When God Makes a Way.

Sometimes things happen that truly amaze us! They shouldn't, we should expect things like this; when God is involved, but somehow we still don't. Let me start by saying that when we moved, one of our goals was to move closer to a certain village that was unreached. It is a village where there are no evangelical churches present. We want to see if we can try and start a small group there and see what God will do. However, since we didn't know anyone in this village we weren't exactly sure how we were going to do this. Greg took a trip there one day to meet with the village president and see how we could help them. They talked about our shoe ministry, about some blankets and food that we had to give away to some of the more needy families, and some other things that we knew we could do to help the community. All of these things were offered as a way to gain the communities good will and then hopefully we would be allowed into some homes to share Jesus. After the meeting, Greg was on his way to his truck feeling pretty good about how the meeting went when he saw a store selling baskets. He knew I was wanting some baskets for our house so he decided he would check them out. 

When he went into the store he saw the exact same Bible that he has on her desk in her store. (Now this Bible isn't really a common type of Bible to have here.) He asked her if she liked to read the Bible and she said she did. She said sometimes it wasn't always easy to understand but that Bible seemed to make it  a little bit easier. She then said her friend had given her the Bible. That is when Greg found out that the friend who gave her the Bible had gotten the Bible from him(Greg). We had received a box of Bibles from a church in the US and our friend had asked for one to give to a lady who had interest in reading the Bible. This lady lived an hour away from where we lived. She told Greg she would like to have us come back and share some Bible stories with her in her home. So that is what we are planning to do. It is so awesome to see how God moves. He had this planned almost a year before we ever moved or even planned to work in that village. God truly is amazing! 

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!