Well, if you’re looking at this newsletter, then you’ve already discovered that we redid our website. Not only has the design changed, but the information has been updated to include our first year here in Nicaragua. Hard to believe that it has already been over a year!! Keep looking out for our coffee site, www.heavenlyharvestcoffee.com which should be up soon!

We had a baptism on Sunday. Jaime del Carmen, who has been visiting with Margarita (who was baptized just a few weeks ago), decided to become a Christian. We are so excited to have so many young people making the decision to devote their lives to God!

Jaime del Carmen

We have been having record-breaking attendance lately! For the 2nd quarter of the year, the average attendance was about 95. The last 4 Sundays our attendance has been: 124, 131, 143, and 123! This usually includes about 55 adult members, 10 visitors (both non-Chrisitans and visitors from other congregations), and about 60-65 kids. Out of our members, about 17 of them are part of our youth program. As I mentioned with Jaime’s baptism, many of our new Christians are bringing visitors with them.

We’ve started harvesting some of the coffee on the farm. Right now we only have about 4 workers going through and harvesting the few ripe cherries so we’re sure none overripen and rot. Check out the pictures to see us depulping.

This article gives a fairly easy to read overview of the presidential elections to take place in November.

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/344/1/

I have been on “vacation” all week since my family has been here to visit me! We are having such a great time. My mom, sister, brother-in-law, nephew, and niece were all here (still are, they leave tomorrow). My brother-in-law got to help build a bathroom for one of the members of the church. Us girls planted a garden on the farm with tomatoes, onion, cantelope, watermelon, and much more I can’t think of right now. We already have squash and corn on the farm that will be ready soon!

Working on Johanna’s bathroom/shower

Our new garden

Today we got to go to the tourist market in Masaya to get some goodies to remember the trip. We got my niece an authentic Nicaraguan dress and doll. My nephew got a little guitar. Later I’ll have to tell you all the cute things that they do!! One funny thing is that my niece (1 year) says “Boy” but to those who speak spanish it sounds like “buey” which means ox. So all the kids tease that she’s calling them oxen.

Aren’t they cuties?

Here’s the whole family

They brought 4 suitcases of clothes so we sorted them Saturday and each member of the congregation got an outfit. We even had enough left over to give clothes to a neighboring congregation!

Marjuri and her son, Yesner, with their clothes

We had a big crowd!

The church had a wonderful “Building warming” and 2 year anniversary service on Sunday. It started at 4:00. We had members from 5 congregations there. Two elders out of the 3 congregations that started the church on the farm got to give a 15 minute lesson encouraging the congregation to keep working and stay faithful. David also talked for 15 minutes thanking those who were involved and have supported us in the work. After that, one of our members made a slide show of photos from the start of the congregation forward. We had a congregational meal afterwards.

The building is all finished now

Chris, Jack and Syd from Seminole Oklahoma got here on Friday. Chris is doing seminars on song leading and church leadership. I’m working Jack and Syd to the bone doing construction work! We had planned to build Mayra a kitchen, but she said she’d rather have some house work done. It is not easy, but it’s coming along nicely.

The start of Mayra’s house

The finished product

My family gets here in 2 days!!! I can’t wait, but I’ve been so busy, I don’t feel ready. It will be nice to have them here and take a little break to visit with the family and play with my niece and nephew!

I’ll get some pictures up sometime…right now I just feel like a nap!!

We have been running all over Managua getting things ready for our first shipment of coffee to go by carrier. Since it was the first time, there are tons of going back and forth to get in the computer, waiting for the computer to recognize us so we can do the next step, and on and on! Plus, they don’t have the paperwork in order of the places to go, so many times you have to go to a place and get things printed off, take it to another to get it stamped, and then return to the first place to get it signed. And none of them are good at telling you what you’ll need for the next step. But, we made a buddy at the exportation organization, so we should be set for the future.

Packing up the Coffee

The church building is looking great! I’ll have a picture up soon of the finished product. It looks really pretty, and we are ready to have it done!

Yesterday we had a special service for Greyssel and her family. Greyssel is the only one in her immediate family that is a member of the church (she’s about 16 or so). Her sister’s husband has been very sick with cancer, and he is doing much better now, so her family wanted us to have a service to give thanks to God and pray that God continue to inprove his health. Giovanni gave a great evangelistic lesson. He used the scripture where Jesus asks the paralytic at the pool of healing if he wants to be healed. Of course the paralytic says “Yes!” But what was Jesus really asking? Being healed includes responsibility. As a healed man, he will be responsible for working, providing for himself, feeding himself, clothing himself, etc. Giovanni relates that to spiritual sickness. When people ask “Do you want to be saved?” most answer yes, but what does “saved” mean? It means responsibility. It means the sinner can’t continue to live in his sinful ways. The sinner has to change, clearing out the world to make room for Christ to live in him. He has to live a life worthy of Christ (Phil 1:27), and it isn’t easy, but the reward is great - spiritual health.

This next week we have a lot of things planned. Three men from Seminole, OK (Giovanni’s sponsoring congregation) will be visiting. One will be holding two seminars for 3-4 days each. One seminar is over song leading, and the other is over Christian leadership. The other two men will be working on building bathrooms and kitchens for some of our members. I will be using the money that the Edmond group brought to do this great deed for the members.