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

Some VBS pictures...

The Intermediate class this morning getting ready to share a song they learned this week.

The preschool and primary classes receiving their certificates this morning.

The Intermediate class met on the terrazzo Friday and Saturday nights.

The primary class, Saturday night.

The preschool class working on their activity, Saturday night.

We had a great week here in Manta! VBS went really well. We had over 50 kids every night. A great turnout of workers. Everyone had a great time. This morning for the closing program with had 134 in church. We had a great turn out in each of the children's classes and a few parents visiting to see their kids receive their certificate.

There were 20 at the service in Portoviejo, so that was good. 4 visitors. Please keep this work in your prayers. Pray that God would send a permanent pastor to take over.

This evening Tony had his Bible Study and then at 7:00 we had an "Annual Meeting". It went really well. It is exciting to see how the Lord has blessed this work over the last year.

We are hoping to get the construction started this week...looks like it might not start until next week. Pray for that. We need a "general contractor" and that still isn't settled. Everything else is ready to go.

We appreciate your prayers for the ministry here in Manta. God bless you as you serve Him this week!

In Christ,
Joy

Carnival Vacation

Good morning everyone! This week-end is "Carnival" here in Ecuador. The kids are all out of school and most people are off work today and tomorrow. The traditional thing, besides for everyone who doesn't live on the coast to go for vacation...is to throw water on people. These days everywhere you go, you need to be on the look out for water balloons, water guns, buckets of water, cups of water, whatever... No one can tell me where this tradition of throwing water at people came from, but everyone seems to have a great time!

Our family had a good week. We had a great trip to Santo Domingo last week. Enjoyed very much being a part of the Valentine's banquet at Iglesia Biblica Bautista Rey de Vida. Tony also preached there Sunday morning. This is their "Missions Emphasis Month" and it was special to be a part of that. We also enjoyed a few days visiting with our good friends, Joe and Sylvia Wells. We returned home Tuesday evening, and pretty much hit the ground running. Wednesday was the Men's and Ladies Bible Studies in Portoviejo. Thursday I had a few visits to make...Friday one of the ladies from the church visited me, and Saturday was our monthly Ladies meeting here at the house. We had 14 and I thought that was pretty good, considering this is a "vacation week-end".

We had good services yesterday. Not sure what the attendance was, but estimate it was in the 80's. We started our new Sunday School class yesterday, so now we have 3 children's classes. Pre-school, 3-5 year olds, Primaries 1st-3rd grade, and Intermediates, 4th-6th grade. We also have a class for kids 7th-10th grade.

After our church service here in Manta, we headed over to Portoviejo and had church there. Then back home, to get things ready for Bible Study and our last meeting to organize our "mini" VBS. Things seem to be ready for that, and we are excited to see what the Lord does through this outreach. We will be starting Thursday evening and going through Sunday. This is the first "VBS" we have done one our own here, so we have been excited to see the response of the people and look forward to the blessings God gives us this week.

Thank you for your prayers for the ministry here in Manta. I pray that each one of you have a wonderful week!

Blessings,
Joy