Stubbornness Can Be A Blessing

I tend to be stubborn at times, but today, my persistence was a hero for one little boy.

We were given a gift basket last night from the church. Inside was a lot of wonderful things for us. One of the things that was given was a small green train for Matthew. He wanted to sleep with it, but we wouldn't let him. This morning, when he woke up we couldn't find it. He slept in late this morning as he fell off the bed in the middle of the night and took a little while to calm down. When he finally got up, the maid was already here. The maid and I looked everywhere, but to no avail. After she left I continued to look and still couldn't find it. I finally went down the hall and asked the maid if I could look in our trash. I found the train under several layers of trash. It was covered with leftover cereal and milk. I was so excited that I had finally found it. I made me remember the story of the woman in the New Testament who hunted for a lost coin and finally found it.

Matthew's reaction when I came back in the room with the train was priceless. He was so excited. In case you were wondering; yes, I cleaned it before I gave it back to him. :-) Today I am thankful for my "persistent" tendencies.

Many miles travelled

The last few weeks have been anything but boring. We are thankful for the good times that God has given us in many new churches. It has been great to meet and get to know many more precious Christians. We are praising the Lord for the one new church's support that has come in since my last post. We enjoyed spending time in a few supporting churches. We were able to report back to them what God has done with their investment into His work.

While we are travelling we have many hours in the van, but when we stop at some place for a few days we try to get out and do fun things with the kids. We were able to spend almost two weeks at a supporting church in the Baltimore area. We got to spend three days doing the tourist stuff. We spent two days in Washington DC. One of those days we had a shaking experience. We were in the Museum of American History when the 5.9 earthquake hit. Being the observant person that I am I didn't notice the swaying of the items on display until the big jolt came. At the beginning we weren't sure if the jolt was an earthquake or a bomb. It was so short. Thankfully there were no problems. We spent the rest of the day outside and walked to see the White House, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam War Memorial, Korean War Memorial, and WWII Memorial. The White House and Lincoln Memorial were closed, but we got to see them from a distance. It just made me more eager to go back to DC someday and see things again.

Last Monday we left Ohio to head west again. At the time of this posting we are in Utah. It is a blessing to see how God is moving in this town. God is moving. We were able to talk to a hispanic man in Del Taco. We spoke in Spanish and felt great freedom to say what we wanted. When we left we gave him a tract and pray that he will read it and will accept Christ as his personal saviour.

We will be in Utah until Tuesday and then we start a road trip for Billings, Montana. We will then be coming back to Utah and then on to Arizona. In the many miles travelled, God has been so good to us. Please pray with us that our support level will continue to increase.

Travelling

The motels have been many and the months few, yet we have been blessed beyond measure. As I think about the time that we have traveled and the things that God has done, my mind constantly goes back to the song "He Giveth More Grace". Jason and I sang that song on Sunday morning as we were in Iglesia Bautista South Haven. It is a Spanish ministry and it was a huge blessing to be with them.

We haven't been around many Spanish speaking people since we left Honduras. I was not nervous though. We try to speak in Spanish as much as possible when out and about and we speak frequently with the kids. I thought I was prepared so I wouldn't have much of a problem. I was not prepared, however, for Mrs. Gonzales. The Gonzales family was so kind to put us up in their home. Mrs. Gonzales talked a little bit when we got there, but I couldn't understand much of what she was saying. It may be because of my tiredness as we have been travelling all day, or it may have been the rate at which she rattled off Spanish. I am not sure what the problem was, but my first though was how was I going to live in this family's house for the weekend. The feelings of despair I had upon moving to Costa Rica for language school all came rushing back to me. I took some time that night to pray and ask the Lord to help me. Thankfully all went well the next day and we had some great time talking and rejoicing in the Lord. I was able to learn much about her and her family. I pray that I was as much an encouragement to her as she was to me.

God always knows what we will need even before we need it and provides help for any situation. There are so many things that have gone "wrong" past few weeks of travelling, but each time we were able to see God step in and give us an even better outcome than what we could have hoped for. Now as I sit here in a hotel room, I am overwhelmed at all of the blessings God has bestowed upon us. While I know that as I use this verse here, it is taken out of context, but II Corinthians 9:15 keeps running through my mind. "Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift" We have the greatest gift of all, salvation. With that it should be enough, but God keep on blessing us with gifts of his goodness and grace along the way.

Please continue to pray for us. We are travelling many miles and presenting our work in many new churches. Our desire is to return to the field in February, but to do so means getting new supporters. Please pray for the hearts of those who hear of our burden to unite with us in reaching Honduras. We have every faith that God will provide for our need of more support, but we don't want to neglect to pray for it every day.

New Blog

My blog has been updated with a new design and new pictures. I will be striving to update my blogs more frequently while in the states and then, hopefully with our new android phones, I can keep up while in Honduras.

