I taught ladies class this week and focused on Heb 12:4-11.  Here’s the lesson:

Who, when they were a child or a teenager liked to receive discipline from their parents?  Who likes to discipline their kids?  Why do you do discipline them?  Would you say its a sacrifice for you to discipline your kids (”This hurts me more than it hurts you” or being grounded when your kids are grounded)?

Who thinks that their parents were too easy in their discipline?  Too hard?  Perfect?  Do you respect your parents for disciplining you?  You should - Prov 15:5.

Now, what about the discipline of the church?  Do you like it when a brother/sister comes to your house to show you sin in your life?  Do you like it when God puts tests in your lives?  Did you know that this is how God disciplines us?

Heb 12:4-11

I - God’s discipline:

A - Trials, tests, difficulties, and persecution (v7).  B - Teaches us that God loves us (v6).  C - Teaches us to have respect and submit to God (9).  D - Produces 1)Pain in the moment (v11)  2)Life (v9)  3)Holiness (v10)  4)A harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it (v11).  E) We can use God’s discipline as training to improve our lives, or a stumbling block to fall into sin or a reason to complain.

II - The discipline of the church:

A - Is necessary and commanded by God: 2 Tim 4:2, 2 Thes 3:15, Matt 18:15-17.  Who wouldn’t warn a friend that they were entering something dangerous?  In the same way, the church must warn a brother who is doing something dangerous for their souls.  B - Shows the love of the church: Prov 28:23, Prov 27:5. Think about all the excuses that most people use to not talk to someone about their sin: they could get angry; it’s none of my business; what if they leave the church, it would be all my fault; etc.  If someone is coming to you about your sin, they overcame all of that fear and nervousness because of their concern for you.  C - We must submit to the correction/discipline: Heb 13:17, Eph 5:21, Prov 15:5.  D - Produces the salvation of our soul through repentance: 2 Tim 2:24-26.

No one in this world is perfect.  This means that at some point or another we are going to receive discipline and correction, be it from the church, our spouses, friends, etc.  How are we going to respond?  Think that the person correcting us is “against us” or trying to hurt us?  Get angry?  Try to criticize the person correcting us (and we could, because that person, of course, isn’t perfect either)?  Or receive it with appreciation that someone loves us enough to do something that is not fun, but rather causes fear and nervousness and receive it with joy that we are going to put our lives into order and submission to God.

Well, we have been busy busy! First we had internet problems with no internet for a week. Then we had electricity problems. We hadn’t really had no electricity since we got back from the States, so Monday I finally bought some frozen veggies, thinking they wouldn’t go bad since we’ve had electricity. So what do you think we found when we got home from the grocery trip? No electricity. Oh well, we’ll just have to eat them fast!!

We’ve had 3 more baptisms from contacts from the gospel meeting. One of our workers and his wife decided to become Christians! We are so excited!! The other was a woman who’s daughter responded to the gospel before her. I always love to see when new Christians lead their family members to Christ!

For church activities, we are getting into our busy time of year. We will have a special end-of-year service where the kid’s classes will sing, show off what they’ve learned and such. Last year we had over 200 people in attendance, so I’m sure we’ll have much more this year too! It’s a great way to reach out to the parents who don’t attend regular services, so please keep this in your prayers.

Farm work is going well too. We are harvesting coffee. This year we are doing the processing of depulping (we just made the depulping tank below) and drying the coffee ourselves, and everything is going smoothly. We bought a container to store our coffee in. It is truck container, and it works great because the inside is lined with wood that helps protect from the humidity.

We’ve also had our first pineapple harvest, so David has been off to the market at 4:30 and 5:00 to sell. The pineapple ripened at the perfect time, because there’s practically no other pineapple ripe right now and the prices are high. Israel, a member of the church, has several pineapple fields, and he has been helping us learn how to care for the pineapple and sell it.

Well, we finished up our gospel meeting today, and things went wonderfully. The first day (Thursday) we had 108 in attendance. 2nd - 118. 3rd - 164. 4th (today) 139. This included 13-20 visitors from the neighborhood. We had a total of 9 baptisms. We had 142 in our regular service this morning. Thank you so much for keeping us and the meeting in your prayers. Please continue to pray for those who became Christians this week, and for the contacts that we have made and will be visiting in the weeks to come.

I’m excited to tell you that 4 people decided to share in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ today through baptism.  One of those is one of our young people, Juan Francisco.  He is Reyna’s son, and is such a sweet, soft-spoken young man.  Luciano, who preached at the congregation on the farm in the year after our initial gospel meeting and until we moved out here, gave the lesson tonight.  He talked about how in the transfiguration, God said “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear him.”  On this topic, he asked us all if we were “hearing” Jesus, listening to His words and commandments, and following them.  He talked about what Jesus said that we all needed to do to be saved, and then lead a life obeying Christ.  Please pray for the continued success of our door-knocking campaign/gospel meeting.

