We hope you have a wonderful time celebrating the WONDER of our Good GOD loving us so much that He sent His ONLY SON to come to this earth to be born a BABY and SAVE US from the punishment of our sins which is death and separation from Him, and offer us the most precious gift of all:  ETERNAL LIFE IN HEAVEN WITH THE ONE TRUE GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Written by Jenny

Does anybody else say that?? Maybe it's just my crazy family! :)

Anywho, just wanted to hop on real quick and ask for prayers!! (I can't believe it's been over a month since we've blogged- oops!!)

I am so excited-- I am leaving tomorrow to go to LIMA, PERU!!!! FOR A WEEK!! I am so excited, but also crazy nervous at the same time- this is definitely a first for me to be away from the kids for SO LONG!!

OK, so why I am doing it?

Well, sometimes, it just gets too much around here, ya'know??! :)

No, I'm teasin'!!

For reals, though, I get to go to an awesome training by our mission for the first 3 days!! I am so excited!! It sounds like a great way to reach more people with the gospel, and I'm pumped!!

THEN, literally a gift from God, I get to go to a retreat for girl missionaries for the next 3 days!!! God totally worked the details out for it to finish the day my training ended, and my AMAZING husband to whom no one compares, said "Go for it!!" :) So, I get to worship in English and grow spiritually and be pampered by the sweet sweet ladies of Pure Joy!! Thank You, God, for this precious gift from You!!

And my wonderful mother-in-law, Mary Joe, aka Joe Joe, to the kids, has just landed in Oaxaca to help John with the kids for the week!

God took care of all the details! As always!!

I think I am most excited to hear from Him over the next week as I will have infinitely more time to be quiet and think and read and think and study and think!!! :) What bliss!!

Please join with me in praising God for this opportunity!

Please pray for John and Mary Joe and the kids as they hold down the fort here!

Please pray for good health for all of us so we could have a wonderful week, or grace to accept sickness if it comes, or comes any worse-- Elijah has a throat infection, after Lukey did just last week, but started his meds tonight.

Please pray for safe travel for me and for Mary Joe as she returns home next week!

Thank you for praying for our family!

Written by Jenny

This week was a challenge, but God has been crazy faithful (AS ALWAYS) in holding us up!! So, it was just becoming clear that we truly needed an extra hand with little Hopey! So of course, we were praying, but on Wednesday at breakfast, I prayed that "God would please send us a helper today!" John and Caleb, my sweet skeptics, kinda scoffed at my prayer.  Well, guess what???? Just a few hours later, Alicia stopped at our door and asked me if we had any work!!!!!!!!! :) :) She is actually someone I have tried to befriend dozens of times, inviting her kid to come play, etc. with zero success! And now she just showed up and asked for work!  So, we talked a bit about the details and we agreed to try each other out for one week! :) :) She will start Monday!

GOD CARES FOR ME AND HE CARES FOR YOU!!!!!!!! HE IS ABLE AND WORTHY AND GOOD!!
PRAISE HIS HOLY NAME!

Written by Jenny

If it's ok with you all, I'm just gonna whimper for a bit on this post- please feel free to leave an encouraging comment if you like!!

Last week, we started school, tried out a new Hope/ house helper, and started a great new schedule! :) (Can you hear the hammer fixin' to drop???)

Monday started with Hope throwing up all over her crib, her "Elly" (her lovey- a stuffed elephant), and the other 4,000 stuffed animals in her crib.  No worries, I took it in stride, smiling confidently in the face of Satan as I knew to expect some efforts from him to thwart our new week (and my optimistic outlook).

Well, it pretty much went horribly down hill from there:

• we had no gas for hot showers or the clothes dryer for about 3 days- although, the gas truck ALWAYS passes by our house every day!! (except for suddenly these 3 days)!
• Caleb missed BOTH swim classes last week :( because of truck trouble! (It won't start and they can't figure out why)
• the house helper criticized a ton of what we do and asked me a 1,000 times what could she do to help as I answered a 1,000 times- could you please look after Hope?????? She is an AMAZING CLEANER, but is just annoyed by little Hope!!  She actually caused a great deal of stress last week! And Hope would scream her head off as we did school each day!!
  
