We had a great day worshiping the Lord! The attendance was down, but we are so thankful that God is working in the hearts of his people. Please remember to keep this work in your prayers.

Upcoming events...on Friday the Leadership team and their wives will be coming over to our house for a small Christmas party. Then on Sunday morning, the kids at church will be receiving their Christmas treats and Sunday evening we will be having a "Family Christmas Party" at church...We are going to be having a "Birthday Party for Jesus!" The church will be providing the meat, which we are grilling...and everyone else is helping by either bringing rice, menestra (lentils), salad, colas, plates, cups, napkins, forks.... This is all a "new" idea for the culture here, so we will see how it works. "Potluck dinners" are not a normal thing in Ecuador! :-) But everyone seems really excited about it and is looking forward to a great time. We will be exchanging ornaments...each family that wants to participate has been bringing ornaments and putting them on the trees at church...The ornament has their family's name on it. The idea is that we will exchange them and then each family will pray for the family whose ornament they receive, during the coming year. We have also asked those that would like to participate to bring a wrapped "birthday gift for Jesus". These are to be toys that we will be giving out to the 2 children's homes in our area. We are looking forward to a great time of fun and fellowship!

We are excited and looking forward to Christmas at the Anzalone house! We have been baking and decorating. This week we are planning to do some shopping. I pray that each of you has a wonderful week as you prepare for this most precious time of you!

God Bless you!
Joy

Some pictures....

Just about finished decorating for our Ladies program, "Fantasia de nieve"(Winter Wonderland) Saturday morning. I have to say it was pretty strange to have "snow" in Manta! :-)


Some of the ladies that attended Saturday's program. Everyone seemed to have a great time. Here they are listening intently to my lesson...They are really trying to figure out what in the world I'm trying to say in Spanish! :-)

These are the 9 people that were baptized a couple weeks ago, with Tony. We are so thankful for the work the Lord is doing here! Many lives are being changed!

The Ecuador, BBFI missionary family on Thanksgiving Day at Joe and Sylvia Wells. We had a great time! (we missed you Jenny!)

Christmas is coming!!!!!!!!!!

Can you believe that Christmas is just 16 days away?!?!?! Yes we are counting down here at the Anzalone house. Teddy would have us counting the hours and the minutes too, but we will just stick to days. :-)

We have had a very busy few weeks here in Manta. We were able to enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving with our friends Joe and Sylvia Wells in Santo Domingo. We joined all the other BBFI missionary family for a wonderful day of fun, fellowship and thanksgiving.

Two weeks ago, we had 9 precious baby believers follow their Lord in Baptism! What a wonderful day.

Last Saturday was our special Ladies Christmas program. We had 39 ladies attend and had a wonderful time.

Our church attendance the last few weeks has been very good. God is working and changing lives. Of course anytime the Lord is working, Satan doesn't like it! Please pray for the work here, and especially for the leaders, as Satan is attacking big time. Pray too for the new baby Christian that sometimes get caught up in the "crossfire" for the attack.

I pray that God richly blesses you as you serve him in the place he has put you.
Blessings!
Joy

Amazing Love....

I started a new Bible Reading plan this morning. The idea is to read through the main stories of the Bible in chronological order in 61 days. So today I started with Creation and the Fall of Man. As I was reading, I tried to envision what this world must have been like...I mean, over and over again, it says and "God said it was good". WOW! Then he created Man and Woman in his very image. Pure and completely innocent. God would take time each day to come down and "walk with them". Then the day came when they disobeyed God, and it all came "crashing down" around them. Suddenly, what they thought they wanted, really wasn't what they wanted at all!

Yet God still came down and sought them. He still came looking for them. I often wonder what would have happened if Adam had taken responsibility for his sin...instead of "passing the buck" to Eve...or if Eve had taken responsibility, instead of passing it off on the serpent. We'll never know. This passage is really very sad, except when you remember that God still loved them, he still came seeking and he still made a way of salvation.

Oh, Amazing Love, how can it be, that thou my God wouldst love me?

Praise the Lord he still comes searching for us today!

We had a great day yesterday! 124 people packed out our temporary meeting room. The men are working on getting the roof on the 2nd floor so we can use that for our services, and put the children in the classrooms downstairs. Not only are we pushing the limits on all classrooms, but we desperatly need a nursery! There were at least 5 little babies in the service yesterday not counting the little children under 2!!!! What a wonderful problem to have. :-)

Pray for this Saturday, as we have a special Ladies meeting, where we will be making a craft. There are at least 50 ladies already signed up to attend. Pray too, as plans go forward for our special Christmas Event we have every year for the Ladies. This year we are planning to have it at the church on Dec. 5.

Tomorrow, I will be meeting with Cecila and Jessica to go over plans for our Children's ministry. Wednesday night we will be having a "Prayer Meeting/Bible Study" at the church. Friday evening, Luis and Melanea will be coming over to visit with us, and talk about plans for the young people. These are just the "meetings" I am personally involved in. Tony has several other things on his plate as he works with the men to keep things moving forward with the construction, and everything else. Pray too, as Teddy and I focus on school every morning.

Thank you for your interest in the ministry here in Manta! God bless you as you serve him where you are this week!

Joy