18 months ago we packed up everything and made the journey from Canada to our partner country in Latin America. Every day it feels more and more like home and the direction from God to be here is affirmed.
A lot has happened in this last year and a half, and we love to share stories of how God is at work.
The property we purchased has been blessed with the funding coming in for projects. We finished our community centre in March of this year and we are about halfway through phase two with the addition of a kitchen and bathrooms. Praise God for the way He has provided for the ministry in this way. We use the community centre for a variety of purposes, from our sports outreach program to kids camps, to events for some of our partner ministries. With the addition of the bathrooms and kitchen, it will open up to a lot more. We are praying about starting a feeding program in the near future.
When we arrived here we had our plans held in our hands but our palms were open to see how God would use our yes. We have started a dump ministry, working with vulnerable children and families working and living in and around our local garbage dump. They sift through all the garbage to find any plastic that they can sell for recycling and this is how they “support” themselves.
Most don’t go to school and when you see a 7-year-old little girl chasing after your car to be the first one to get to your garbage it does something to your heart. We have been visiting them weekly, building relationships, and bringing food and basic necessities. We are also trying to work with them in the area of education so please pray with us about how that can be developed. We share some Bible stories and it has been a blessing to have various local Pastors and community members helping us with this ministry.
Kait works in a residential program for women and children rescued from prostitution and human trafficking situations. Our program there is simple right now with crafts and games for the kids and building relationships with the women. God has laid some pretty big dreams on our hearts to further this ministry in the are of education and job opportunity. Please pray with us as God puts the pieces of the puzzle together.
A couple of nights a week Greg runs a sports outreach program for our local community. Young men from 14-30 come out and play soccer. We try to have a local Pastor or ministry leader there to share a devotional and time of prayer and recently Greg has been partnering with some other sports outreach programs to get the guys more involved with other similar communities of men.
The culture here is very competitive and once a month or so Greg arranges a tournament for 5-10 teams to play against each other, complete with a trophy on the line. This has been a great opportunity to intersect local teens of the church and non believers.
We have had some camp days but with the number of kids that show up and the lack of bathrooms, we’ve run into some problems. So, we have been gathering ideas and planning events but have put them on hold until the completion of phase 2 of the community centre.
We also partner with a discipleship program and are gearing up to host a big event for 350 youth and church leadership. Protege is a 7-book discipleship curriculum that is in 23 churches with about 500 students. The goal with protege is to strengthen the local church, build a leadership team and develop their youth programs, which then have outreach events in their communities. It has been amazing to see what God is doing through Protege.
We have also become the directors of the kid’s ministry program at our local English-speaking church. We are looking forward to working with the missionary kids as they serve alongside their parents here in this beautiful country.
We continue to homeschool our children, and they are currently enjoying their summer break. We are praying about schooling opportunities for the coming year.
Just a short update on how much God can do in 18 months.
