Monday, February 29, 2016

February, 2016 Newsletter

Leap year and leap here and there.  Every month seems to be even more filled with activities and studies and we are very thankful because that is why we are here.  Busy days fly by.  We had asked Jose to paint a mural on the wall in the children's class room at our new location so he did that on the first day of Feb.  As he worked we talked about their decision to become Christians and as the month went on and we had more studies we were really hopeful and expectant that he, Kelly and their son Kiki would be baptized soon.  As of this time they still have not but they are attending a lot of activities.  We hope to have them over for dinner and a study next Monday night to tie them over while we are back in Huntsville for 2 weeks in March.  At our first Wednesday night service in Feb. we had 10 visitors and we also had 20 people in our house for a Thursday night Bible study.  So far, we are experiencing that mid-week is a better time for people to come than on Sundays since that is a day that many people work here or it is the only day of the week they do not work and so the only day they have for any travel or having out of town visitors.  We decided by vote to change the time of our Thursday night home studies to 6 instead of 5 because of people getting off from work and the kids here getting out of school at 5:30.  One of our Thursday night gatherings was in the home of Jose and Kelly, and when we set the schedule for families to take turns cleaning the church building Kelly volunteered to do April so it is clear they are feeling a part of the family here but they understand that they are not part of God's family until they are born into it.  We also had a ladies’ event in Juayua and Salcoatitan.  We have a schedule now of every 1st Saturday for a ladies’ event in Juayua and the same event to be held in Salcoatitan on the 3rd Saturday.  Charlotte was the speaker for the Feb. event and the theme was Flowers for Me.  She spoke about Lydia and along with lots of food, (all prepared by Charlotte) there was also a craft session of learning to make paper flowers. Each ladies’ class had about 15 visitors.   We also had a movie for the teens in Salcoatitan and then here in Juayua.  Ours was not very well attended because we invited the class from the school next door where we had visited to begin teaching some English.  They were very enthusiastic in receiving the tickets but the class age was 14 and they probably were not able to get permission from their parents and we did not have a chance to see them again before the day of the movie.  The next one will be at the church location and we plan to go door to door in the neighborhood to invite people as we do for the other events.  We did get to show the movie to Jose, Kelly and Kids on Saturday night after the teen event and then again on Tuesday night for Don Santos, Sonia and Jimmy as well as Socorro.  It was “Facing the Giants” and everyone who did see it really liked it.  We had a 4 hours session during one of our weekly leader's meetings in Feb. to plan all the details about our mission team from Central coming in July.  We had to finish up the planning over a pupusa dinner at our house on the following Sat. night but we have a good plan in place.  Charlotte has had numerous meetings with Elisa planning the children's classes for Sunday as well as some long meetings to get ready for each ladies' event.  Sometimes we say that it seems like all we do is meet about things but without organization it is not possible to do anything.  We cohosted the monthly preacher's gathering in Salcoatitan and although we had a low turnout and lots of food left over, the meeting still went an hour over schedule because of a visiting speaker who was not given any time until after we had already gone the full regular time on the usual stuff.  

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