We are expecting twins! You can only imagine how surprised we were when we went to get a sonogram done and the doctor very matter-of-factly stated that this is a twin pregnancy. Anthony just about collapsed on the floor stammering “Wwwhat dddid yyyou ssay?” To which she very calmly replied, “There are two babies.” That was one of our life changing moments. Two babies!! We’ve never even had one before and now we are having two?! That was a month ago and we still have plenty of days where we walk around in a daze-like state of mind. How do we wrap our mind around the fact that we are going to have two babies?

This news has rocked our world quite dramatically. We will need to move into the city probably sometime in February. We can’t be five hours from our midwife or a good hospital in the last trimester with a twin pregnancy. So I guess we’ll be city folk for a few months. Something that we aren’t particularly looking forward to. We aren’t really city people as the country as always been our home. We’ll need to find a place to live. That looks pretty big to us. Where do we even start? But, we know moving to the city for the last trimester of pregnancy and over the birth of the twins will be the best thing for us to do.

After the twins are born and a little older we don’t know for sure what we will do. When we leave our dear little house where we live now we won’t be able to move back to it. So, I guess we’ll be houseless. If we move back to the area where we live now we’ll have to build a new house. Something we don’t want to do. As many of you know things have changed drastically within the mission here in the last two years and we no longer feel like we have a future there. We’ve been thinking and praying about moving on for a while but never sure how to go about it. Now we have no choice. Where we will move onto yet is a big ? for us. We know God has a place for us somewhere but we aren’t totally sure where that is. So for now we are taking one step at a time. Moving to the city is the next step and hopefully by the time we are ready to leave the city we will know where God wants us to go.

The hardest thing ever about leaving is leaving the school. We have invested our everything into the school and have been so excited to see where it will go. Now we are leaving it not sure if it will continue or not. There is so much potential there but so few people who have a vision for it. We are currently looking for a director and teachers for next year. If those needs are all fulfilled then it can continue. If not, well, I don’t even want to think about that.

Some of you have been asking about Alex’s adoption. There has been so little progress made in the last three months that it is discouraging. All we need is for the judge to give us a court date for the hearing for the adoption but he is taking a very long time giving us that. Our judge is in town so we are really praying that the adoption will be complete by the time we move to the city so we won’t have to go back for the hearing after we move.

There are many areas where we’d like you to join us in prayer:

• For a good place to live in the city
• Anthony will need a good job in the city
• A healthy pregnancy and healthy babies and that everything with the birth will work out as planned
• That the school can continue – for a director and teachers with a vision for a Christian school
• That Alex’s adoption will be complete before we move to the city
• Direction for the future

I’ll close for now with one of my favorite quotes –

“Don’t tell God you have a big problem. Tell your problem you have a big God.”

I’m so glad God is bigger than whatever circumstance we find ourselves in. He has faithfully guided us in the past and I know He will continue to do so in the future.

P.S. In case this blog post sounds heavy and discouraging I want you to know we don’t necessarily feel that way. Yes, we have a lot of big, hard changes and an unknown future ahead of us. It’s a lot for us to process and know how to proceed from here. But. We are very excited about our babies. We never would have asked for twins but since that’s what we are getting we are excited about it. It’ll be a true adventure and as most of you know we’ve always been the adventurous type. And besides, we are privileged – not many people get to have two babies at once. 🙂

Dear readers,

I decided to do something different this time for an update. I decided to give you a different perspective. Anthony’s nieces, Carrie and Juanita, came down for a two-week visit in June and I asked them to write about their trip so I could post it on here. So this time you’ll be hearing from them. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did! 😉

Our Trip to Bolivia

In June, Juanita and I were privileged to visit our Uncle Anthony, Aunt Diana, and little Alex. We enjoyed our time there very much.

