Women's Ministry Tea

The women's ministry of Iglesia Bautista Vueda Nueva held a tea on Saturday, May 20, to raise support for Evelyn and Marco Umaña as God is leading them to a new opportunity for their spiritual growth ad development.  God has opened a door for Evelyn to pursue a master’s degree in Outdoor and Adventure Leadership at Wheaton University in Wheaton, Illinois.  The master’s program includes working at the Leadership Training Center at Honey Rock Camp in Three Lakes, Wisconsin.  Marco will work in the administrative and program areas at the camp and their daughter, Mariela, will continue her studies and have the opportunity to experience a new culture in the United States. 

Evelyn and Marco have been co-directors of the Children's Ministry at our church for the past seven years and will be greatly missed.  Under their leadership, hundreds of children have come to know Jesus as their personal Savior through Sunday School, children's camps and VBS.

By God's grace, Evelyn has received a partial scholarship through the Billy Graham Center Scholarship Program.  The scholarship covers almost 70% (registration, tuition, books, health insurance) of the total cost of $70,000. In order to commit to the project, they need to raise the remaining $23,000 before they can apply for their visas.

Would you be willing to help them raise the remainder of their support?  Your tax-deductible gifts may be made to United World Mission at http://uwm.org/projects/project-22040/. Please include:  Support for Study Costs of Umaña Rivas Family in the comment section.

They also covet your prayer support; please pray: 

For God’s provision to meet their financial needs in a timely manner

For God’s wisdom and instruction 

For good health

For support as they transition/acclimate to the US culture and customs

For God’s guidance to be able to complete all the required tasks before they leave

Saleeby Family in Guatemala--Sunday

Even though I've gotten behind, I felt like I should finish out the "series" on the Saleeby's visit to Central America!   Sunday morning we were up and out of the house by 8:30 and arrived at the Hotel Westin in plenty of time to help set up for the service.  As usual, it was great to see all our friends at IBVN, Guatemala, the music (led by William) was awesome and Joseph did a great job sharing his passion for evangelism.

After church, we went to Oakland Mall and had lunch and then also visited Starbucks for coffee.

Getting Ready

Vida Nueva's women's retreat is this weekend.  There's been so much preparation for this weekend and we're praying that the 140 women who attend will be richly blessed.  The theme of the weekend is "Cambio de Rumbo," which is translated, "Change Direction."

  

We will be completing a study on the life of Jonah--God asked Jonah to change direction and go to Nineveh.  However, Jonah made the decision to change his direction and go toward Tarsus--miles away in the opposite direction of where God wanted him to go.  Jonah's bad decision had consequences for him and for his shipmates.  I'll save the rest of the teaching for after the retreat.

The ladies of Hilo, Aguja y Biblia started preparing the craft for the retreat about six weeks ago.  We thought we were finished, but the women just kept enrolling.  I made 10 more whales this week and then yesterday, Maria Elena and I assembled 110 bags (have 30 more to do today) with the whale, buttons, needle, instructions, etc.  I'll be helping her during craft time on Sunday.

We weren't the only ones working on the retreat, Ena and her leadership team worked all day yesterday and are still working today to be sure everything is ready.   

Pray that all goes smoothly and God is glorified!

El Vive! He Lives!

It was great to be back in El Salvador to celebrate Easter with Iglesia Bautista Vida Nueva this morning.  Unlike in the states, Easter Sunday services are not well attended.  Because most of the country is on vacation during Semana Santa (Holy Week), anyone who is able to "get out of town" does so. 

Nevertheless, we celebrated the risen Savior today. 

 Pastor Julio preached from 1 Corinthians 15.  

14 And if Christ be not risen, then [is] our preaching vain, and your faith [is] also vain. 15 Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. 16 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: 17 And if Christ be not raised, your faith [is] vain; ye are yet in your sins. 18 Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. 19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. 20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, [and] become the firstfruits of them that slept.

Everything is different because He Lives.  Let's live like we believe it!

One more Friendship Event

On the last day of February, we celebrated the final friendship event for the month--a women's ministry breakfast.  This active ministry holds three breakfasts and one retreat each year and we always celebrate friendship in February.

