Connecting the Dots!

While getting ready to go to the weekly meeting at the nursing home just half a block away, DJM and I had the following conversation:

I: Are you going to sit still while I talk to the Papas and Grandmas about Jesus?

DJM: Yah.

(As I finished dressing him, I could see the wheels turning in his mind.)

DJM: Do you have one?

I (looking puzzled): One what?

DJM (smiling shyly, in a whisper): A Bible! [sounds like /uh bah-boh/]

It was one of those extra-joyful moments when, as a parent, I realized he was connecting the dots: We need to use The Bible to tell people about Jesus! Though DJM didn’t know it, that was exactly the point I was planning to make with the folks at the nursing home...

One of our little co-workers, hard at work,

setting out hymnbooks on the very literal

“end of the benches” – just as he’d been asked!

Pray for us!

Greetings once again from Montevideo! Most of you know that in July we returned unexpectedly to the US in order to clean up our house in SC following a robbery there. The Lord used the break-in... As our pastor summarized it, the Lord (very kindly) lifted us up and shook most everything out of our pockets. We spent the last half of July and the month of August selling, giving, discarding, storing, and packing what remained to bring back in suitcases and boxes. Many decisions were difficult but freeing. We arrived back in Uruguay on September 2, in time for JM to begin teaching the following evening...

We share our home... Living above all of this [shared space] with only an open staircase between has a few disadvantages (your imagination can fill in the gaps), especially as we navigate the ruts and bumps of emptying suitcases, beginning homeschooling, preparing classes, teaching, and generally learning to function in an environment in which life takes just a bit longer to live. Yet we’re thankful for the relationships that the situation facilitates. We feel a bit like Paul at the end of Acts, who didn’t even need to leave his house (arrest!) to enjoy many opportunities coming directly to his door.

In our case these opportunities have included the kids’ (and adults’) participating in a weekly service in a nursing home up an adjoining street, our singing in and accompanying for a choir drawn from several like-minded area churches, and getting to know neighbors whose need for the Lord could hardly be more obvious...

Thank-you for your prayers!

(You can read the entire ministry report on our ministry blog.)