Praise to the Lord

For He is good.

The Customs papers have arrived. All is Done. All is Finished. We only had to pay 560 dollars.


So, within one week, we received Neil's visa and the Customs paperwork, all done.

I cannot tell you what a relief this is.


We are overjoyed.

Lesson to be learned. When you want to ship a container, talk to the experts first. Not your buddy. Lesson over.

Good-ish news

As you may know, we have been waiting for over 2 years for our stuff to be liberated from Customs. We have jumped through all the hoops time and again.
Tuesday, we found out that the paperwork had finally gone through. All we needed to do now was pay. But now they say that we need an agent, (more money) and they said that we were trying to liberate too much. So now we have to pay. We don't know how much. Could be 500 dollars, could be 3000. We won't know until goes there tomorrow, which means an overnight bus ride to Santiago and a 2 hour bus ride to Valparaiso.

Please pray for us. We are a tad stressed.

The things I hear

For World Cup, Neil got our TV hooked up to the cable.
Our cable is international, so we get commercials from everywhere. Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Uruguay, Argentina, the list goes on and on.

So, we were watching a commercial about a fabric softener that keeps smelling good.....for months!
That was their pitch. You didn't have to wash things for months because they still smelled good.
My goodness. There in really nothing I'd like to leave unwashed for months, no matter how good it smelled!

These things only happen to us!

A new family started attending our church. Dad, Mom and two boys. They seemed nice, they had a charismatic background, but weren't attending church. They seemed nice enough, but the lady was kinda strange. She hated the fact that we didn't have women preachers, since her Mama was a preacher. She insisted on calling me the "Pastora" even though she was corrected often, and by everybody. But that wasn't enough. When we had a big preachers conference, with Bro Bill Smith as the speaker, she got up to give a testimony that lasted 10 minutes....and the she broke out into song! We were so embarrased. She was well behaved for a while, but then just last June, during the visit of our sending pastor, she got up again to give testimony. Not in her seat, no, she had to go forward. Unfortunately, Neil was in the baptistry, about to baptize when she started her show. You see, she had just come out a few weeks prior, of a major operation to remove a tumor from her liver. She was so thankful to the Lord for healing her that she promised God to go to seven different churches to give testimony. Not only did she give testimony for another 10 minutes, she lifted up her shirt to reveal her scar, and all of her chunky midsection! The church was packed with about 175 people. I was sitting at the piano, wanting the earth to open up and swallow me......or her. Our pastor later joked with us about our "Flasher"
To end, she recently told one of our deacons that they weren't coming anymore, that no one was going to change her mind about women pastors. Too bad. Well, not really. I don't have enough energy to deal with her!

The first ladies Bible study of the year

It went great! We started a few weeks late due to several factors. But that's OK, we aren't on a schedule or anything. We didn't know how many to expect. I made 25 lesson pages. We ended up with 34, which was amazing. It was a great night. Mom taught on Psalm 77. The lesson addressed anger and depression, something that is very common here. I missed some of it because I had to check on Vanessa who has been a bit sick for the past two days.

The interesting thing is that two of our leaders were in a bit of a problem. One of them went to the other and basically told her off. Nothing with substance, but she was hurt and offended. I counseled her to forget it. God is so good. The offender apologized to the offended yesterday morning. So all better. I like it when they can solve their problems on their own.

So today we head out to Mafil for Bible study there. We are not expecting many, most of the ladies told us that they would not be there. We may just end up visiting. It is slow going in Mafil. Thankfully, we are not paid on a per-person basis. We just do our part and God does the hard part, which is not hard for God.

Camp!

Only 11 more days!

Its going to start getting wild around here. Neil is writing the devotional booklets, which I will type and print. Mom is doing all the decorating and another gazillion things that need to be done. We shop for the food next week. Our special speaker arrives from Cal. next Friday.

I am looking for a theme song for the family camp. We are doing "The Fruit of the Spirit" Each family will be a different fruit. Mom made me a fruit hat á la Carmen Miranda. Its a good thing I am not afraid to look silly! Two years ago, she put Neil in a black vest and hat, a sherriff's star and a fake mustache. It was a hoot.

Youth camp will be the following week. The theme is "A Special Treasure" I already have a theme song for that. Mom is going to do a treasure hunt.

I've got a bunch of stuff to print up.



If I don't post soon, you'll know why!

"Attempt great things for God,

Expect great things from God!" I hope I got that quite right, I might have gotten it backwards. It is from William Carey, missionary to India.

The Lord has blessed our church greatly, but in the past two years, we fell into a rut, attendance -wise. We hovered around 100. We won new people, but lost others. Six weeks ago, the Preacher got all the SS teachers and leaders together and made a challenge. We wanted to get to 150 by September, 2010. He laid out a visitation schedule and we got to work. Almost immediately we began to see progress. We averaged 120 for about 4 weeks.

Yesterday was the best so far. Nothing special, no give-aways. (we never do that) Just hard work. God sent 148 people to our Church yesterday. Yea!!!!!

Now, we no longer are expceting 150 from God. We're kicking it up to 170!

The last ladies meeting of the year!

We had a soup and salad dinner. We had a salad competition. Above you can see some of the better entries. The salad "clock" won!. I taught about the power of praising God in all situations of our life. It was a great night, but I am glad the weekly meetings are over for a while. I'll be readly to start again, come Fall. South American Fall, that is, maybe Arpil, 2010. Do your faithfully attend your church's ladies Bible study? If not, you might be missing out on a huge blessing!

