What's Happening?

"Happy Monday Morning!!"  It's been quite some time since I just gave you a ministry update from here, so I'm going to try to share some "highs" and "lows" with you this morning.

The church attendance here has been moving steadily up, for which we are thankful.  Yesterday we had 141, with 4 first time visitors.  We had a great VBS the end of March.  We are so thankful for about 30 workers who showed up every night.  We had extra people helping in each class, taking care of our registration and attendance, passing out snacks and helping with crowd control.  The young people worked with their teacher to do a skit each night that went along with the Bible Study they kids had in class.  We had others working with puppets.  They also did a short skit each night,  in our opening time, that introduced the theme.   We had a high of 86 kids and teens on Friday night.  Many of the children have continued to attend Sunday School, these past few weeks.

Tony has started back into our regular Bible Institute Classes.  He had taken a month to do a seminar on discipleship.  Then they had 3 weeks off of classes...1 for VBS one for "Holy Week", (everyone is off here!) and the week after Easter our family had a vacation.  Appreciate your prayers for him and for the students.  He is presently teaching 2 classes on Thursday evenings.  1 at 7:00, Life of Christ 4, which is for the people in the first 2 years of study.  Then at 8:00, the Principles of Teaching.  Which are for those who have completed the first 2 years, and want to study more.

As with every church there are "growing pains", and we certainly have our share!;-)  Confrontation is never easy, nor is it something that we go looking for, but at times it is necessary for the health of the church.   In one case a couple who has been attending our church for 6 years, decided that they weren't in agreement with some very fundamental doctrines, but instead wanted to be able to teach doctrines that they had learned years ago, while attending a church in Quito.  Tony and I had known for a little while now, that something wasn't right, and had been praying that God would do a work in their heart or move them on.   So this past week, when they came to us, and said, that they felt they needed to move on and find a church that would agree with what they wanted to do, we knew that it was God's answer to our prayers.   It is never easy to go through these situations, but we are so very thankful that God worked and yesterday when Tony announced to the church that these people were leaving, there was no major reaction.  It was as if the majority were already aware that it was going to happen, and that it needed to happen.

We are also dealing with another situation that I would ask you to be praying with us about.  We have had to confront one lady in our church who has not had the right attitude toward leaders in the church or toward other families.  At this point we are still uncertain of what the outcome is going to be, but we do know that God knows and that he is in control, so we are placing it all in his hands.

You know, over the years I have learned that the more Satan is attacking the closer we are to seeing God do something AMAZING!  During these days we appreciate your prayers for wisdom...to speak when we should speak and to be quiet when we should be quiet.  :-)  Also that in all of this, God would be honored and glorified.   That His work would move forward.

Upcoming events...this Saturday we will be having our first "church wedding"!  The people are very excited to be involved in helping to give Maximo and Mercedes this special wedding.  Please pray for this sweet young couple as they form a Christian home.   In two weeks it will be Mother's Day!!! I k now you knew that, it just has seemed to creep up on us! ;-)  The ladies will be having a special breakfast during our Sunday School hour.  This is always a very special day here.  It is a great opportunity to get people in church who normally do not attend.  Appreciate your prayers for all the preparation and that we would have many visitors.