March 2018
Children under thatch roof
The last couple of months have been rewarding. We thank the Lord for His guidance and His help. He has truly been good to His children.
First of all, I will mention that the finances for the land purchase have been taken care of! With our return coming up soon, this has helped ignite a renewed desire to get back to Bolivia and get back to work. We have not raised any funds toward the building but it is mostly because we are still working on what it will cost. There have been large differences in the numbers we have received so this needs to be investigated more. But we are excited about being able to purchase the land, start building plans and begin services! God is good!
In our last couple of letters, we have mentioned about Ellie being diagnosed as being autistic. This was a very hard realization for us as parents but one we needed. If we don’t know what the problem is, we don’t know how to help her. There have been many different doctor visits and lots of therapy appointments. She has come a very long way in the last few months. We have seen great improvements in her. She is not yet where she needs to be but she is much farther than she was. In March, we plan to travel to Pennsylvania to attend 2 events that will help us, help her. One is a parent training conference so that we will be able to continue her therapy from Bolivia. We know other missionaries that have attended the same conference and seen great improvements in their children as a result. After that, Ellie will have a special 2 day evaluation geared specifically toward meeting her individual needs. We pray both of these help us and her in the long run.
In January, I made a trip to Bolivia with one of our supporting pastors. This was a logistical trip to fix our leaking roof and do some other needed projects. This logistical trip turned in to a busy schedule for preaching. We were able to accomplish all our projects and also ended up preaching 10 times all within about one week. We were able to encourage some of the local pastors and see some souls saved. It was a great blessing, plus I always enjoy introducing visitors to our country of service. For some reason, it always seems to stir up a renewed joy for our ministry.
Lord willing, we will be returning to Bolivia as a family on the 6th of April. We are excited to get back there and get back to work in Bolivia. We have land to buy, a church to build, Bibles to print, and much, much more. I have several new projects already in the works that I hope to be able to share with you soon. We would like to ask for your prayers as we travel back. Our biggest concern is again for Ellie. She gets very anxious when we travel. She can see our suitcases come out and just start crying because the change is so hard on her. Also we are very concerned how the Spanish environment will effect her. She is just now starting to talk decently and we hope this doesn’t set her back. Would you please pray for all of us but more specifically for her? Please help us pray that the Lord would make the change and the adjustment easy for her.
We also want to thank those who have helped us financially with some of Ellie’s medical bills. As you know, Daniel also needed some testing done over the summer. But God has used some of you to help lighten some of this load and we thank all of you for your prayers and support during this time! God bless you all!