Today I worked at the registration table with two other women.  We helped check in the more than 100 women who attended.  I was really surprised at how many of the women I knew--I guess that should be expected as we are closing in on five years at Vida Nueva.  I think I was the only "gringa" in the room today, as neither Rachelle nor Tiffany were able to attend.

A few pictures:

Day of Friendship and Love

For some reason February 14 is not called Valentine's Day here. So, instead, we celebrated "Day of Friendship and Love" three different ways over two days. 

FIRST CELEBRATION:  On Saturday morning the 14th we had a potluck breakfast with our discipleship group.  Not wanting to miss the opportunity to share "gringo" food, I signed up to bring biscuits and gravy.  This became a possibility when I saw that SuperSelectos, my grocery store, began carrying various kinds of Johnsonville sausages, including traditional breakfast links.  Of course, the down side of biscuits and gravy is that there are no canned biscuits here--they have to be made from scratch.  So bright and early Saturday morning I was making a triple batch of my mom's biscuits and a huge pot of gravy.  It's hard to believe that not everyone at the breakfast wanted to try them!  Ryan, Keeley, Stephen and I managed to eat our fair share.  Several weeks ago Stephen and I ate breakfast at State's Diner and I posted a picture on Facebook with the caption, "best biscuits and gravy in El Salvador."  However, after Saturday, the four of us decided to amend that statement to "second best."

The company and the rest of the food was also great, as we hadn't had the whole IDEM group together since November.  

SECOND CELEBRATION:   After being up early to cook, we decided to go out for dinner.  We really didn't know what to expect in terms of whether the restaurants would be busy, but decided to risk it.  We walked to our favorite Chinese place which is called 168, and found it less than busy.  The food is always good and, in fact, when we were in Kansas City over the holidays we thought our former favorite Chinese place was just okay.  Guess we've come to appreciate the restaurant here.  It was a great night to walk, and we're loving the fact that we're in a safe neighborhood and the 4-5 block walk is something we can even do after dark, as long as it's not too late.

THIRD CELEBRATION:  Sunday afternoon I was privileged to share with the single mom's ministry at our church.  This month's theme was "friendship" so we learned what some famous people had to say about friendship, including Helen Keller who said:

and Charles Dickens who said:

and, of course, we passed out Hershey's kisses after reading this quote.  Got to keep your audience involved!

However, we spent most of our time talking about what the Bible has to say about friends and friendship. Not surprisingly, it's quite a lot, including telling us about the friendships between Job and his friends, David and Jonathan and Paul and Barnabus, to name a few.  It was so much fun to share with them and Ena did a great job translating for me!   

The Unexpected

Our "flying" day on Friday was long, long, long!  We left Daniel and Shannon's house at 6:00 a.m. and arrived at our apartment just before 11:00 p.m.  Our flight was delayed out of Houston--we didn't take off until almost 7:00 p.m. (original departure time was 5:40 p.m.)  Once we made it to El Salvador the immigration line was as long as we've ever seen it and we even had to wait on the luggage.  There was only one person working the customs line so that also took a long time.  The unexpected (for Stephen)-- Nelson and Rosemarie were there to pick us up and it's a good thing because with six pieces of luggage I don't think we could have fit in anything other than a van.

Yesterday, we slept in and tried to get back on Central Standard time.  We put away everything in the suitcases, including getting our new drapes (thanks, Daniel and Shannon) up in all three bedrooms.  We didn't leave the house yesterday--well, we did, but not in our truck.  The unexpected--we walked to La Pizzaria and had a great dinner.  .

This morning we had quite a few things to take with us to church, so we thought it best to drive.  The unexpected--our truck battery was completely dead.  Unexpected--the walk to the hotel was less than 15 minutes.  It was great to worship at Iglesia Bautista Vida Nueva and have the privilege to hear Koky Lopez preach this morning.  (His sermon will be the subject of another blog post later in the week.)  

William and Gilma brought us and the jumper cables back to our apartment, and we were able to get the truck going.  The unexpected--evidently, the life expectancy of a battery here in El Salvador is about four years.  So you can imagine William and Gilma's surprise when we told them we've had the same battery since we bought the truck in July 2010.  Guess it shattered all the records.  