I’m excited to let you know that the gospel meeting was a great success today. We had 93 people in attendance, including 50 members, 29 kids, and 14 visitors from the community. We had two baptisms today as well! Jorge Norori from the Ducuali congregation in Managua preached the lesson. He talked about Acts 17 when Paul taught in Athens about the “unknown” God. It was a great lesson about getting to know the God we worship, and not trying to replace Him with images/idols. He mentioned how in Nicaragua there is a lot of image worship in the Catholic church with their saints, but how we should worship the true and living God, not try to exchange Him for a dead statue of a created being. He also talked about how the people of Athens either outright rejected God (poked fun of the resurrection), round-about rejected Him (come back another day), or accepted Him. Today we have the same choice - we can accept or reject God. Please continue to pray for the success of the gospel meeting.

Edwin and 3 other kids were over playing Nintendo.  I was working on the computer and not paying much attention to how long they were playing, etc.  Edwin hollers to me “Kim, do we need to quit playing, or can we keep on?”  I reply, “Yeah, you can keep playing.”  He yells again, “Yes or no, haven’t we been playing too long?”  I say “I don’t care, you can keep playing.”  Yet again he says, “Yes, keep playing, or are you sure we haven’t already been playing to long.”  Finally I say, “Right, you’ve been playing too long.  You guys can’t play anymore,” and he quickly says, “Okay.”  I don’t know if he was really concerned in the length of their playing time, or just had something else he wanted to do and wanted the other guys to join him, but I thought it was funny.

A kid was admiring a new fancy shiny car and the owner came up and said, “Hey, you like it?” And the kid said, “Yes, where did you get it.” The owner said, “My brother gave it to me.” The kid was just awestruck and says “For nothing, absolutely free. The owner says, “Yep, do you wish you had a brother like that?” The kid says, “No, I wish I could be a brother like that.”

Acts 20:35 “In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

It is so wonderful having great workers like ours!  When we got back from the states, we were so happy to see that they had worked on the entrance of the farm, and it looks great!  (no picture yet)  When we left, I gave Roger estimates of the pay for the workers, coffee harvesters, etc., and the day we returned he brought me sheets detailing each expense and everything added up perfectly and was accounted for.  It was so nice!!  I just think of how much God is blessing us and this farm and the work here!

We are getting ready for our campaign/gospel meeting this week.  We’ll be door-knocking, visiting contacts, and doing lots of prep work.  Please pray that God blesses this effort!  Also, please keep our congregation in your prayers, that we continue to grow in numbers, but also that our current Christians grow spiritually.

Ephesians 4:29 says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”  I’d like for everyone to sit and think for a minute about how nice life would be for us if everyone we talked to only said what was helpful for building us up according to our needs, and to our benefit.  Now think about how we talk.  Is what I’m saying helpful to the person I’m speaking with?  Is what I’m saying according to the needs of who I’m speaking to, or according to my needs?  Am I benefiting those who listen to me, or am I trying to benefit myself in conversation.  Pray that God help us speak in a uplifting, encouraging way, and then take steps today to talk in the way God asks us to.

After a wonderful 3 week visit to the states, we are glad to be back home!! A quick rundown of what we did. We spent the first week in Fort Worth with my parents and sister and her family. We got to shop and play and have a good vacation. It was good to see my nephew and niece again too, and amazing how much they’d grown since they visited me in August. Then it was off to OKC and work (ok, we played there some too). Probably the biggest thing was that we had a booth at OC’s Homecoming, and sold quite a bit of coffee! It really looks like coffee sales are going well, so with God’s help we’ll be on track for funding some great works here in Nicaragua! It was great to get to see all of our friends in OKC!

The return home was exciting. We flew to Houston in the smallest plane I’d ever been on. There was a seat, the isle, and then 2 more seats. They had to put our roll-bags under the place because they wouldn’t fit in the overhead area. Then on the flight to Managua there was a little turbulence (not bad though) and what I would call a bumpy landing. Maybe the pilot was new? We started to make our way home, but got to an intersection that was packed with people celebrating Ortega’s win. Further along was only getting deeper into the mess, so we turned around and stayed at a hotel for the night. We had some chocolate covered bridge mix, and it tried to kill David. He’s allergic to some nuts, that we thought weren’t in the mix (we’d been eating it all day), but I guess there were, because all of a sudden his face was swollen and he was having trouble breathing. The hotel took us to a nearby hospital that very efficiently gave him a shot. In no time he was back to normal. I was very impressed with the hotel and the hospital. The hotel didn’t charge us for our little outing, even though the driver waited about 30 min for us (we had to wait after the shot to be sure it was working). And the hospital visit - free! So, now I have to eat the rest of the bridge mix all by myself. Our stay in Managua worked out because we got to buy groceries and everything.

