March 2011 Update

At the church plant

Our own Pastor Manuel was the recipient of the care of a medical brigade this past month. Robert took him out to a town over an hour away from here where they operated on a hernia. Thank God for medical brigades! While Pastor Manuel recuperated Robert preached two Sunday sermons at our church plant, dedicated a baby, and officiated at a funeral. Pray with us for his complete recovery.

At the library

Many of these children have never put a puzzle together before. Most have never played a table game. The excitement on the children’s faces is a reward in itself. It’s so encouraging when we see them jump up and down and shout “I did it!” upon completing a puzzle. They say, “Oh, how beautiful!” when they see the pictures in the lovely books that people have donated. The teachers have commented how thankful they are for the library as they can see an improvement in the children’s abilities to read and do their numbers, and we’ve only just begun! The photos we’ve taken can never do this justice. How we wish you could be here to experience it! We are so grateful for your prayers to make this a reality. The children are being blessed. A community will be changed because of your support and prayers. We are thankful to the Lord for Oscar Noé and Mary, whom we are training to run the library. Pray that we will be able to find and train volunteers that can come along side them to help.

At the school

A few days of observing at the Pablo Menzel bilingual Christian school and we knew exactly what they needed to do to improve the quality of their educational institution. English classes for their teachers! Robert will be giving pronunciation classes to the teachers there over the next several weeks. This is one of several recommendations we have given to the school board after they requested that we evaluate their Christian Reformed school’s performance. The teachers are also asking for training on working with children with learning disabilities.

At home

On March 28 David turned 13! It’s hard to believe we now have a teenager in our family! We are very proud of his musical gifts, which he is putting to use to serve the Lord. The last two Sundays of March we led worship at the English speaking church and David joined us on the drums one of those days. He is also an incredible artist, amazing us with his drawings for his schoolwork. Both he and Julianna help us with the children in the library three times a week, taking them to the bathroom, playing with them, helping them with homework, or helping them to check out books. We are very blessed to be able to serve God together as a family.

On the streets

The violence continues...This month another pastor’s son in Choloma was kidnapped and murdered. The brother of the cleaning lady at our library was murdered. Two policemen were killed trying to save a friend’s niece from being captured and murdered. Please pray for the families who are grieving. Pray for peace for the Hondurans and safety for His people. We are encouraged to announce that at long last the pastors are responding to the invitation to get together for prayer against the violence and to be united as a body of believers. Roberto Marroquin (our pastor friend murdered last month), who had once been the chairman of the pastors association, saw only a handful of men of God at those meetings. Now that he has been taken from them, they are about 200 strong!

This month there has also been days of protesting in the streets by the teachers. Pray that the issues can be dealt with in a peaceful manner.

Your prayers are key to our ministry here in Honduras. Thank you for your support and friendship. May the Lord bless you a hundred-fold!

On the front lines,

Robert, Roxanne, David, and Julianna