• I got a nasty stomach thing on Thursday which left me crazy weak on Friday!!
• Friday night we got the call that our truck was fixed- YEAH! We all 6 headed to Oaxaca in a taxi, picked up the truck, all spiffy and cleaned up!!! Headed to buy a couple things and then, . . . THE TRUCK DIDN'T START! And, oh sorry, Chevy was all closed, and oh sorry, you can't leave your truck here, said the store authorities!! Ugh! Elijah, Hope and I paid an arm and a leg to get a taxi to take us to our village, to our house and we got home around 9:30! John and the big boys waited forever for the tow truck to tow them to Chevy and leave it there (keys with the security guard) and got a taxi for only an arm to our house and got here at 11:30!!!
• John's back went out on Wednesday and he is just now starting to be able to walk a bit normally!
• The pump on our well got submerged in water and John has had to wrestle the heavy-tail thing, leaning over the edge of the well a few different times (hence the back going out).
• We fired our house helper on Friday, explaining we would love to call her occasionally to clean, but we would look for someone with some experience as a nanny- she was definitely disappointed to lose the money, but really understood- Hope is definitely a challenging little kid!!
  
• Maria told me her sister, with experience as a nanny in California, might want work- I told her to pass by- never came!! 2 days after, Maria stopped by (when she knew I was at English class) to say no, her sister had to help with some weavings! ???
  
• Internet was out yesterday and this morning.
• Printer wouldn't print for my school stuff that I need
• And this is so small and insignificant, but I have been without Coke Zero for days!! With no truck to go to town! And that just stinks!!
  

OK, that's enough complaining!

PRAISE GOD:

• We have Internet!!!!!
• Printer is working!!!!
• I'm better from my sickness!!!!!
• John is almost better with his back!!!
• We got a whole week of school done last week- glory to God!!

Please pray for a helper for us as I have NO IDEA how we will do this week with nobody to help with Hope during school!!
Please pray for our truck to be fixed soon, too!

I am so discouraged today!! I actually feel a physical weight around me.  Let me reiterate: Your "Love for the People" is NOT what keeps you on the field! The people are LOST, they will hurt you and disappoint you! They don't know Christ! I am disobedient and selfish and on and on and I DO know Christ- how could I expect any different from someone apart from Him???? It is our call to missions and our commitment to GOD to serve Him in this way that keeps me here and keeps me from packing up to head home! 

Thanks for letting me be myself here: the good, the bad and the ugly!!

Written by Jenny

As John said last night to our believing friends, "We have found the battle, and we are ready to fight." I have always known there is an actual battle going on between God and satan, albeit a losing battle for satan, but he nevertheless continues to attack!  I loved reading Frank Peretti in high school as he so clearly depicted this spiritual world and the ongoing battle!  And although we have been on the field for more than 4 years, we really feel like we have truly found the battle now.  We have known this was a very dark place since we got here, but now seeing this intense fight for the souls of these precious people, we are reminded of just how much is at stake! It gave me such chills last night as Nemecio encouraged us to fight!! He said that our village is not a place to wait on the sidelines and just hope that someone will come to Christ.  He was showing us with his hands how tightly satan is gripping our people and that we have to respond in like manner!

So, Friday was Maria's last day! I prayed all day about what I was going to say to her when she left.  I got her money and went to talk to her when her husband came to the door! That was unexpected!! He seemed so nervous and I just couldn't imagine what he had to say! We went to the kitchen- just me, John and him- not Maria.  And he starts with a long speech about how thankful they are for us, how good we've been to them, etc. and they feel so bad, but Maria has to take care of her kids now because his mom isn't around anymore to help.  After about 15 minutes or more of this, he says so softly, almost under his breath, that he hopes we don't think this has anything to do with the fact that we read the Bible!  No, it has nothing to do with that! (I am still wondering, "Doesn't he realize that by saying it has nothing do with that PROVES it has EVERYTHING to do with that??!!!!")  He continues on for a bit about how great he thinks God is and that he even thinks about God when he wakes up and when he weaves.  At this point, Maria had come in, and I looked her dead in the eyes and told her that we were here if she ever wanted to hear from the Word of God, and the tears just begin to fall down her cheeks!! It was heartwrenching!!

Yesterday, I saw their niece, the 12 year old who had been living with Maria's in-laws, in town and I hopped out of the truck to say hello and meet her mother (where all this Santa Muerte influence is coming from).  It was real tense and Magda stayed partially turned away from me the whole conversation, surely trying to hide that awful Santa Muerte charm on her necklace (you know it is portrayed as a female grim reaper).  I found out she will live with her mom now!! I am sick about this! I hugged her and told her to please keep coming to my English classes on Saturday mornings!!  PLEASE PRAY FOR MAGDA and her family as her mom (Maria's husband's sister) is very interested in all this Santa Muerte, well and Maria's husband and his mom, too!!

I sent muffins home with Maria on Thursday and prayed over each one of their family members by name as I touched the muffins.  I just pray that God will draw this family to
Himself!

We are so excited as Cesar and Tekla come tonight to hear about the Word of God!!

