I was talking to Patricia, who has 5 kids in our youth class, and she was commenting on the fact that her kids are all reading their Bibles everyday thanks to David’s daily Bible reading plan.  At the first of the year David had the kids who wanted to make commitments to read through the Bible this year.  They have sheets with what to read daily, and Sunday David asks questions about the texts.  We’re about to complete 3 months of the program, so David is going to take those who are reading to something special (maybe a movie) as a treat.  Carolina said that Gabriel is reading everyday too! 

We saw on Sunday that our house is going to be a great blessing!  We have 11 visitors come over and eat lunch with us, and it was so much fun.  We got to know eachother better and had some time to relax.  I can’t imagine how much better it will be when we actually have furniture (Giovanni had to bring his table over so we had a place to eat!).

It’s time for a break, but I can already tell it’s not going to happen!  We had a great week helping out with the gospel meeting in San Marcos.  There were 7 baptisms and 1 restoration if I remember correctly.  Boy did it make us tired! 

David got to preach on Sunday, and he gave a great lesson titled “A Christian Without Rights.”  He talked about how Christ gave up his rights to stay with God in heaven to come to earth, and his right to be a earthly king to die on the cross, and that we should imitate Him.  Give up our rights when someone offends us - not eye for an eye but forgive, turn the other cheek, and bless.  Give up our rights when we want something - we can offend someone else just because we have the right to what we want (ex:meat sacrificied to idols).  Give up our rights to our blessings - we can’t say “I earned it” but we have to be willing to share with others and help those in need.  He concluded that though we don’t have rights, we do have responsiblities - to love others and concern ourselves with the needs of others.

I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to teach an interesting women’s class.  Well, I’m actually more guiding than teaching.  We are talking about the “love chapter” and so I made sheets with each love characterisitic, it’s definition, similar words, and a coordinating verse.  Each woman gets a sheet and they get to teach on the characterisitic, giving an example from life or the Bible, another verse, or something that explains it, as well as the information given.  We only got through 3 characterisitics on Tuesday, but we have 2 more weeks to finish.  It was really neat because the women got some good experience on devo type lessons, and we all got to give advice and ideas.  I am very excited that so many of the women participated!

In kids class, we finished up “God our Father” and started “God is Holy” this week.  One interesting point made in the lesson is that holy means super special.  We all break rules every day, but those who break God’s rules are treating His rules like common rules, and they’re not.  They’re super specal.  Many people miss school, work, meetings, etc. every day, but if we miss our appointment with God on Sunday and during the week, we are treating it like any other appoitment and not something super special.

Oh, and I’ve been wanting to write about a series Giovanni was teaching on Thursdays.  He was talking about apathy.  He first explained how to know if we are apathetic as a church, showing that we have 120 in attendance on Sundays, and 25 or so at our Thursday services.  That means that 95 of our memebers are apathetic about learning more about God.  It’s not their priority.  Apathy means that you just don’t care about something, it doesn’t matter.  You’re not for it or against it.  If you can make it to services, you do.  If you can’t, you don’t.  No big deal either way.  He talked about how apathy can kill a church, discouraging those who are faithful (you know what it’s like to attend an activity when not many show up).

We got more coffee shipped off today.  Man was it a challenge this time.  With the dog sick, we were always leaving late to Managua, so it took many days, plus things just took extra long.  We finally went Saturday to finish up customs paperwork, and the lady that worked for the taxes we have to pay didn’t show up!  Luckily the customs guy let us ship off pending payment.  This is our first batch of coffee from 2006 harvest.  We depulped, dryed and selected ourselves, so it should be great!  When we took the dryed coffee to have it deshelled, the men at the company asked if it was coffee from up north because the beans were larger than normal for here.  God has really blessed this work.

This week we are working with a congregation in San Marcos for their gospel meeting.  Please pray for the success of this work.

Tigger is much better.  He’s eating me out of house and home now!  I’ve decided he thinks that he deserves those 4 days worth of food still, and wants it now!

Yesterday we had another review day in kids Bible class, and I was again impressed with our kids and how much they are learning.  Our 1st level class (3-5 year olds) put the other classes to shame with their memory verses!  It is great to see that the parents are really placing importance in teaching their kids their verses.

Well, we have been working hard!  We are getting another shipment of coffee off, trying to organize and arrange our new place, and having all sorts of church activities.  Last week Giovanni gave a seminar on personal evangelism for 3 days to help the congregation prepare for next week when we will be helping a congregation in San Marcos door knock for their gospel meeting.  This week we have a seminar on preparing sermon outlines.  We also started a new activity on Wednesday night.  Giovanni, Carolina, David and I stay at the church building from 7-9 for anyone who needs advice or has a specific Bible question.  We’ve had a lot of people join us, and we’ve also been able to play some fun games with life applications, study interesting Bible questions, and learn Bible trivia.  This is serving as a great time to get to know each member personally.  David had another youth visiting last Sunday.  Once a month the youth visit a member and bring a short devotional and a small gift.  This is a great way for the youth to begin preparing lessons, practicing song leading, and prayers.  Francisco gave his first lesson on Sunday and did a great job.  After the visit, we took the kids to a little food court and ate pizza.  Then they all went to the farm to play.  It was fun, but tiring! 

Our house is coming along nicely considering we don’t have much furniture still!  We bought a desk and book shelf so we’re getting the office all organized.  I bought little shelves for the laundry room and have it all set up too.  Whenever I get overwhelmed with the mess I go to the laundry room and it brings me peace.  =)

Our little puppy has been and still is very sick.  He has some kind of virus and woke up Monday sick.  He’s gotten a little worse, so we are filling him full of medicine and vitamens and hoping for the best.  I’ve been having sympathy nausia I think.  Ok, it’s probably just that there’s only so many times you can see someone throw up without feeling sick yourself!  Well, can you ask for prayers for a dog?