Hello Everyone! I trust that you had great week. We are still trying to get adjusted to being back home. I haven't completely gotten back on schedule but we are progressing. We started school Monday morning with Teddy and for the most part that went really well. Especially considering that he had 3 weeks of vacation! :-) We are right on schedule with school though and I am thankful for that.

Tony made the 6 hour trip to the town of Buena Fe to preach at the Ecuadorian Fellowship meeting. He took Wilson and his son Julio from our church with him. They left Friday afternoon and drove to Santo Domingo, where they spent the night with Joe and Sylvia Wells and then drove the hour from there Saturday morning into Buena Fe. Tony said things went well and they made excellent time on the trip home yesterday afternoon arriving back around 6:15 or so.

We had great services this morning. There were 100 in attendance for our Worship service! The terrace was very full. We had 72 adults! We had several first time visitors. Some of course are from other areas, just visiting our city, but we had several that live here in Manta. That was a blessing.

This Saturday the ladies are having a fellowship time in honor of those who have birthdays in January. Please pray that there is a good turnout for this. I am excited as this is something that they have taken the imitative in and are doing all the planning for.

We will be starting up our weekly small group meetings again this week. Usually we meet in different homes, but this month, we are just going to have one meeting at the church on Wednesday. We hope to start back up in at least a couple different homes the next time around. Please pray that people will take advantage of this opportunity for fellowship, prayer and baby study.

I would also ask you to be praying for me this week. I really need to get the next semester of Sunday School material organized and ready to hand out. We start a new semester the middle of February, and since Tony, Teddy and I will be taking a short 4 month furlough this spring, I need to get the whole semesters worth of material done, instead of the usual 13 week quarter.

We are thrilled to see how full our calendar is for the planned furlough in the US. We are thankful that the Lord has given us the opportunity to not only visit many of our faithful supporters but has also opened the door for us to be in several new churches. Please be praying with us that the Lord would prepare the hearts of those we will come in contact with and that we will be able to raise the money necessary to begin construction on our new church building. We are excited because we just about have enough money raised at present to pay for the plans and permits we will need!

Thank you so much for your prayers for the work here in Ecuador and for our Family around the world! :-) I had the opportunity to "chat" with Mandie a couple times this week and they are doing well. She and Ioan both had check-ups last week and they are both doing great! Ioan is over 11 pounds now and has already grown an inch! Ashley and Lexi are both doing fine. They are both getting ready to start classes again. They are both excited about their upcoming weddings and both spending a lot of time making plans! In case I didn't mention it before, Lexi and Jonathan got engaged right before Christmas and they are planning to get married on Jan. 1, 2009! So we will have 2 weddings in the not to distant future.

God Bless you as you serve him this week!
Joy