After waiting in the airport for a very long time, we finally got our visas. With our limited Spanish and their limited English, it felt like quite an accomplishment! Thankfully, Anthony was there to help us out and pick us up. We slept for a few hours at an Air B&B, then bussed home with Anthony, Diana, and Alex. Alex was so excited to meet his cousins. He didn’t speak much English, but we managed to communicate pretty well. He enjoyed the stories we read him, even though they were in English an, hey, you don’t need to know Spanish or English to play Go Fish, right?! 😊

Anthony and Diana had 2 days of school left before vacation so we were able to visit school. Bonus, we even got to go on the school picnic too! They have a tiny school with 12 students and 3 teachers- Anthony, Diana, and Jefferson. We loaded in the trusty Toyota Tundra with our hotdogs, potato salad, and cake and headed out on Ed’s land. Surprisingly, the woods looked a lot like Missouri, but there were palm trees sprinkled here and there. We wore off our energy on a few games, ate lunch, then had a scavenger hunt.

One day we cleaned the school, then got to visit the Children’s Home and taught them how to play frisbee football, which is not for the faint of heart in the direct Bolivian sun! 😊 It was interesting visiting the place where Anthony and Diana both worked, and where Alex spent his first years. The children always welcomed us quite joyfully and were always ready to play a game.

We arrived in Bolivia in their ‘winter’. They call it their dry season. The weather was fairly pleasant EXCEPT for one or two days. Fifty four degrees feels very chilly inside the house. Especially a tiny house with concrete floor. But we managed and even had fun shelling peanuts and making peanut soup. (Which is MUCH better than it sounds, btw.) Diana and Alex love cold weather, while Anthony and we girls would groan every time we would hear her announce quite cheerfully that a ‘sur’ was blowing in.

The food was very yummy for the most part. It was different from Belizean food, which basically is the only other foreign country I have been to. They eat a lot of rice, potatoes, and chicken. And how could I forget! Mayonnaise. Yes, that’s right. Maybe because their food is slightly dry?? It also isn’t seasoned very heavily and tends to be a little bland. Salpicon was a very amazing dish we had consisting of French fries, boiled eggs, onions, tomatoes, green peppers, rice, and chicken. We had some delicious fried chicken one night when none of us felt like cooking and Anthony sweetly took us up the mountain for supper at one of the villages close by. Another interesting side note- Diana, Juanita, and I do NOT like to cook. Surely out of three of us, one of us would. But Diana did very well at cooking traditional Bolivian foods. And the tea breaks. I learned to love their hot black tea with a little bit of sugar and milk. We would drink it 3  if not 5 times a day. 😊 One night, we also had the privilege of going to one of the village families and eating food that the men had grilled. The family didn’t know English, so it was very different to sit there and have no idea what was being said. And then to talk about them to Diana and they had no idea what was being said. The food was still good, though, and they dished it out in huge portions for everyone. The yuckiest food was probably cow lung, heart, and stomach lining and a corn drink called ‘chicha’. At least we didn’t have to drink any blood or something gross like that. (Side note- They don’t drink blood in Bolivia, but I’m told they do in other countries.)

 Another fun thing was to ride motorcycles everywhere, because that’s what you ride if you don’t have a truck or jeep. Juanita and I rode behind Anthony one time on a half hour trip to town. My! We were sore and I managed to burn my leg on the way back, but it was quite an adventure! We were so loaded with groceries and supper that it was a wonder the moto could carry us all! Usually one of us girls would hop on behind Diana on her moto and one would hop on behind Anthony and Alex on his moto. Alex had this thing that he would whoop and holler and cheer every time his cycle beat. Juanita and I actually learned to drive Diana’s bike the day before we left. We didn’t crash, although, we won’t discuss how I blundered through a flowerbed and nearly crashed into a tree. 😉 And our scary trip to the Big Rock with Juanita breathing down my neck. We got a splendid view and even got to see the Home from up there. With a lovely campfire and pretty sunset, it was a perfect evening.

Another highlight was going for water at the village well. Alex LOVED to go with us. He would push the wheelbarrow with the empty buckets and try not to almost go in the mud puddles. So, Anthony and Diana have this cozy little 2 room brick house with a thatched roof. They have a nice little laundry/bathroom and a well that they can use if the water is not too muddy. But we had to haul water for washing clothes, drinking water, and sometimes bathing. I loved it! I felt so pioneerish to haul water from a well that I actually had to pump by hand. Anthony was working at adding an outdoor kitchen which will be very handy once they have it done!

