Happy New Year. The end of
January marks one year since we arrived in Ataco. We have now moved into our 4th
different house and are involved in the beginnings of new churches in two
places. Jan. 3rd was the
first service for the church in Salcoatitan and Jan. 10th was the
first service in our new location here in Juayua that is only for the church
and has a sign out front. The first half
of Jan. was one long celebration with parades, lots of loud music and tons of
food and sweets for sale in the streets.
We successfully avoided the sweets and the street food, survived the
loud music and took in the parades. We
also started several new studies in Jan. as well as continuing most of the ones
we already had going. This month is also
the time of coffee harvest when many people work long hours because of the
extra work available in the coffee fields.
Because of that and the celebrations we often had hit and miss on our
studies with people not being at home.
We did have good attendance at our services with several visitors coming
for their first time. Just this past
Wednesday night our former landlord's family came to our night service and he
had also come to our first service in the new location. Then on Thursday night we had 20 people in
our house for a congregational home study.
Jose, Kelly and their 2 kids came and it was the first time for Jose in
months plus Socorro came and it was her first time to any service. We also had most of our members who live here
in Juayua. We had a husband and wife who
are in the church move to Juayua, actually they moved into the house we moved
out of, they are Mario and Seyli Lara and he has been a preacher for many years
and they will be working with our group as well as the group in
Salcoatitan. Though we did not have a
big event in the month of Jan. we did continue our weekly meetings with the
Salcoatitan team and now we are alternating meeting in our building one week
and theirs the next. We plan to spend
most of the meetings in Feb. discussing what our team from Huntsville will be
doing when they come in July so that Charlotte and I can share that with those
who are coming when we visit back in March.
We had lots of illness in our church group this month but so far
Charlotte and I have been able to stay fairly well. She continues to cook tons as we often have
people over as part of our ministry or fellowship and just last week we started
having free sweet bread, cooked by Charlotte of course, and coffee in front of
our building to try to talk to passersby and invite them to services. On our first Saturday we had 28 people stop
by. At least we are getting more and
more familiar with the people here and have studies on almost every street and
several on some streets surrounding the new location. It is a lot better with the space we have for
adults and nice class room space for the kids.
We are continually being blessed far beyond what we could possibly have
hoped and are praying fervently that several of our studies will soon bear
fruit and we ask for your prayers also for Jose & Kelly, Nelson, Don Santos
and Sonia, Wendy and Oscar, Alba, Socorro, and others I cannot think of at the
moment.
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