Please continue to pray for a helper for us as we start school a week from tomorrow! GOD IS IN CONTROL!!

Written by Jenny

Well, today is Maria's last day with us and she is a completely different person now than from Tuesday.  She is so distant and cold.  It is breaking my heart! Yesterday, I asked her if she was still interested in hearing the Word of God.  She stammered and said sure, if WE wanted to do that! How sad!! I am reminded of the parable of the sower (in Matthew 13, Mark 4, and Luke 8).  Luke 8: 11-12 says, "Now the parable is this:  The seed is the word of God.  The ones along the path are those who have heard.  Then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, SO THAT THEY MAY NOT BELIEVE AND BE SAVED" (emphasis mine).  I am so angry at the devil because Maria never even got to hear!! He snatched the pure DESIRE TO HEAR right out of her!! But, "Our God is greater, our God is stronger, God you are higher than any other.  Our God is Healer, Awesome in Power, Our God! Our God!" ("Our God" by Chris Tomlin)!! AMEN!!

We will say a very difficult and tearful good-bye to Maria this afternoon, leaving our door wide open if she ever wants to hear more about God and His Word! PLEASE continue to pray for her, and her whole family! I saw her 12 year old niece yesterday (she lives there with them, too and we've been real close to her) with her Santa Muerte necklace on!!!  Please pray!!! satan has such a stronghold here!

OK, so now the good news!!

Well first, I just have to say how SWEET and GRACIOUS and LOVING and PRECIOUS is OUR GOD to let this happen yesterday, which was a very difficult day- Maria was just acting so different! Then, we went to Caleb's school and the director said there wasn't space for him! (Really??? He comes ONE day a week as a "listener" only- requiring no paperwork).  It really hurt my feelings! But, we went to the other school on our village and they had no problem with him coming! And, listen to how God works- this is the school where Maria's kids go- so Caleb and Angel (her oldest) are in the same class!! :) Thank You, God!

GOOD NEWS ALERT!!!  In the afternoon, we went to Tekla's house (the other lady from last week who said she was Thirsty for the Word).  We visited with her and her husband for a bit- they are just so nice!! We talked about what we were doing here! We all lamented how our village is losing the language! Tekla said she makes an effort to really speak the language without the mixing in Spanish!! (So, definitely a potential new helper to replace Maria!)  Also, I mentioned to her my idea about sharing the stories with her in Spanish and then her going to her dad and sharing them in their indigenous language (she had mentioned earlier that it was his preference), and she Loved it!!  Her eyes lit up with the possibility of being able to share God's Word with her daddy, too!  Then, John brought up her saying she wanted to hear the Word and her husband started nodding his head real earnestly in agreement!! :) :)PRAISE GOD!!!  So, they're coming over to our house on Sunday! They said the next time we could go to their house.  GOD IS SO GOOD!! It was such a great visit!

Walking home with a handful of fresh lemon grass for tea, I told John if he had asked me a week ago how all this would turn out, I would never have guessed this- that we would lose Maria over her interest in the Word, and these people we barely knew would be the genuine learners!! Wow! God is sovereign!

Please pray for Maria and her family to be free from the devil's grip!

Please pray for Tekla and Cesar that the Word will have a chance to get in their hearts SO THAT THEY MAY BELIEVE AND BE SAVED!! FOR GOD'S GLORY!!!!

Written by Jenny

Well, here we are almost a week since the last post and wow, how things have changed! Even as you begin to read this post, I just want to already ask you to begin to PRAY HARD for Maria and her family!!!!

OK, so Maria was off Monday so she could take her kids to the first day of school.  Tuesday when she got here, right off she told me she had bad news.  The look on her face startled me.  I sat down and asked her what was going on.  She said that she won't be able to work for us anymore after this week!!!! I was shocked and asked her what happened.  With tears running down her face, she told me this story:
 
    Thursday (THE VERY DAY SHE HAD EXPRESSED INTEREST TO US IN HEARING MORE FROM THE WORD OF GOD), she gets home and her husband had had a "cleaning" by some lady his mom had brought over (Maria and her kids live with her husband's parents).  Maria got angry and asked why he had done that without talking to her first.  Well, then on Friday she gets home and her 3 kids (the same ages as our boys (7, 6, 4) are all wearing these necklaces with a charm on it with the face of "Santa Muerte" (Saint Death)! The lady from Thursday had returned!! to give the kids these charms and filled their sweet impressionable young minds with a bunch of garbage about the "power" of this Saint.  Maria's daughter said that now if she sees a spider, for example, she just holds up the charm and the spider will go away!