Do you at

A break

We will be receiving a group of 14 from California next week, for 8 days. I will be hosting the pastor, his son, and an old family friend. In fact, this man's daughter was my first "best friend" when I was about 3. Mom will have the 6 ladies and the other 5 men will sleep at the Church.

We are going to be insanely busy, so I thought I'd just log off for a while. I will post pictures of all the special activities that we will be having. Please pray that souls will be saved this week!

We still have so much to do before they come! Please pray that I will not lose my: sanity, temper, children, or head!

Missionary Joys....Dealing with paperwork

I told you that we had to go to the US embassy. Thats in Santiago, 500 miles from here. We got Ronnie and Eileen's passports renewed easily. Then we had to file a consular report of birth abroad. Sounds easy,right? Wrong! My children aren't automatically US citizens unless I can prove I resided in the US for 5 years, 2 of which were after the age of 14. That was 20 years ago. Can you remember events from 20 years ago? I gave them all the evidence I could come up with at the time and it wasn't enough. By the way, passports stamps are not considered valid as evidence. Sounds crazy? YES! So, since we've been home, I have been going through junk I would have tossed years ago. I've found a few pay stubbs from 1994. Church bulletins with our names in them. A few medical tests from when I had a seizure in 2001.
I am uncertain as to what more to do. Everytime I talk to the guy in charge, he says, "Unfortunately..........." I feel like bopping him in the nose.

Please pray that all will go well. I'll have to make a quick trip to Santiago in a few weeks.

Tracts do work

Michele wrote this post about sharing the Gospel. She talked about how that tracts do work.
This last week we saw the truth about this as well. Four weeks ago, a family began visiting our church. The have a 4 month old baby girl with severe heart defects. This family are neighbors to Pati and Fabian, members of our church who had invited Carlos and Josselin. But when Carlos and Josselin walked into the door, Pati was surprised to see them. Apparently, they had not accepted their invitation. This past Sunday, Carlos invited Neil over. He told him about their little baby's problems. Neil asked them how they decided to come to our church. He said that Fabian had invited them, but they had ignored the invitation. Then later, they wanted to go to church, any church. One of them had one of our tracts with our address and services hours. They thought "Why not this one?" And so they came. I think that they were just as surprised to see Pati and Fabian, as they had been to see Carlos and Josselin.

Carlos says that he is saved, but Josselin recieved Christ Sunday night. We are so pleased. Please pray for their sweet baby, Carla.

A cake and a wedding

We are having Sandra's baby shower tonight. I, the non-crafty type decided to spread my wings outside my comfort zone with a diaper cake! I hadn't done one before, but it was easy!

Last week, we headed down to the Civil Registry to witness the marriage of Eduardo and Nancy, a new couple in our church. They have been together for over five years, but wanted to make things right before God and country. Here am I, along with Mom and Pati, who dubbed us "Charlie's Angels"

And here's the happy couple!

Weddings and babies, it just doesn't get any better than that! How are we doing Bro. Voddie?

What I do when I cannot blog, Part 2

And if that weren't enough, its Kids Club day!!! Yay! We had to hurry our guests because, unlike most latin Amercan endeavors, we are punctual. We had to make a few adjustments, but all went well. We had 44 children and 10 workers. Here Sandra is telling the story of the life of Hudson Taylor

Here, the younger kids have their game time.

Here are the big kids playing Hot Potato. That's Eileen in green in the back and Ronnie here in the front in red.

Here's more of the story-verse-singing-Gospel time.I am so tired my eyes are crossing. I can't go to bed until Neil gets here. They all went to watch the big Chile vs. Paraguay soccer game. We are sooooo going to lose! Paraguay is in first place and they are playing in Asuncion. What a bummer!

What do you think of our lovely orange chairs? There's a 30 year old story behind them!

Have a wonderful Lord's day! Rest if you can. Thank God that you can still worship freely.

Do you know what my favorite piece of advice is? Go to church expecting God to speak to you! Expect a blessing and you'll get one!

Peace from Above

Things I do when I cannot blog! Part 1

Well, here's some photos of the construction going on at my house. Look at the left side of the photo. That whole area is going to be knocked out and pushed out about another meter.

Here's what it looks like from the outside.

So, then, another workman came from a church in another city to build us a inside door for the church. He is staying with us also. Here's what he is building.

Then, to top it all off, we're having a group from another church in another city come a do a soul winning seminar. We thought that it was a small group, but their pastor thought more was better and came with 22 people! In the interest of decorum, I will say no more!

Here we have set up tables in our dining room to feed them all. We got most of our women to come and cook and clean. I am so grateful for my ladies, they are all hard workers and rarely shirk their duty.

To Spanish-speaking missionaries

Have any of you see the "El Principio del Tesoro" DVD by Randy Alcorn? We have the book, and I think that it is great. Our Pastor reccomended "Money, possessions and Eternity",which I have not read. Anyway, while looking up this book, I found the DVD in Spanish. WooHoo! But, is it any good? 25 dollars plus shipping good?

If you've seen it, let me know!

BTW, did you know that you can order Dutch Blitz for 6 bucks at CBD? We paid 12 the the US at a store.