One night, Juanita and I babysat Alex while Anthony and Diana went on a date. He loved staying with us but would worriedly wonder where Papi and Mami were. He is such a cute little guy, and was always asking questions. “Why?” was his favorite one, as well as “Where is it?” Anthony and Diana are such good parents and he listens to them very well. If you think of it, you can pray for them that the adoption process would go smoothly and fast.

Church was another interesting thing to observe. I say, observe because we didn’t participate very much because it was ALL IN SPANISH! I’ve never wished I knew Spanish worse in those 2 weeks as I ever had before! Of course the sermon was boring because we couldn’t understand it, but Diana wrote down notes so we at least could read those.

Evenings were the best! Anthony and Diana would put Alex to bed and then the four of us would play games, drink tea, and talk late every night. Juanita and Diana were the champion winners and Anthony and I where the champion losers until the last 2 days or so. We played lots of Nine Patch and Qwirkle. We even got Nelson to play Dominos one Sunday afternoon. If you don’t know Nelson, you should. Everyone needs someone like him in their lives. He is very kind and helpful. He is also very slow at everything. We were ALWAYS waiting for him to take his turn in Dominos. And he is absolutely hilarious! His dry sense of humor…let it suffice to say that Diana, Juanita, and I were almost always in stitches the evening he took us all to town in his dilapidated old jeep.

Bussing is another thing that was an interesting experience. Let’s just say that curvy roads and bussing don’t necessarily make for a very enjoyable time for people who easily get motion sickness. But we both made sure to take pills which definitely helped! It was a long 5-6 hour bus ride from the city back to where Anthony’s lived. One time a lady got on with a chicken and walked slowly toward the back. She stopped right by me and I was so afraid it would peck me. Thankfully it didn’t.

Our last two days we spent in Santa Cruz. It was fun cruising through the streets in a taxi, eating yummy ice cream, and meeting Tania for supper. We also climbed a bell tower and saw lots of pigeons at the plaza. And shopping was so much fun! Of course, we had to go material shopping and found some pretty pieces.

And now, my favorite part of Bolivia (other than being with Anthony and Diana) was spending time with Lydia and her children. She is a very dear lady who is trying to raise her children to serve the Lord. She has six children- Danilo, Maikol, Kenny, Anaceli, Dilan, and Juan Miguel. They speak some English, as she is American. They completely stole my heart and I miss them so much. We got to know Lydia a little better one day when Diana had a prayer time with some of the ladies- Lydia, sweet Rosemary, (who was so excited to hear we were coming, only to find out we knew only English ☹), Juanita, Diana, and I. She has bright red hair and her children are as brown as can be- so cute! We were able to be with them or see them fairly much because they would often husk and shell corn in Anthony’s front yard. They are respectful, cleaned up, and are always so sweet and cheerful. I actually sponsor Danilo to go to school, so it was extra special to be able to meet him. So if you think of it, pray for them that they would grow up to love and serve God.  I hope to go visit Bolivia again, hopefully with my boyfriend sometime. We really enjoyed our stay and it was so fun getting to know Diana better. (She feels like an older sister, rather than an aunt.) We are praying for you all as you serve in Bolivia. You are our heroes.

Blessings- Carrie & Juanita

A BIG thank you to Carrie and Juanita for writing about your time here! Come again anytime. 🙂

God is a good Father and He really does take care of us. I’ve prayed a lot especially since my daddy died that God would be my Father and that He would care for me like a father. He has been doing that and I would like to share with you some of the ways He has taken care of us recently.

