Praise Reports

We got our boat!! Finally we can get off the island without calling the expensive taxi's who sometimes show up. We're still learning how to drive!! Guess what, there's no brakes in the water!! The biggest issue is determining how fast and which direction the current is flowing as you kick into reverse to slow down when docking. It hasn't been accomplished to perfection yet, a few bumps and bruises have occurred.

Also, Mitch's meds came through customs ok. We're so thankful to all who have been praying for them. These took about a month, and his Dr. was kind enough to include lots of samples to make up for the time lag.

We also had our first "big" shopping trip. A quick 30 minute plane trip to David. This is the closest city with a Costco type store. We quickly found out shopping here ain't like the states. Each store has it's own eclectic variety of goods, with no particular order or organization. We also found out you can't return things here, so you have to first spend a day price checking, then retrace steps to purchase. Fortunately with so many people moving here Toby has devised a service to help us Gringos. She picked us up at the airport, drove us around, negotiated prices, and then delivers all of our good via her 16 foot truck. It was supposed to be delivered a few days later, which turned into two weeks. Hey, in Panama the ferry might not run, the roads could be washed out, or they frequently have "protests" which block traffic. Now that we have her number we can just email her, and she'll do the shopping for us and send it along. For those of you who know how much I don't like shopping this is a great deal!! All for $7.00 an hour, which is way above the normal $2.00, but way less than a regular taxi, and we wouldn't have had a clue where to go. This also includes the delivery. Then I headed for the YWAM conference in Mexico, and Dale and the kids took the bus home. It's a money saver, but takes 4 hours.

Solar electric is almost working. We had to replace a motherboard on the inverter panel, and have also had to add a converter so that the generator could use 220 when recharging the batteries and it would go quicker. We're learning a whole new "solar lingo" here along with our Spanish!!

Making new friends. Reanna has attended her first "bash", and we've gotten to know the few people who attend our church better. It's wonderful to have a face recognize us when we head into town.

First apprentice

Dale has been working this week with Louis. He lives nearby and is married with no children. Louis canoes 2 hours every morning to get to work on another island, and back again in the evening. He has shown up all three days Dale asked him to work, which is unusual here. We've asked over 5 people, and he's the only one that's ever shown up on time, or at all. We've been praying about asking Louis to be here full-time, as our first real apprentice. He's hard working, and diligent, and we'd love to share more of the Lord with him. However, he needs to provide for his wife, and he also lives with his parents and 11 other siblings. He's asking for $1.50 an hour for his part-time work, and Dale said there was a little forboding in his eye, like was that too much. The Indians here are the very lowest on the social scale, often seen by others as equal to dogs. Please pray about whether God would have you partner with us in providing training for Louis, and being able to pay him the salary he's asking for. We want to start slowly, once we have been able to train one, we can then use his help in training others. Also pray for wisdom, the system is different here. We would need to pay his social security as well, which is more like our workmen's compensation and hospitalization combined. It would cover if he got hurt at work, or became ill at home.

YWAM DNA Conference, Ensenada, Mexico

Hi!
I just returned from the YWAM conference in Ensenada, Mexico. What a thrill to be annointed by Loren Cunningham, and to sit at the feet of Darlene Cunningham and David Hamilton as they shared the stories of God's faithfulness to this generation. These pioneers stepped out in faith on the word of the Lord to begin to encourage young people to go to all the nations of the earth. Today, YWAM is in every nation. One of my favorite stories involved 3 girls who prayed and heard the Lord tell them to go into the Amazon jungle. They searched the web, asked people, even called other missions organizations, and everyone said there were no people there. Three months they searched and prayed; God repeatedly gave them this direction. So they boated as far as they could, then switched to canoe, and finally hiked for four days through dense jungle. Then a fierce looking people surrounded them. After spending three months with them they began to understand their language. The old witch doctor knew her people were all going to die. She held her hands up to heaven and implored if there could be only one God, send someone. Three months later the girls showed up. They brought some of these precious new Christians out of the jungle, and the first time this language was ever heard outside their people, it was as they praised God with their own songs!!!! It was a totally unheard of people group, but God knew where they were, and He wanted them for His own.
We don't need to be in the jungle to find the lost, we just need to look around wherever God has placed us, and begin to pray with urgency that the enemy would be bound, and the Holy Spirit loosed so these people can also know their creator.