Up at Night

Once again, I am up at 2:30 in the morning not able to sleep. My family has been gone four days now and I feel a big chunk of my heart is absent. The last few days have been a wonderful yet hard learning experience. God is showing me how blessed I am. He has blessed me with an incredible partner in this life that loves Him more than anything and two wonderful children who are so fun to be with and so easy to love. I am a truly blessed woman.

The work here continues to grow and flourish. God seems to be blessing it despite our weaknesses and inadequacies. This month has been a wonderful month full of events and people. We hosted a medical group who offered services to the Tabacundo and surrounding communities. This group from Arkansas helped and encouraged many through their sacrifice and love. During this same weekend, a wedding also took place here. A young lady who I have had the pleasure of knowing since she was three years old joined her life with an Argentine who recently graduated from the Bible School in Quito. It was exciting to watch them dedicate their lives to each other. This was the first wedding to take place here at the camp, but after seeing how beautiful a wedding can be in the midst of God’s beauty I think we’ll be seeing many more lives joined here.
We have entered our last month of the children’s program before we take the summer break. Recently we have been busy celebrating Mother’s Day and Children’s Day. For Mother’s Day the children made cards for their mothers, and they also helped cut out and decorated cookies for their mothers. Now I have to say, that was a full day. Organizing cooking and decorating for 100 children is a much bigger task than I thought. We had very limited supplies, so we all used the same cookie cutter and we could not make a whole lot of icing so we had four colors and one by one, they chose what color they wanted and then decorated their cookie. At the end, it was totally worth it. They were all so excited to take their finished cookie to their mother. God continues to grow the program and send us children who are in need. Please continue to pray we have the wisdom to work with each child and provide them with their needs. I want to thank all of you who have been praying for the man who is raising his four children on his own. His youngest baby seems to be growing and doing much better health wise. He is still very behind in motor skills, but is gradually making progress.
God keeps showing us He is in control of the church here. Our new brothers and sisters continue to show us how blessed we are. Their love for God and desire to follow Him is so encouraging and often humbling. They remind us how blessed we are to be sons and daughters of the King. Again, we thank you for your prayers for the people here. God is at work and we are thankful we have so many partners in this work who love Him.
Before I close, I would like to share a special prayer request. We are facing more and more teen mothers in our area. Often, they drop out of school and begin living with the father of their baby and his family, not out of love or a commitment, but necessity. It is a sad but very common situation here. The local children and family protection service has repeatedly contacted us asking us to give temporary housing to children living in abusive and neglectful situations. Currently, we do not have the facilities or the personnel to help the way we feel God wants us to. As we look for what He desires for us to do in this situation, we know we cannot shut the door. We have begun thinking about possible housing opportunities that we could offer as a temporary living assistance for those in desperate need get their feet back under them. Please pray for God to guide us to His will and share with us your thoughts. God is good and I believe He will supply us with what we need to follow His will.
We pray God is blessing each of you.