– Anthony recently had to go to town to submit some papers for the adoption. It ended up taking him a lot longer in there then he was expecting. By the time he was finally ready to come home it was dark. The lights were so bad on the moto he was using that he could barely see. He wasn’t sure how he was going to get home. I was here at home in the meantime praying for protection for him and that God would bring him safely home. He wasn’t very far from town yet when all of a sudden, the moto lights got very bright – brighter than they’ve ever been before! They stayed that way all the time until he was safely home. There’s no doubt in my mind that it was God answering my prayer.

– Our water situation here has been getting quite alarming. The village well doesn’t always have water and the hole in the ground we use for washing and showering has been so dirty and smelly we weren’t able to use it. Anthony really started praying for our water situation. The last few times he pumped water out of the hole it has been so much cleaner and it doesn’t smell bad anymore! And the last several times I went for water at the village pump I have always been able to fill my buckets! One time the water ran out just as I was filling the last bucket. Thank You, God, for providing good water for us right now!

– My washing machine just decided to stop working right one day. When it came time to start washing heavier it would just start the cycle over and do it gently unless I went and manually changed it to the cycle it was ready for. Then one day I had already washed two loads of laundry. I had been manually making it continue on the cycle for a few weeks but this time all of a sudden it started working like it is supposed to. That was a few weeks ago and it’s been working ever since! God answered that prayer before I even prayed about it.

– Alex and I were in town yesterday. We had gone in on my moto. When we were ready to leave the first stop we made my moto would not start for anything. It didn’t even try to start. I kicked it a few times but nothing. Something wasn’t right. I paused and prayed asking God to please take care of me and get my moto started for me. I kicked again and it started up right away. I didn’t have any more problems with it the rest of the day!

– Last week and the beginning of this week we’ve been having very challenging days at school. Some of the children have been having very bad attitudes and things were going roughly. At Wednesday night prayer Anthony asked our small group to please pray specifically for the school. The next day and Friday were remarkably better days. We could all tell the difference. Yeah, God! You are helping us once again!

There is so much power in prayer! Prayer really does change things. God really does want to be our Father and take care of us. No, He doesn’t always answer our prayers the way we hope or that quickly but we must believe that it’s because He knows what is best. He wants to give good gifts to His children. I wanted to share these things because we all need reminders that God is good. We all need to be reminded that if God is for us things will happen. I want to love Him more and trust Him more – even when I can’t understand or see what He is doing.

“God, thank you for being a good Father to us. Thank you for seeing us and for caring for us. Thank you for loving us and for protecting us. Help us to continue to know You better and to trust You more. We want to be good children for You but we don’t always know how and we fail so many times. Please help us. Please keep being our Father. You are all we have. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.” – James 1:17

“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” – Luke 11: 13

“The safest place to be is in the center of God’s will.” – Corrie Ten Boom

Mother’s Day was two weeks ago. It was the best Mother’s Day ever! My husband and my son did a super good job of honoring and making me feel special and loved. I certainly am blessed. It was extra special to have a child here with me on Mother’s Day. My heart was just continually overflowing that day. The day before I had made a bunch of heart-shaped cakes. Then on Mother’s Day (a Monday here) all the school children decorated a cake and gave it to their mom or a mother figure in their life. It was pretty special to get a cake from my son. 🙂 ❤ I actually ended up getting two cakes because one of the girl’s wanted to give her cake to me too.

The night of Mother’s Day we were invited over to Miguel and Lydia’s (neighbors) house for supper. Nelson wanted to do something for the mamas so he brought hot-dogs over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two of Anthony’s nieces get here next week. We are really excited to have some family coming for a visit. Especially Anthony’s family as none of them have ever been here before. They’ll be here for two weeks.

We are halfway done with school! We always have a three-week break at the half way mark. We’ll start the break after this next week of school. We’re glad that Carrie and Juanita will be here for two days of school and the school hike. But we are also glad that most of the time they are here we will be on our little vacation.

 

Last week was Teacher’s Day and these little things showed up at our door by some of our students. 🙂 Totally made my day and paid off being a teacher in that very moment. We had off from school that day so that was super nice. We went in to town to eat with the other teacher. That was a fun relaxing day for us!

 

“If we counted our BLESSINGS instead of our MONEY, we would all be RICH.”

