Blessed Misunderstanding

I don't know if anyone reading this has ever made a mistake, but I make lots of them. While I speak and understand Spanish pretty well, there are still times when I fail to interpret something correctly. Yet when this happened the other day it led to a huge blessing.

We have a project in the church called Cookie Project Honduras. It is a ministry based out of a church in Louisiana. This ministry provides us with the ingredients and the money to run a nutritional program for malnourished children. If someone wants to have their child in the program, they must come to the church and Jason or I measure them with a special ruler. With this ruler that measures with centimeters, you measure their arm right above the elbow. If they measure anywhere in the yellow or red, then they are entered into the program.

Twice a month we have two ladies from our and Bible Institute come and bake from 600 to 800 nutritional cookies in a typical Honduran oven. This provides them with a little bit of income and gives them a way to serve.

The cookies are made from a recipe that is high in protein and nutrients. Most of the children love them. Each child gets one cookie mixed with milk and a vitamin premix. Once they eat that cookie and drink a cup a milk, they are given a cookie to snack on for the walk back home. We have been blessed to see this program grow and God has blessed. We have enjoyed seeing many of the mothers come to know the Lord. We presently have three mothers doing discipleship and two more have expressed interest. We just need to sit down with them and come up with a time to meet every week.

Because this program is funded by many organizations in the states that would not give to a ministry, but will to a charity, we are not allowed to push religion or require church attendance for admittance in the program. We wouldn't anyway. While we love to witness, we have found that people will agree to anything if they feel they are being pressured, but once they leave you will never see them again. We are there to love on them and once they feel loved and accepted, they start asking questions and that opens the door to witnessing. Our goal it to see souls saved and spiritual growth and we have seen great results from God.

Since I am not able to go every day to distribute the cookies I am there every Monday (baring sickness) to talk to the ladies, correct any issues, and measure any children that need to be measured. Last Monday morning we got a phone call from a lady asking if we could measure her daughter. Jason told her to be at the church that afternoon and we would measure her. When I arrived at the church that afternoon there were two families with their children waiting for me to measure them. The first one I measured was Nissi and she measured 14 cm so we admitted her to the program. The second a little girl named Monica was also measured. It was with her that I had the "blessed misunderstanding".

Monica Fernanda

A few weeks before, I was sick and Jason measured a young girl from the church in Aragua. Jason thought she should be in the program so he told the lady to come back and bring her birth certificate so we could get all of her information. When I was measuring Monica her mother told me, "Pastor Jason told me to bring her to be measured." I, however, thought she said that Jason had already measured her and told her to bring in her information to be admitted to the program. So I thought that this was the lady from Aragua. She measured right on the line and since she had just turned four it was a judgement call for me. Normally we would have them wait a few months and be measured again. But because of my misunderstanding, we entered her in the program. 

The mother's name is Eva and she has never been to our church before, but is friends with one of the ladies that goes to our church. On Wednesday night she came to church with her friend, Carla. She enjoyed the services and was asking questions about salvation. Bro. Ernesto talked to her after the service, but she did not make a decision that night.

The next day was Ernesto and Nelly's turn to work at Cookie Project. When Eva came with Monica to get her cookies, she started asking them a lot of questions. While she was sitting there watching Monica eat her cookies and drink her milk, she accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Saviour. After Ernesto and Nelly prayed with Eva, they talked to her about discipleship. Sitting nearby was Sulema who has a young son in the project. As she was leaving, she asked if Bro. Ernesto and Hna.Nelly would disciple her. She has been attending a Pentecostal church that has a woman pastor just down the road from our church and she is not really sure what salvation really is or if she is even saved. The first two lessons of discipleship deal with salvation so we are going to use this as a tool to help her to understand what the Bible says and how she can know for sure that she is on her way to Heaven. None of this would have happened if would have understood Eva the first time. Praise the Lord he allowed me to fail to interpret Eva correctly.

We are so excited to see what God is going to do with this ministry. There are many mothers that at the beginning of the project would say hi to us, but that was it. They were shy or embarrassed by their situation so they wouldn't come to church. Now, when we visit them at their houses or see them on the road, they always stop and talk with us. It is such a blessing to be able to be a help and to be included in their lives. 

Fabulous End of the Year

Last night as we sat down as a family and had a time of devotions, I was struck by how much God has blessed us this past year. Often we are too busy to just sit down and ponder all that God has done for us. We have a house that we now own (or will when we are done paying the bank for it), two cars, two cats, four dogs, seven chickens, and most of all four healthy kids. During our prayer time it was a joy to hear the kids pray about what they were thankful for and the desired they had for the new year. It was funny to hear Matthew pray for snow. That is one request that I am pretty sure will not be coming true while we are in Honduras (at least we hope not). Jordan thanked God for all of the things that he had given us and it was quite a list, but it did my heart good to hear him as God to help us to reach many new people in the year to come.

Living on the mission field we miss our friends and families that we have left behind, but it is such a joy to gain "family" here. Recently, I got a call from a young girl, Michelle, who has been coming to our church since August. She came with her sister and got saved. While visiting Karen and Nixon, her mom and "stepdad", they also got saved. Michelle had to go and stay with her dad in another town for Christmas and the New Year. Every day when she calls her mom, she asks about Hermana (Sister) Cassy and Audrey. On Sunday, she was finally allowed to call her mom when she was at church and got to talk to me. She was so excited to tell me that she would be home for church on Wednesday night. Her mother, Karen, is a blessing too. We are praying that she will get married soon. She will help in any way that I will let her. It is such a joy to see someone with such a desire for the Lord. Even though she lives quite a ways from church (too far to walk), she is always waiting on us as we drive by to pick her up for church. We NEVER have to wait on her. We will be beginning discipleship with her soon.

This last year we began some new family traditions. On Christmas Eve, the kids opened a gift that had new pajamas, fuzzy socks, and Christmas cups for each of them. There was also a Christmas movie in the box. We had them put on their jammies and we all sat down and watched the new Christmas movie. After that we watched It's a Wonderful Life. We put out a plate of banana bread, cookies, and peanut butter fudge. We all ate what we wanted and enjoyed the time together. Matthew is the only one who didn't make it. He fell asleep halfway through It's a Wonderful Life. We decided that this would be a fun way to end the year too. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. Matthew really wanted to watch Wall-E so we decided that he would watch that while all the older ones played Train Dominoes. We didn't get done playing until after 1:00 am. While we didn't watch movies and eat snacks, we had a lot of fun. Julie (the young lady who is staying with us for a few weeks), Audrey, Jason, and I ended the year playing games and laughing a lot while the boys watched Thomas the Train and Flipper. What a blessing to be able to have fun and make memories. I am pretty sure that Train Dominoes is going to become a New Year's tradition in the Tate house.