As I sit down to write this update today I am overwhelmed with God’s grace and mercy. Five years ago today Garrett was told by his oncologist that he was cancer free for the second time. We don’t often get to see why we go through trials and tribulations in this world, but we have seen God’s purpose through all of this. Without Garrett’s cancer it is almost certain that we wouldn’t have been sensitive to His call on our lives to pick up everything and move to a foreign country so we could tell people about the amazing God we serve. In fact I doubt that our faith would have been strong enough to follow through with this call.
A quick update on the family. Hope is continuing to do well, although sometimes I fear she is a little lonely. Please pray that we can find friends her age. Also pray that she will continue to learn spanish. As of right now when we read to her in spanish she says, “no fanish”.This could be because we sound like 2 year olds ourselves reading to her. Gideon is growing too fast he is 3 months old now, and has already doubled his birth weight and is in the 90th percentile in length! We were able to get all of Gideon’s paperwork complete. We have his Mexican and American passports, thank you for praying for that specific request, your prayers work! Garrett and I are doing well, we should be starting official tutor sessions for spanish twice a week, in the next week or so. We have taken on the challenge to read The Bible in a year. This has been a personal goal of mine for a few years now…so you can pray that we are diligent to complete this goal. Pray for our permanent visa process, we are in the middle of the process now and feel confident that in the next update that this will be another prayer answered!
We had our first mission team come down last week. I think they might still be traumatized from being our guinea pigs. But all in all it went well. We have found all of the villages that our people group live. We also have found a possible person of peace, E, that is willing to take us into some of these remote villages where he has grown up. Pray that we can build a relationship with him, and that his relationship with Christ will grow stronger. We are working on a virtual prayer walking video. You can pray that our vision and message are clear in this video.
The Domingo family, the family by the river, seems to be doing well. We have set up a bible study time every other saturday. We all open our bibles and take turns reading and discussing God’s word. It is amazing to watch the joy on their faces when they are shown for the first time how to navigate the Bible starting with the table of contents to find the book we are in, and then showing them how the chapters and the verses are used. Pray that more of the family will participate in the Bible study, and that they will start to invite friends so that the gospel can spread through out the family and beyond.
Our next team comes down in March. They are good friends of ours so we are very excited to get to spend time with them. They are bringing their 3 kids out of the country for the first time. I am super excited for Hope to see her friends! Pray for smooth travels, and a fun productive trip for God’s glory. Thank you for all of your continued support. We do not feel alone in our call to be here spreading the Gospel.
We have also made a connection with another state-side church that is working in a village close to Tuxtepec with another people similiar to ours. We hope to be able to help them with various ministry needs. Pray for their effectiveness to reach their people group, and there upcoming trips this year.