 

 

 

 

It is with great great joy that I introduce to you Alex David. Last Thursday we got guardianship of him and we finally got to bring him home and claim him as our son on Friday. We are not finished with the adoption yet but we have guardianship. Our social worker says the adoption should be a breeze though and should only take three to six months to complete. We can start the end of May. So we are hopeful that she is right and knows what she is talking about. But we finally have him! It has been amazing. The whole transition process has gone so smoothly so far. It has helped tremendously that we have known him since he was only a few months old and had established a good solid relationship with him for a long time already. He was DELIGHTED when we told him the news. He kept jumping up and down and laughing and hugging us. He wanted to pack up and come immediately so that’s what we did. It seemed like he really understood and he is so excited to finally have a daddy and a mama. He started calling us that right away and calls us that just about every time. Sometimes he forgets but not very often. Yes, we are super blessed! It is such a joy to have him in our house as a son. No more visits and begging to come. He can stay.

I’d like to give a little background on him. He is six years old. He went to the Children’s Home when he was only two months old. Anthony was there when he got there and I came shortly after. He didn’t have a name. The workers there all talked about it and he was given the name Alex (NOT SHORT FOR ALEXANDER) David. We will have the option to change his name when we do the adoption but we do not want to. We like the name and to change it would seem weird. He’s always been Alex. He has always had a special connection with Anthony. Even when he was a little he always was in search of Anthony and would spend many hours with him. When we first started talking about adopting it wasn’t even hard to figure out who to adopt. It was to be Alex of course. He is a little slow for his age. Not everyone can understand him when he talks. But we love him dearly and are excited to be his parents.

Anthony and I had one last romantic getaway before we got Alex. It was a wonderful time at a beautiful place. It was called Warm Waters and that’s exactly what it was. The water came from a spring in the ground and it was nice and warm and felt so good.

A huge thank you to each one that has been praying for us with the adoption case. God is answering our prayers step by step.

“They may not have my eyes, they may not have my smile, but they have all my heart.”  

School occupies very much of our time these days. It’s a good thing though and we both thoroughly enjoy teaching. Granted it does have it’s challenges but it’s rewarding overall and we really enjoy spending time with the children.

 

From left to right top to bottom – Anaceli, Yamil, Kenrick, Danilo, Yordano, and Jose Miguel. We are still looking for sponsors for these six children. If you are intrested but forgot to say something, please say something. 😉 If you know of someone that might be interested please let them know.

And now, a great big huge prayer request. Up until this year we have been able to inscribe students up to 8th grade. In Spanish there are two halves to school. 1st-6th is one half and 7th-12th is the other half. Our school is only registered to teach for the first half. After 8th grade the students have been going to town every two weeks for classes in order to get a diploma. Never a great idea but it was the only option. We’ve been talking for a while already about looking into the requirements to take them all the way through 12th grade and get a diploma but we’ve never pursued it. Until now. Somehow we can’t put them in the system anymore after 6th grade. So, we are actively pursuing high school here. Basically it will take a huge miracle from God. We need to have registered teachers and a huge sum of money for the lawyers etc. that we will need. Honestly, it looks pretty impossible. But we believe that this school is God’s will and we know if it’s His will for us to have high school and to be able to teach past 6th grade He will open the doors and do the impossible. But we need prayer. Lots and lots of it. Pray for wisdom for Anthony has he tries to look into our options. Pray for understanding with the people he has to work with. Most of them have no idea what the laws are concerning a private school and they try very hard to make us comply with all the government school rules. Pray for a way around getting public school teachers to teach it. Pray that God would supply the huge amount of money we will need. Pray that God would open the doors wide if it’s His will for us to have this. We barely know where to start. It looks very overwhelming. But we feel like we need to try. So we will. But like I said before, we really need prayer in this.

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”                   -Robert Stevenson

We have had a busy, social week. As I mentioned earlier, the beginning of this week was Carnaval. Yami and her cousin, Graciela came out and spent two days with us. They really didn’t want to be in town over the holiday. It was a wise decision. We enjoyed having them here immensely. It was a new experience for Graciela to be out in the country. She seemed to enjoy it but I think she was ready for town again by the time they left.

