did not schedule anything, but we haven't heard from him. Well, we need a little rest after yesterday's activities.

Until next time...from the beach...