Well, obviously Maria got very upset.  And she told me that her oldest son was being real disobedient to her and kept telling her things the lady had said.  She finally got the kids to take the charms off that night!!  After taking them off, her oldest son said his chest was hurting where the charm had been and that the lady had said he would hurt if he ever took it off! Her daughter woke up that night scared, crying for her mom to "protect her from that man!"

So, right then as Maria told us, we asked her if we could pray and she said sure.  John and I both prayed for her and her whole family by name!! I was so encouraged, for that moment, that this was bringing Maria even closer to the Lord!  And we really felt like she was being forced to quit working for us.  In fact, she was crying telling us how much she loved working here and loves our kids!!  I felt so sorry for her!

Well, that soft Maria is no more! Today, she came and was totally different.  We had offered for her kids to come here after school and for her youngest to come to work with her if she wanted while she figured things out.  I asked her if she had decided to do that.  Her face was totally different as she told me the kids would be fine with her husband! And she never mentioned anything else all day!

So, only the Lord knows what is going on at their house and what is being said, but I know this is spiritual warfare! It's a pretty effective blow by the enemy as he is taking a very interested person out of a believing home AND leaving us in a huge difficult place as we are ready to begin home school Sept. 5 and are in full time language learning (Maria is my main language helper, my only, in fact!!).  I really have no idea how we would manage without a full time helper!  I have been tempted to worry today and fret over this, but John has been so good to remind me to be faithful in God! God is sovereign and He is way bigger than this!

PLEASE PRAY FOR MARIA AND HER SALVATION!!!!!!!!
PLEASE PRAY FOR HER HUSBAND'S HEART TO SOFTEN TOWARD THE LORD!!
PLEASE PRAY FOR HER CHILDREN TO BE PROTECTED FROM THESE LIES FROM THE DEVIL!!
PLEASE PRAY FOR A HELPER FOR US!

This is so serious! We, all of us Christians, are at war with Satan, who hates God and hates us!  Please pray! Thank you!

If you're interested, here's a quick video about Santa Muerte! This is not Catholic! And very dangerous!!

written by Jenny.
OK, I have so much more to share with you about our mini-vacation and mission meeting and life in general, but first I had to hop on and share this with you!! Get ready to praise GOD!! 

First, just so you know, we have found a wonderful house helper, she is mainly a "Hope helper" as Hope is just so demanding a lot of the time- our sweet Maria really helps watch Hope to free me up to school, cook, laundry, etc. Anyway, she is awesome and is a huge help to our family!! She isn't a believer (yet!!) and we have prayed and prayed for her! Caleb has really been praying for her even and talks often how great it will be the day when she becomes a Christian (I love his faith!!). 

OK, so just hang on to that info. a minute. 

We're back from the market today, unloading the truck and we see these 2 believers who are from our village but live in California. They are Christians and came down for a few weeks to encourage the local church here! So, we see them and are chatting in front of the house when a neighbor from a bit farther up the road passes and asks me to sell her some lemons from our tree.  I told her no, please just come on and get some!! Well, she is talking with the CA believers and then asks if we are pastors, too!! John and I jump in to say No!! But, yes we are Christians!! She was like, "Oh, how nice." Then she tells John . . .  ok, get ready, this is the best part. . .  she says, "I AM THIRSTY TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE WORD OF GOD!"  WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? I mean, I freaked (when John told me, not in front of her- you know, we don't want to scare them off!!) :)!!

Then John tells me this in front of our Maria (we were in the kitchen).  And Maria starts talking about how SHE, TOO, WOULD BE REALLY INTERESTED IN HEARING MORE FROM THE WORD OF GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am trying so hard to play it cool, while I am sneaking wild eyes and huge grins to John behind her back!! :) PRAISE GOD!!

We obviously told them both that we would love to teach them some stories from the Bible!! I AM SO EXCITED!!!!! We actually were able to go on with Maria a bit and we were talking about our sin and how good it feels to be forgiven! She even said that her husband had interest, too, in learning more from the Bible!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PRAISE GOD!!!!!!!!!!

Please join us in PRAISING GOD for these ladies and how He is clearly drawing them to Himself!

Please pray for us as we begin the joyous task of sharing God's Story with these ladies and hopefully, their families, too!!

THANK YOU!!

Last month, we as a family had a blast one weekend making this "trailer".  This is the first time the internet has been reliable enough to upload it.  We hope you enjoy "The Fantastic Four" starring Caleb, Luke, Elijah and Hope.  I finally got it to post in time for today, Luke's 6th birthday!  Happy Birthday, Scooter!

Last week's meetings allowed us the opportunity to visit with our good friend from Peru, Arnold.  The kids loved seeing him (and enjoying the peruvian treats he brought us)!