Tuesday we made a huge kettle of soup over at our friend Isabel’s house. It took most of the morning and part of the afternoon from start to finish. We served around 200 plates. It was a blessing to minister to the children in this way.

 

 

Wednesday found us back in school again. Everyone enjoyed the little vacation but it was exciting to be back again.

Thursday God did a miracle for us. We were on our way into town to pick up some papers we needed for school. It was an exceptionally warm day. About half way into town the moto quick working. Anthony messed around with it but could not get it running. We finally decided we were going to have to push it a LONG way back home. Not something we wanted to do – especially not on a hot afternoon. Right before we decided to start pushing we prayed asking God to please help us and fix our moto if it’d be His will. After we finished praying Anthony tried it again and it started right up. With very grateful hearts we were on our way again. God took care of whatever problem there was because it got us to town and when Anthony looked at it he couldn’t find anything very wrong with it. It was a precious reminder to us that God still cares and He sees and He does like to give us good things.

Friday we woke up to rain. What a blessed noise as rainy season is almost over and we got very little rain. We had to cancel school because it was raining so much. God blessed us with five inches of rain that day. What a blessing! The ponds are finally about to overflow once again.

Today was a social Sunday. We had some village friends over to share lunch with us. Then this afternoon a number of the children from the Children’s Home came over to play darts with us. It was special to have them here for the afternoon. They felt pretty important being here without any of their tios or tias.

Even Jose Luis got to play. That was very special for him!

 

May God give you exactly what you need to face tomorrow and this coming week. Let’s continue to be a blessing to others in this journey of life.

“Happy moments? Praise God.

Difficult moments? Seek God.

Quiet moments? Worship God.

Painful moments? Trust God.

Every moment… Thank God.”

“God and man exist for each other and neither is satisfied without the other.” – A. W. Tozer

 

This is a lady I want you to meet. Her name is Elena. She doesn’t know how old she is but we guess her to be in her 80’s. She goes way back to the days when our big neighbor village next door had slaves. She remembers being a slave. She is one of my dearest old lady friends and she likes to call me her daughter. Anthony and I go regularly to see her. She comes to church fairly frequently but it’s so that maybe she’ll gain favor with God so that He’ll heal her. She has bad cataracts in both eyes and because of that can’t see out of one eye. She has problems with her heart and yeah, several other problems that come with old age. She must have some faith in God because she tells me that she knows God can heal her. But after Anthony clearly explained salvation to her she said she didn’t believe it. But, in a more recent conversation with her Anthony made it very clear that she needs to ask God for spiritual healing more than physical healing. He had a long straightforward talk with her. It seemed to sink in a little more then previously. I feel a real burden for her. She’s an old lady and we know she won’t live too many more years. We so badly want her to come to know Jesus and believe in Him before she dies.

“God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other.” – C. S. Lewis

 

This young man is one of our good friends. His name is Marco. He is another needy soul. He knows the truth and he knows what he needs to do to be a Christian. But, he’s not ready to surrender everything yet and give it all over to God. He has been showing up at church sporadically again. I think he’s close. But not close enough. He’s been facing some hard things lately and we pray that those things will push him closer to God. He needs your prayers.

 

Vismar. He was a Christian at one point in his life. But he let his relationship with God grow cold. He does not profess to be a Christian anymore as He knows he’s not. I don’t know what it will take for him to surrender his life to God once again. He’s fine on his own and doesn’t see his need for God. He comes to church every Sunday – to see the people there. He has a pretty easy life and good luck and things always just seem to fall in place for him. I think it’s harder for people like that to really recognize their need for God. His spiritual state lies heavy on our hearts.

