When a month has a fifth Sunday, VidaNueva Baptist Church holds one service at the Crown Plaza Hotel. Last night Jeff and Stephen spent 2 hours helping move equipment over and getting the screens and projectors set up. The technical and sound guys were there for hours longer. It's so much work, but having the whole church family worship together is really awesome. There were about 650 adults at today's service and probably another 100 kids. The service was amazing, with great music from the worship band and praise team, music from two guest singers, a video about plans for growing the church and expanding ministry options and an insightful sermon from Pastor Julio. You might wonder how we fit everything in, well, it's not that difficult when the service is 2.5 hours long! Of course, everything has to be broken down and returned to the church building when the service is over. I think it was almost 2:00 when we got home.
Our schedule is about to change with the addition of three days of teaching each week. We have Spanish classes on Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning from 9 to 11. We teach on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday afternoon from 1 to 3. Stephen has band practice every Wednesday evening at 7:00 and we have church on Friday night at 6:30. Please pray that we are able to balance all areas of the ministry and be good stewards of our time.
Stephen has been hanging out at the basketball court with some of our neighbors. They are pretty impressed with his shooting. :-) Just tonight two of the high school boys asked about our church, and said they might want to go with us sometime. Please pray that we can be Godly examples for these two boys and that they will be go to church with us on Friday.
We are continuing the process of pursuing our residency in El Salvador. The next step is for the church to start putting together the paperwork necessary to apply for a religious visa. We're hoping that we we will be able to make our first trip to immigration by the middle of September--stay tuned for updates.
It's such a blessing to hear such good news! It is wonderful that things are going well. Although we miss you, we know that you are exactly where God wants you to be.
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