When we arrived at the farm one of our pelibueys (goat+sheep = geep) had 2 babies. Then last night another had 2 babies too. They are too cute, and sound exactly like a baby when they cry. Awwww.

The new additions to the farm family!

There’s a group of Americans (mostly) who meet in Managua, and I received this email from them.  Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this article are of the writer and aren’t endorsed/agreed upon by me.  Just thought you might find it interesting.

Tuesday, November 7^th

 

On Tuesday, Nov. 7^th at the Casa Ben Linder in Managua, Nicaragua, over 70 people participated in a forum on the 2006 Nicaraguan elections.   Among the participants were members of international elections observation delegations organized by Witness for Peace, the Center for Global Education, the School for International Training, and the Carter Center, as well as long-term international residents of Nicaragua. 

 

The purpose of the forum was fourfold:

• to share general experiences of elections observations,
• to share evidence of US influence and intervention in Nicaragua’s electoral process,
• to discuss the extent to which the elections could be described as “free, fair, and transparent,” and
• to gather a general summary of points to share with US groups interested in Nicaragua. 

 

We first heard from representatives of the various elections observation delegations, who engaged in observation work in various locations in the Pacific region of Nicaragua.  Overall, the consensus was that the elections were generally well-run, without major anomalies.  The elections were closely observed, with 1,227 accredited International observers and just over 13,000 national observers. Several participants commented that the Nicaraguan people exhibited a great attitude and enthusiasm as they participated in the voting process.  

 

Irregularities/problems observed included the late opening of some polling places, unequal application of rules such as cell phone usage inside the polling places, local ballots and national party ballots getting mixed up by the use of confusingly similar-colored ballot boxes, and slow-moving lines. More seriously, one observer witnessed the early closing of the polling place to which he had been assigned, leaving those still in the lines without an opportunity to vote.   However, all agreed that the irregularities observed were minor and not sufficient to significantly affect the elections results.

 

Prior to the elections, various scenarios were postulated in which large-scale electoral manipulation or fraud could occur, such as annulling votes or whole polling places or through the politicized distribution of cedulas, the national identification card required to vote in Nicaragua.  None of the participants reported observing evidence of systematic ballot or polling place annulment.   It was noted that in cases of disputes or confusion observed at polling places, they were generally resolved by consensus decisions made among the fiscals, or poll watchers, assigned by the Nicaraguan political parties to watch the polls.  A member of the Carter Center delegation noted that there was criticism of the distribution of cedulas by political parties in some regions of Nicaragua, leaving the distribution process open to claims of bias.  However, even if this did occur it would not be enough to sway the presidential results, though it could have impacted local elections.   On a systemic level, the pact between the PLC and the FSLN contributed to an unequal playing field for other parties.

 

No participants observed instances of direct US intervention in the voting process on elections day.   However, in the months leading up to the elections there were threats made by US government officials to cut off aid and trade with Nicaragua and to block the sending of remittances to Nicaraguans if the FSLN won.   The US embassy made it clear, through documented statements and actions, that they preferred Eduardo Montealegre, the ALN candidate.  Less tangible is the lasting influence previous US intervention in Nicaragua has on voters’ actions. 

 

On a smaller scale, USAID sponsored the printing of elections literature that included a comic book with a biased and pejorative depiction of Nicaraguan history and the Sandinista period.   Another participant noted that Nicaraguan electoral watchdog Etica y Transparencia receives much of its funding from USAID and that Etica y Transparencia observers at the polls had USAID logos prominently displayed on their materials.  Also, the US embassy made a public statement on election night expressing concern that the election was not transparent.   This assertion has not been supported by the Carter Center or other elections observers.

 

To conclude, forum participants gathered a general summary of points to share with people and groups back in the US interested in Nicaragua.

 

• The elections were generally well-run, without major problems significant enough to call question to the official outcome (the FSLN victory).   This assertion has been supported by watchdog groups Etica y Transparencia, IPADE, OAS, UE, Central American Observers and the Carter Center.
• There was a huge turnout, general enthusiasm and good attitude among Nicaraguans, making this election a good exercise in democracy.
• The Nicaraguan people have spoken; we and the US government have to respect their right to elect whomever they chose and their sovereignty.
• The US government must work cooperatively with the FSLN and Daniel Ortega as the democratically-elected leader of Nicaragua, and that we as US citizens/members of the international community need to communicate our opinions on this matter to our government.
• In discussing the Nicaraguan election with people in the US, it will be helpful to stick to the facts: that according to respected elections observer groups, the 2006 FSLN victory was free, fair, and transparent. Furthermore, US government officials openly intervened in the electoral process in several well-documented instances.