“Nothing can take the place of the touch of God in the soul and the sense of Someone there.” -A. W. Tozer

 

These dear girls – Nelida, Tania, and Yami. Nelida is facing some health problems right now and that looks big and scary to her and all of us. She needs prayer. Yami is facing difficulties in town where she is currently living. She is a Christian but it’s hard to stand alone. She experiences a lot of pressure and she’s not sure how long she can stand it. She needs prayer for strength and for wisdom.

I don’t have a picture of Ed Yoder but he’s needing prayer right now too. He is the one who started the work here and who must of us call Grandpa. He’s been sick for a number of weeks now. He’s been to the doctor several times and they can’t seem to find anything wrong. But he keeps getting weaker. Please join us in prayer for him. God is the only one who can heal our bodies.

Right now a huge fiesta is starting here. Many, many people will spend the next two days drinking and dancing and being crazy. Children will go hungry while their parents drink away. Darkness will prevail. We’ll go on Tuesday to the big community next to us and give lunch to all the hungry children. The spiritual darkness will be so heavy we’ll feel it pressing us. It’s called Carnaval. It’s where Mardi Gras comes from if that helps give you a perspective. Many people will be trying to fill a huge void in their lives. They’ll try to make themselves feel happy. But they’ll only stay miserable. Only God can fulfill that void but in their ignorance they miss it. After the party is over and the alcohol is gone they’ll still feel sad. They’ll still feel that void. So many needy souls. Please pray that God’s light would shine brightly through us in this time of spiritual darkness. Please pray that the people around us would recognize that they are needy souls and that only God can fill their void.

“May my life be like the full moon on a clear summer night – brightly shining into the darkness.” -DJW

As I write this post I think maybe I should just put a picture of all of us in here. We all are needy souls. We all have so many needs. All of us are craving for God. I don’t know of anyone who is exempt. Only God can fill the needs in our hearts. How desperately we need Him!

“To know God is to live. To be ignorant of Him is to die. To be drawn into oneness with the eternal Father and Son and Holy Spirit – this is truly the highest purpose of life.” – Rodney Yoder

 

Sometimes we forget basic Bible truths because we’ve heard them so many times. After awhile we forget to think about what they really truly mean. We’re like yeah, we know that but do we really BELIEVE it?

I would like to share two Bible truths that I’ve always known but that jumped out at my recently and have been impacting my life in a big way as I go from knowing them to believing them.

Here’s the first one. Matthew 10:30 says that the very hairs of our head are all numbered. Think about that with me for a minute. Every. single. hair. Do we know when we lose one hair? Are you kidding??!! No way! Does God know when we lose one hair? You better believe it! That’s how much we care to Him. He knows every single hair.

The next basic Bible truth that I want to share with you comes from Psalm 56:8. It talks about God seeing each tear that falls and putting them in His bottle. Every tear? Yes, every. single. tear. Every one! Does He just see it? Nope, He does more than that. He puts it in a bottle. I’ve often wondered how big of a tear bottle God must have for me, because honestly folks, I’ve shed a lot of tears.

 

Think about these two thoughts today. Let them deepen your trust and faith in God. We can’t always feel God but we can know He is always there if He sees those two little things about us. That is how intimately He knows each one of us.  Yes, that’s my God! That’s why I can tell you for sure that God really cares about you. He really cares about me. When I put that into perspective I amaze myself and wonder why I find it so difficult to trust Him sometimes.

It’s hard to believe that it’s that time of the year again! How fast our vacation time flew. We are doing something different this year. We are going to try sponsorship’s. We are hoping to get a sponsor for each of our children. It’s a big huge blessing to have a Christian school for our children but we need more help financially. That’s where you can help!

Vision

To provide a quality Bible-based education to Bolivian children. We want to provide children with an environment that they can learn to relate well with others, develop healthy relationships, and learn to bring the Bible to life.

Sponsorship

Give a Bolivian child the opportunity to earn their education at a school with a good, Christian atmosphere.

A commitment of sponsoring the child for an entire school term is required. The cost is $60.00 a month.

More Info

Contact Anthony and Diana Weaver for more information or to start your sponsorship!                              Email: rayofjoy15@gmail.com  Whatsapp: +59175036769