Women's Ministry Outing

Yesterday about 90 women from our four campus sites spent the day together to celebrate Mother's Day.  We met at the Miralvalle campus and loaded the bus to drive to our campus in Lourdes.  

After a delicious catered typical breakfast (eggs, fried plantains, rice and beans) we met in the sanctuary for a time of praise and worship.  Isabel Paloma shared a powerful testimony about how we have many rolls to fill- as daughters, sisters, wives and mothers.  

Next we boarded the buses and journeyed to Ataco, a small pueblo in the northern part of El Salvador.  Once we arrived, everyone was free to shop at the artisan markets and then eat lunch on their own.  Ena, Erlen and I walked up to the top of one of the hills and had coffee at Mission of the Angles, a small boutique hotel and restaurant.  The views were spectacular.

We visited a few shops and then went to eat at Vitto's Pizza.  We were about finished when it started raining, in fact, raining cats and dogs or like they say in El Salvador, raining snakes and frogs.  It rained really hard for about 20 minutes and since there is little or no drainage in the town, the street looked like this.

We thought it best to wait for the water to recede before heading back to the bus.  It took about 20 minutes, but we were finally able to cross the street.  

Celebrating 25 Years in Turlock

La Familia De Dios, the Spanish speaking congregation of Turlock Covenant Church, celebrated it's 25th anniversary on Sunday, March 5.  We made the one hour, 40 minute trip to arrive in time for the 11:00 a.m. service.  William, Gilma and Amy Flores were there for the celebration, as well.  Her brother, Samuel, is the pastor.  

The service had everything--contemporary worship songs, at least one hymn (How Great Thou Art with William on the guitar and Stephen on the piano), singing and dancing children, recognizing one of the "founders" of the church, video memories and a guest pastor.  If that sounds like a lot, it was--the service was nearly three hours long!  

After the service we had lunch with William, Gilma and Amy and then returned to the church to help with the celebration dinner.  Former staff members and others were recognized at the dinner.  It was a great way to end the celebration.  We left about 9:30 p.m. and made it back to Sunnyvale before midnight.   

Dinner with Friends

We flew to California on Tuesday, September 13, and Daniel picked us up at SFO about 4:00 p.m.  We had a quick dinner with the family before Daniel left for Bible Study Fellowship.  Afterward we had some time to play with the grandkids.

Wednesday morning after breakfast we drove 3.5 hours to spend some time with William, Gilma and Amy Flores.  We started by having lunch with William and Gilma at In-n-Out!  

After lunch we followed them to Porterville and checked into our hotel.  Once Amy was out of school, they picked us up and we went to Gilma's sister's restaurant for a Salvadoran snack--first time we've eaten "real" Salvadoran pupusas in the states and they were really tasty.

William and Stephen went to church early to set up for the Wednesday evening service.  Gilma, Amy and I joined them just before the service started.  It was a special praise/worship service with Stephen singing (in Spanish), William singing some of his original songs and then Stephen playing along with William for some congregational songs.  It was like a little slice of Iglesia Bautista Vida Nueva!  We ended the night with ice cream.

Thursday morning we had breakfast at Black Bear Diner.  They had biscuits (the size of hamburger buns) and gravy which was a pleasant surprise for Stephen.  After lunch we began our 4+ hour drive to Santa Cruz to spend the day/night with our son, Jon.

Bogota Campaign, Part 2

The whole team was in town and ready to be picked up by the bus on Sunday morning.  Iglesia Bautista Videa Nueva, Bogota is no longer meeting in the Holiday Inn hotel, instead they have their own place and we were all excited to see it.  

It was a great time of worship with people from the church, Costa Ricans and Salvadorans.  Randy Adams preached and David translated.  

We even celebrated Father's Day with them!

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.

Sunday--Guatemala Campaign

Worshipping with the local church is always one of the highlights of any campaign and Sunday was no different.  We sang some praise/worship songs and then two hymns, "Great is Thy Faithfulness" and "How Great Thou Art."  Although both were in Spanish is easy for the team members to sing along in English.  Nelson preached in Spanish and then after each point did a brief translation in English.  He made it seem easy, but I know it had to be very tiring!  

Because children's camp was still going on, we didn't seem as many familiar faces as normal.  Most of them were counselors/teachers at the camp which didn't end until Sunday afternoon.

Stephen and I did a quick orientation after the service to welcome teams from all three churches, Faith Baptist, NC; Bay Life Church, FL and Calvary's Cross Baptist, NC.  

It was a short afternoon, but we were on board the vans and bus by 4:00 p.m.  Translators for the week are assigned the first night that the whole team is present.  Once everyone was matched up they began the process of sharing Jesus door-to-door in the neighborhood. Salvadorans, who don't translate, set up the inflatable, sound system and the rest of the equipment.

Stephen and I both made some new friends, but best of all, there were 40+ professions of faith.