The last 2 months have been ones of celebration in the Anzalone house! We have celebrated 3 birthdays and the kids enjoyed Halloween, and we also enjoyed celebrating the Ecuadorian Holiday, "Dia de los Muertos". Then we had a wonderful Thanksgiving here with just our family this year. Teddy was a little concerned at first when he realized we weren't having company, because he thought if there weren't a lot of people here we wouldn't have a "feast" as he likes to refer to it. But we put that notion to rest! :-) We had all of the classic dishes, and everyone was stuffed when dinner was over!
What fun we've had celebrating the joys of life and marking special days as a family. It is neat to see how the kids have grown and how God is continuing to mold us into a family. A tradition of ours is to start decorating for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving. It has been a joy to see the kids faces light up as we pull out things that they remember from last year. Carla mentioned the other day, that this was her 2nd Christmas. Tonight we started our Advent Celebration. One of the things we talked about was the giving aspect of Christmas, and that we wanted to think of people that we could give to this year. Each of the kids thought of someone that they wanted to do something for. It is so good to see them want to be generous to others.
The church is growing. We had another evangelistic outreach in Jaramijo yesterday. This one focused on the children. There were about 40 kids that came to the program. People from the church went and invited people and handed out about 300 tracks and invitations. Our 4 puppet teams from the church, each presented a small skit. In between the skits we had fun activities and music. At the close Tony presented the plan of salvation. At the end 12 boys and girls accepted Christ as their Savior!! What a blessing! Today, we had a great service. 134 attended the worship service and one man accepted Christ as his Savior at the end of the service.
Tony has 2 Bible Institute classes going now. Appreciate your prayers for him and for the students. Also we are ready to get more things done on the building. Work on the walls of the auditorium should be continuing soon and we are getting tile put in the large class on the main floor of the Education Building. Exciting times!!
The Ladies are planning a Christmas Tea for Sunday afternoon, Dec. 18. Appreciate your prayers for the planning and that this would be a great outreach opportunity for the Ladies Ministry. I am very thankful for the ladies helping with the planning and organization of this program!
One more very special blessing for our family, is that my parents will be traveling down to Ecuador on Tuesday and staying for a month! We are so excited to have them here for Christmas! Carla and Matthew are very excited about meeting Grandpa and Grandma, and of course Teddy is excited to have them here for a visit! Please pray for safety as they travel.
Blessings to you and yours!
Joy
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