Summing up 2007

We hope that many of you might be interested in seeing a summary of some of the major events of our lives and ministry for 2007. Thanks so much to all of you who contributed through your prayers, gifts and participation in successes and blessings of the year. May the Lord richly bless you and encourage you through 2008. I'm going to do it in quarters, so it will be easier for me to manage.

JANUARY – Leadership mentoring program reorganized. The year began with our traditional week of prayer and fasting. We closed down our home groups for 1½ months and meet together corporately. Then we met with every couple in the leadership and had a time of prayer and evaluation to see if they should continue in the ministry or take a time of rest and restoration. All but two of our leaders continued, and we had an opportunity for wonderful times of ministry and were able to help couples work out some important difficulties they had been facing. Then we asked them to pick an elder with whom they wanted to work with in a mentoring program. Marilyn and I are currently working closely with 7 wonderful couples and one on-fire young man.

On the 7^th Marilyn celebrates her birthday. Here she with Tammy making plans for an upcoming medical team.

The Taylor University Lighthouse team came with 15 students who worked with various children’s ministries throughout the city.

FEBRUARY - The City Park in front of our church is re-zoned as a residential area. We are currently in a law suit with the city de- manding that our park be restored. They plowed up the volleyball court that was used by local citizen's every weekend in the top photo, and put up a barbed wire fence in an area we used as a parking lot.

MARCH - Taylor University sends 8 Students who stay 4 months studying Biology and Spanish at the local University of Azuay and in our newly formed Language Institute.

What we did for our Christmas Vacation

We really hadn't planned on going to the States to see the kids for Christmas this past year, but when a friend called saying we could buy tickets to New York City for $259 without any blackout dates we made a quick decision. How could we pass up a chance to see our quickly growing grand girls!

Jonathan was able to fly up from LA for 5 days, and Joel was off- he's a manager in the school cafeteria, so . . . no school, no work. Lisa juggled her schedule and only had to work one evening during 3 weeks. Christoph is working at Hewlett-Packard, and they have a policy that you have to take the week between Christmas and New Year's off to be with your family. It was great.
In spite of a thankfully only 24 hour flu, which went from one to the other every three days, we had lots of fun time to be together. Lisa and I took Emily to see the Nutcracker in Portland, while Grandpa, Joel and Daddy babysat Katrina. When Jonathan flew up we went to the Portland Zoo for Zoolights. They put a crazy amount of lights all over the zoo and you walk around in the (really cold) night. We fulfilled our obligation to our Italian heritage eating lots of special food.

Katrina stays warm with her daddy.

Emily says hi to Rudolph at the zoo. Since most of the real animals are sleeping they supplement them with humans dressed as animals!

Katrina takes anything to do with food very seriously, especially blessing it. But she just might be fooling around with her Uncle Jonathan.

We were so blessed to enjoy this time together- it is always fun to see our kids relate to each other as friends, and have our son-in-law right in the mix. Praise God!

Happy New Year!

Since we spent New Year's Eve trying to rest up for the 3 day ordeal of getting back to Ecuador, here are a couple of nice firework pictures taken by my niece, Rachel on the 4th of July!

We pray that each of you has a blessed and fulfilling 2008. Every year we have a corporate fast for the church body, open to those who would like to participate during the first week of January. We open the church building at 6:00 am and at 7:00 pm for times of prayer as well. This morning we read these verses in Isaiah 58:

...vs.8, 9 NLT... "If you do these things your salvation will come like the dawn. Yes, your healing will come quickly. Your godliness will lead you forward, and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind. Then when you call, the Lord will answer. "Yes, I am here," he will quickly reply."

We pray that your steps this year will be led by your godliness and that you sense the glory of the Lord protecting you from behind. We look forward to many new adventures together . . . with our precious Lord Jesus, our wonderful brothers and sisters in Ecuador, and you, our faithful team and family in the States and the rest of the world. God bless you!