Our next stop was Pricesmart where the mechanic announced that our battery was operating at less than 38%.  We are now the proud owners of a new battery and will mark our calendars for January 2016, when, most likely, this new one will fail.  

At least we were able to do our PriceSmart shopping at the same time.  The rest of the afternoon was "as expected."  Stephen went for a run and watched the football games while I went to the regular grocery store.  

Even with the unexpected, we're happy to be home and looking forward to a restful week before we travel to Bogota, Colombia for the first campaign of the year and first ever campaign at our first church plant in South America.

Two Days in Guatemala

WEEKEND--The campaign officially started on Saturday evening; but we were up early on Saturday to meet the Valley Baptist team for breakfast after their red-eye flight from LAX.  Happily, the hotel had agreed to allow them to check-in when they arrived at 7:30 a.m., so all but two of them opted for rest rather than breakfast.  It didn't matter, though, because breakfast at Capistrano is always good and even better when sharing it with friends like Nelson, Rosemarie, Fabi, Camila, Don Laity and Gary Nelson.  It was a great start to the week.

The team from Oakland Baptist Church, Corinth, Mississippi, arrived at the hotel about 2:30, and barely had time to check-in before leaving for the evening campaign.  Stephen headed out with them and the group from Valley.  

There was still had so much VBS prep work to do that I didn't go along; instead, I stayed back and worked on curtains, buttons and sashes.  

Sunday mornings during a campaign are one of my favorite times of worship.  It is so amazing to see how worship unites the body of Christ across all barriers--cultural, language, economic, etc.  Pastor Nelson didn't have a translator so he did his own translating--first point in English, followed by first point in Spanish.  It was kind of a simultaneous translation by the same person.  At the end we had a sweet time of prayer for VBS.

Sunday night the Oakland Baptist group left for the campaign at 3:30, while the rest of us set Colossal Coaster World VBS in the hotel salons.  I think we were half crazy by the time we finished!   

Out of Order

Since I haven't had Internet access , except in the business center, I haven't downloaded any of the hundreds of pictures we took.  I also haven't written anything about this amazing week.  So, this morning as I wait in the lobby where I can get an hour or so of free wi-fi, I thought I would let everyone know that the next few posts on this blog will definitely be "out-of-order."  That is to say, out of chronological order!

Today we are checking out of our hotel and returning to Nelson and Rosemarie's house for the night.  They asked us to stay through the "super fiesta" on Sunday and we were happy to do it  It will give us another chance to see many of our VBS kids one more time.  Rosemarie and I are planning to fix thanksgiving dinner today.  There will be a turkey, but not sure about the rest.  I have what I need to make a pumpkin pie, but don't know if I'll have time or "oven" time to fix it.  Anyway, today is a great day to be thankful for everything God has done this week. 

We will head home in one of the vans from IBVN San Salvador (with a small group of Salvadorans) tomorrow after the morning service.  We have a busy week, put I WILL find time to update the blog so I can preserve the memories of this awesome week.

Catch-up Post (2)

We worshipped with our Guatemalan friends at Iglesia Bautista Vida Nueva on Sunday morning.  We have many friends here and it was so good to "reconnect" with them--even better knowing that we will be back in two weeks to help with VBS.

There are always some "firsts" on a trip like this--this time it was singing the old, old hymn, "I've Got a Mansion Just Over the Hilltop," or, in Spanish, "Bellas Mansiones Hay Alla en la Gloria."  I found a youtube video of Elvis singing it, but decided you could search for it yourself if you're interested!

Worship time

Nelson is an awesome expository preacher; he has been preaching verse-by-verse through the book of 1 Corinthians.  We know this because he was just starting the book when we were in Guatemala for 8 weeks in the summer of 2012.  This Sunday's message was on 1 Corinthians 12:12-13.  

Corinth--A church growing in a difficult city

Congregation listening to the message

Small group prayer for VBS

Signing up for VBS donations

 Stephen and Charlie

 Claudia and Andrea working at "Centro de Informacion"

 Gloria Hernandez and her husband, Guillermo, from El Salvador were there
helping to plan the evangelistic events for the November campaign.