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| Christmas holidays are over and now it
is time to begin to focus on next year. We leave today for a
brief visit with family in West Virginia. We will be back here
in Powhatan on Friday. We are parked in my parent's front yard,
so we are being blessed with almost a month's worth of free
hookups. It is great to see how God works all things out.
Despite the fact that we have only 2 scheduled meetings total in
December and January, it looks like financially everything has been
provided for. He always is faithful to provide where He calls us
to go. We will be in touch with many churches in the next month
and ask that you would already begin to pray with us about this.
Our goal is to get as close to 100% (if not AT 100%) support by
December 31st, 2007 as possible. This is not an impossible goal,
and we are trusting God to work it all out. |
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| We are back in Powhatan, Virginia.
We were supposed to drive today from Mobile, Alabama to Commerce,
Georgia. While we were enroute we decided that we were ready to
be finished driving with this trip, so we just went ahead and drove
all the way through -- a little over 800 miles that day. It took
almost 17 hours, so we didn't arrive back in Powhatan until
11:30p. We had a great trip to Texas and are thankful for the
opportunity. |
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| We have arrived in the Houston area and
when I checked our email we got a surprise gift. Our missions
agency informed us that we have been taken on by another church for
support. Trinity Baptist Church in Martinez, Georgia. We
also appear to have been taken on for support by Trinity Hill Baptist
Church in Norcross, Georgia. This brings our total support to
11.4%. We've also received a couple of Christmas gifts from
churches and are very thankful for their generosity. |
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| Heading home. Today we drive to
somewhere just east of Houston, Texas and then to Mobile, Alabama on
Tuesday. Wednesday is a layover day and then we travel again
Thursday to Commerce, Georgia and then into Powhatan on Friday.
Please pray for our safety while we travel. Please also pray as
we also readjust to it being winter! It's been in the upper 70's
and low 80's down here in the valley and we know it's going to be COLD
back in Virginia! Time to switch the AC off and the heat back
on. |
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| The trip is almost over. Today we
are back visiting Iglesia Bautista Fundamental in Brownsville.
We want to spend as much time as possible with this church so that we
can get to know each other, even just a little. This afternoon
we are going to have lunch with Jim & Carolyn Jewell, who are
members of our sending church in Virginia. Their daughter
Jennifer has been attending school here in Brownsville. She
graduated yesterday and is getting married tomorrow, so they are in
visiting. We are also going to make a brief trip out to South
Padre island to see the Gulf of Mexico while we are close by. |
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| A
shot of the beach and the Gulf of Mexico. We don't know if this is
the regular wave height or not, but it sure is pretty. |
Braden
examines a crab hole while August looks on. |
Aaron,
August and Addie enjoying the view. |
Addie
enjoys walking barefoot along the beach. |
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| August
and Addie stroll back towards the truck. |
Aaron
and Braden taking one last look at the Gulf before we head out. |
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| Field trip! This morning we
visited the Museum of South Texas History in Edinburg, Texas.
It's always good to see history from another perspective. It
took a couple of hours to go through, but we did learn some
interesting facts and also continued to develop our understanding of
the people that call this area home. We also made a brief stop
by the Rio Grande Language Institute, where we will be completing our
language training and living for about 9 months. In the
afternoon we went back out to Rio Grande City to let Missy and the
kids take a look at the property I found yesterday and to grab a
couple of photographs. |
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| Today was a realty day for me. I
didn't get a lot of feedback from the realtors I contacted.
There is not a lot of property to be had in the area. I did have
a couple of leads though, so I went to check them out. In
driving around I also noticed that they tend to do a lot of "For
Sale By Owner" do here, so I got some additional contacts.
We have identified one very nice piece of land which would be a
wonderful base for missions work in this area. The land is
centrally located and quite inexpensive. Most of the land I've
seen is $5000 - $9000 per acre. The land I found today is
between $1500 - $1900 per acre. It is 2 miles from the Rio
Grande City limits, but the city is quickly growing in this
direction. Also, a new outer loop is supposed to be built around
the city, which should come somewhere close to this property (they
haven't definitively identified it's route yet). This will make
this site very convenient to Rio Grande City and Roma, as well as to
the suburbs that are already and will continue to spring up to the
north of these cities. I went out to view the property and the
owner happened to show up while I was there (I had not spoken to him
yet). He was very friendly and we will continue to communicate
about this possibility. Please be in prayer with us over
this. |
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| Today is supposed to be rainy, so we are
staying inside for the most part. I am going to make phone calls
to follow-up with pastors that I have spoken to over the past few
months and Melissa is going to do laundry and go grocery
shopping. Nothing exciting to report about any of those! |
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| We didn't quite finish our shopping in
Mexico so today we went to a flea market in Donna. This is more
of a "winter-Texan" market, so the prices weren't as
good. Watching the people we can begin to see some of the
prejudices that we've been told exist in this area. The "anglos"
and the "hispanics" have a mutual prejudice against each
other, and the Texas hispanics also have a prejudice against Mexican
hispanics. This is one of those things that we wanted to see
firsthand and is one of the reasons we are on this survey trip.
