Sunday afternoon...

Good afternoon everyone! Hope your Sunday is going well. We had good services this morning, even if our attendance was down. The "official" count was 64. Our kids classes were down and we had many regulars out for various reasons...Even with that, we had 1 first time visitor and several returning for the 2nd time, so we were thankful for that.

Yesterday 5 of the younger women came over to our house for a time of fellowship. We had a great time together. Each of them are struggling with different areas in their lives. Two of them have unsaved husbands. Please pray for Paola and Janneth as they witness to their husbands. Pray for Javier and Edwin to accept Christ as their Savior.

We just got back from the service in Portoviejo. There were 17 present there. Please pray for this struggling work. Pray that God would bring the Ecuadorian Pastor that He has for this church.

Tomorrow we believe they are actually going to get down to work at the property! We are very excited about this. We have very limited funds and we are trusting the Lord to supply what is needed for each step of the way. Please be praying with us about this.

I have to share a little blessing...I think it is just amazing how the Lord uses children to encourage and bless us...

Tony has Teddy on an "envelope system" with his allowance. He has an envelope for his offering, another for "spending money", one for "long-term savings" and one for "short-term savings". I don't know if he has figured out the difference in "long-term" and "short-term" savings but over all he is doing really well with it. He totally understands the idea of savings as he saved quite a bit of money to take to the US when we went at Christmas, and used it to buy Christmas presents and then had some left over to do some "shopping of his own".

A few minutes ago, I noticed he had all his money out and he was counting it. I asked him what he was doing, but he was a little vague in his answer. Then he brought Tony an envelope full of money and on the outside, he had written as best he could..."money to help buy Bibles for the people at church". Tony told him that was really nice, but that we had some Bibles and we would be getting more so he didn't have to us his savings for that, but Teddy insisted that he wanted to add his money to the fund. He put in all the money he had, except what was in his "offering envelope" because that was for the church and the missionaries. What a blessing to me to see him growing in generosity and tenderness, toward the things of the Lord. To hear us talking about a need that many of the people have for a Bible, and then decide on his own, that he wanted to do something about it, more than he wanted to buy a new toy.

I pray God's blessings on your week, your family and your ministry!
Joy