God's been moving!

It's been a crazy past few months for sure! 3 days after our team from Indiana left, we packed our house and moved about 30 minutes down the road. This was a difficult decision for us to make as we absolutely loved living in the village where we were. However, sometimes God has plans for us that are not exactly our plans. So, we obeyed and followed His plans and moved. Our plans now are to continue to work in the same villages we were working in, and we now have plans to try and reach some new villages (that are closer to our new home) that have no believers in them. 

Movers came to pack us up.

Tried to fit everything into our smaller dwelling! ;o)

This is a sitting room/office. There are some more house pics at the end of this post. Once we got settled in, I took more! ;o)

We were blessed to see our precious Chata baptized! 

When the team from IN was here we were able to bless this sweet lady with some shoes. 

3 days later she showed up at a VBS and started dancing with all of the youth. It was absolutely priceless to see! 

This is another one of our friends who we were excited to see follow through with the act of baptism!

 God is doing amazing things with our Church group that God has raised up in our village where we lived. We will now call it village number 2. (Because we still work in the first village we lived in, we will call it village number 1) We had a VBS there when the IN team was here also and this opened their eyes to the many needs of the children in their own village. After the VBS the amount of kids that started to come on a weekly basis increased by about 8 children. So, they decided among themselves to have a small scale VBS once a month. We had our first one last night and the response was awesome!! We had 27 children in all and out of the 27, 20 of them were boys. This brings a tiny tear to my eye because boys at this age are who the drug cartels are targeting. We are praying that we can reach them with the Word of God before they do with empty promises.

eating their snack

Playing a water balloon toss, as you can see the water balloon just missed the target. 

Jerod was coaching his team.

The little kids had a blast as well!

This is our ST church group with the new kids that will hopefully continue to come! 

This are the kids that were new to the study.

It was fun to see the big kids helping the little kids.

This family is my "shoe" family. They all received new shoes about 3 months ago and haven't missed a meeting yet. God is so good!

 

Ever wonder where you old VBS shirts wind up? Well this one if from 2002. 

We told the story of Saul's conversion. After they heard it, this little guy, Chimbo, was able to tell it perfectly in front of all of his peers without missing a beat!

He won 2 candy bars for doing it! He was happy!!

Singing songs!

Loved him!

He was making the Jesus is strong sign. 

Greg was trying to make that sign as well!

This precious little girl was so stressed. I felt sad for her. 

Praying that we can teach them the Word of God so we can keep them out of trouble! Please pray with me!

Annie's new room and school room too!

Closet / books for school

I had these awesome shelves built! Got a picture from Pinterest and showed it to the guy and a few hours later.... waalaa! I am now having someone else make baskets to fit the measurements! You gotta love Mexico!! 

Annie's desk ready for her first day of school!

Our 2nd bathroom! We were very happy to have TWO bathrooms in this house! 

View from our kitchen into the living room.

View from the living room/ eating area into the kitchen.

First day of 4th grade! 

Max has gotten settled into our new home.

 So have the boys!

This pool has been a big plus to the neighborhood! 

And this soccer field too!

 That is the front of the house.

That is the great sunset we saw our first night here.

So as you can see, God has moved in MANY ways. I am just now finding the time to tell you about them all. This should really be about 4 different posts, but... it is what it is. We are feeling like God has blessed our move, has blessed our ministry because of our obedience and has blessed our families mental health as well! I say that last part b/c living in this home has given Annie a chance to play like she has never played before, everyone can ride bikes easily and play football in front of our house when they want to. It has just opened up many options for us that we never had before. WE are blessed and thank you all for praying for us when the spirit moves you to do so! Love from our family!

Enjoying our Sunday!

Skyping with KABC during their church service this morning. 

We laughed because Greg was talking for a few minutes and then he realized there was no one on the other end of the conversation. We teased him and said he was given 1 minute and when it was up, they just conveniently said the connection was bad! ;o) Now if only I could do that to him when I was done listening! 

Some of the team shared at church this morning. This is Evan and he shared his testimony in Spanish today and then he also had Jerod translate some parts for him.

Courtney gave her testimony and I translated for her.

I love this look, she is saying, "That is NOT what I just said!" 

We want to say a HUGE "Thank you" to Sandy Reidner for making this beautiful quilt for Annie! She put a lot of heart and soul into making Annie her first quilt and sent her a precious little brown doggie as well. We will treasure this quilt forever! Annie sends lots of hugs to Miss Sandy!

Greg singing take me out to the ball game! One, two, three strikes you're out! Okay, not really he was  introducing the team to the church tonight. I thought it sounded more fun with him singing though!

As you can see, Evan was so excited to be there!

Courtney and Gayle thought something was funny.

Jerod translating for Jim, I think Jim was saying, "Are you sure you know what you are doing?"

All of us praying together.

Gayle loved giving out these ball caps and all of the people loved receiving them!

Annie loves uncle Jim, and uncle Jim probably is thinking, "I need a break!"

Courtney loves having her picture taken!

Love these women!

Alex thinks he is so cool!

Jim and Gayle having fun.

Evan enjoying the photo op.

Robin and Courtney spent a good time of prayer with these two women. They were a great encouragement to them.

I was criticized for not putting any AWESOME pictures of myself on here, so I decided I would show you how I really feel about this team. I mean... MAN.... I will be happy when they head back to IN! ;o)

Jim got arrested for flushing his toilet paper and this was his mug shot! Too funny!

Blessing the Pastor's family!

Last night after VBS this man who came with his son, asked for prayer for his family. They had a great opportunity to share with him.

After VBS we wanted to share with the pastor who we have been working with, that KABC felt lead to bless his family. They gave him a hard drive which he loved and a love offering so he could take his wife out on a very special date!

They were reading the card that was sent.

We took the pastor's 3 children to a park that has a pool and spent all day with them, playing, laughing, eating and napping! The pastor and his wife spent all day together just the two of them. They saw a movie, at dinner, drank coffee and just shared some really well deserved time together! Thanks KABC!

Above was the males playing b-ball and afterward this was the geriatric ward. Too funny, they were aching all over!

Courtney worked on Annie's swimming.

The 3 lil ones just had a blast playing in the water!

The boys brought along 2 friends as well and they had fun too.

Courtney enjoyed rocking babies!

We then got cleaned up and shared at a church that night.

Robin gave her testimony and I translated.

Gayle gave out some of his hats and these two women were 2 of the recipients. The funny part was the one on the right got a hat that says Grandpa on it! 

Then truly minutes after having a very in depth conversation, this is how we found Courtney. Completely gone. I mean, GONE! You could have yelled, "FIRE!" and she would have slept right through it! Needless to say, we are tired! More tomorrow!