It does seem however that those anglos which have learned the culture
and language are very accepted by the hispanic population. This
afternoon I spoke with several realtors about property in the Rio
Grande City area, to begin to get an idea of what is available for
both church property and someplace for us to live. I will go out
Friday to meet with any good leads. Tonight we went to another
spanish-speaking church pastored by Rev. Noe Mendoza. This is a
new contact that I had not met before. They are in the Mission,
Texas area which is about 1 to 1.5 hours east of where we will be
working. |
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| This morning we went to Bentsen-Rio
Grande State Park. This park is also home of the World Birding
Center. It was a little cold so we didn't get to see too many
birds today. We did however see a very unique species of
woodpecker, some kind of bright orange bird and also some green
jays. We saw a bunch of what were probably ocelot tracks,
intermingled with armadillo tracks (something was tracking
dinner!) We wanted to let the children get a taste of S. Texas
wildlife, but unfortunately the weather did not totally
cooperate. In the afternoon we took a drive out to Rio Grande
City and Roma for Melissa and the kid's first glimpse at the area we
will be living in. We also picked up a local newspaper so that
we could get some contacts for realtors to start talking more about
the area and begin to identify exactly where we plan to start
working. |
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| We've moved. Today (and for the
rest of our stay in S. Texas) we are in Donna, Texas, at the
headquarters of Valley Independent Baptist Missions. They have
allowed us to utilize their full RV hookups, which is a blessing to
us. Today we also took a drive down to Nuevo Progresso, Mexico,
to do a little Christmas shopping and let the children see what life
is like just across the border. It is what you would expect from
a Mexican border town. |
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| Two services today. The first was
at Iglesia Bautista Fundamental, a spanish-speaking church pastored by
Rev. Victor Alvarez. This is the church we are planning to work
in while we are in language school in Edinburg. It is a bit of a
drive back and forth (close to an hour), but it is worth it. The
evening church was at Central Baptist Church pastored by Rev. Matthew
Shumaker. This is an english-speaking church in the Harlingen
area. Bro. Shumaker grew up in Pastor Alvarez's church and has
since gone on to continue this work here. |
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| We're here. Today we arrived in
Harlingen, Texas. We'll be staying here until Monday
morning. We've got a couple of visits to make this weekend in
this area before heading westward toward Rio Grande City. |
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| We are on our way to Texas! We
left North Carolina early Monday morning and was supposed to stop at a
church near Martinez, Georgia. Unfortunately, they had to cancel
our arrangements due to their parking lot being used to park machinery
to move a house nearby. So, we drove on through to just past
Atlanta, Georgia and stayed at a Wal-Mart. This did allow us to
jumpstart the RV for a gentleman the next morning who had parked
behind us. I also gave him a tract. Tuesday we drove
through to Mobile, Alabama, where we are now. We are staying
here today and will be traveling again tomorrow to Houston, Texas and
then Friday on down to Harlingen, Texas. We are going to be
attending Iglesia Bautista Fundamental in Brownsville on Sunday and
will spend some time that afternoon with Pastor Victor Alvarez
there. Please continue to pray for our safety on this trip and
that we will make the necessary contacts to assist us once we reach
the field. |
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| We arrived yesterday here at Grace
Baptist Church in Newport, North Carolina. We are staying on the
church grounds, utilizing their RV hookups. It is a nice
church, with a lot of external ministries including a bus ministry and
a full radio station (that broadcasts in several different areas
around the world.) Today, we had an enjoyable time in their
services. For the morning, I had the opportunity to preach in
the Sunday School and Morning Worship services of their Spanish
ministry, Iglesia Bautista Gracia. I did of course have to use
an interpreter. This was my first time ever doing so. All
I can say is that it was interesting! I'm more convinced than
ever that I need to learn the language. It wasn't bad, but there
is always something lost in the translation. The people did seem
to enjoy the message and I believe they got the point of it as
well. In the evening I presented our ministry to the full church
and also preached for that service. It was a very good meeting
and we are glad we had the opportunity to come and be with these
people just before our departure for the survey trip. God always
has perfect timing! |
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| The
sign for Grace Baptist Church in Newport. They also had a sign for
the Spanish church, Iglesia Bautista Gracia. |
The
church is very nice looking, but also relatively simple. They are
doing an amazing amount of work from these simple facilities. A
quick look at their service times tells you this is a very active and
spiritually powerful church. |
A
thriving bus ministry is a core ministry of the church. |
We
were glad to be able to park here for a couple of days. |
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| We had a good meeting last night at
Midway Bible Baptist Church in Fishersville, Virginia. We had
our first opportunity to use the new projector and laptop and both
worked perfectly. We thank God for his continuing blessings on
this ministry. Tomorrow we leave for Newport for our final
meeting of the year and then on Monday we begin our trek to Texas for
our survey trip. |
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