Doris

The day started out really busy for me. For some reason I had rearranged my schedule to have all of my discipleship meetings on one day. It was Wednesday and I would be gone all day. Since Audrey Viveros and Vicky Valle had just arrived from the states I would also be showing them the houses and people they would be discipling.

During my first discipleship, I was fed breakfast and it was a little before noon when I finished at Xiomara's house. I was getting ready to leave and she informed me that she was making lunch and would like for me to stay. Not being one to EVER turn down food and since it would be an offense to turn them down, I decided to stay. I ended up leaving the house at 2:00 in the afternoon instead of 11:45 like I had planned. Thankfully after six years on the mission field we have learned to be flexible.

My next stop was in a neighborhood called Cucuie. It is an area in the town of Santa Ana where a lot of people come to our church from. Everyone that comes from this area must be brought in our truck. We have been picking up people from this area for about two years now. We have seen many people that live in this neighborhood get saved. It is a dangerous neighborhood. Many who live here are use and sell drugs. There is a lot of crime, but God has blessed and we have been safe.

It is in this neighborhood that I have one teenage girl that I am discipling. Miss Audrey and Miss Vicky would also be starting to disciple four more converts. I was introducing them to the ladies they would disciple. We had gone to the all but one last house. We kept this house for last because the visit would take a long time. As is customary, we were invited in. As we entered the living room we saw two women we had never seen before. Cristina introduced us to them. Both women were quiet and we tried to talk to them. I invited them to church and the older women assured us that she had no need of God. The younger woman, 16 year old Doris, was very quiet and shy. While we were talking mostly to her mom, as they got ready to leave I invited Doris to come to the teen class that we have on Thursday nights. She mentioned that she wanted to go. We were very surprised as her mom was so dead set against ever setting foot in the door of the church. Cristina promised us that she would show us where Doris lived on Thursday night so we could pick her up. I let Doris know we would pick her up at 6:30 on Thursday night.

Thursday night rolled around and I, unfortunately, had told Doris the wrong time. We had to pick her up at 6:15. Since I didn't have a phone number to call her, we just hoped she would be ready. When we arrived at Cristina's house she wasn't there. We were a little frustrated, but decided to try and find Doris' house anyway. We started driving and in about half a mile we saw Cristina walking on the road. We picked her up and she informed us that Doris had been ready and waiting for us, but when we didn't show up she decided not to come. I didn't understand this as we were still early. It wasn't even 6:15 yet. As we drive by the house we saw Doris out front and tried to encourage her to come. She looked like she was going to change her mind, but her Mother called out, "She isn't going". I was definitely upset and decided to try and visit her another day.

The next Thursday rolled around. We were excited for church and to see what God would do. While we were not expecting to see Doris at church that night (her mom still was very cold to us), not only did she come, but her mom came too.

Since that Thursday, Doris has not missed a service. She comes out soulwinning with us and is so excited about being with us. Last Saturday during churchwide soulwinning, we started talking to her about what salvation is. She is not saved and since she has never been to church all is very new to her. We started giving her the plan of salvation, but had to stop when she told us that she had never heard the story of Jesus dying on the cross for her sins. She is so excited and open to the things of God, but we are going to have to start at square one.

Doris comes from a very poor family. Her dad died when she was young. Her mom and her live alone. There is no income so Doris has never been to school. Miss Vicky has started classes with her to teach her to read and write and is also slowly explaining the story of Jesus to her at the same time. Please continue to pray for Doris' salvation. It is exciting to see what God is doing in her life.

Our Lives These Past Few Months

It is sad that I only seem to be able to post once a month. Today we are in Tegucigalpa and thanks to Jason's new laptop (which has a battery that lasts more than 10 minutes), I am attempting to update you all on what has been happening with the Tate family.

Thankfully we were kept safe when Tropical Storm Agatha came to Honduras. It brought with it a full week of rain. Being from Seattle, we thoroughly enjoyed the wet, gray skies. The only problem we had was that our clothes didn't want to dry being out in the rain and all. We also lost water the last day. The pipe that brings water from the well to our house has to cross a river and because it was so swollen, it broke the pipe. Thankfully once the river went down, we easily fixed that problem.

There were many people affected from this storm, but thankfully, is wasn't as bad as it could have been. If there had been any wind, there would have been many more mudslides.

Since Audrey Viveros went back to the States I have been taking over her discipleship duties. I have 5 ladies that I am discipling. Gabi, Xiomara, Maritza, Fani, and Deisi are growing a lot. Three of these ladies are really soaking everything in. I am so blessed to be able to be involved in their lives. When I first started discipling Maritza, I couldn't get her to finish a lesson on her own. It was taking her a month just to do one lesson. Last week, she complained to me that she needed more than two lessons a week. The great thing is that she is not only doing the lessons, but asking questions every week.

We have been having a lot of power issues lately. Today we didn't have any electricity. The kids love it. If we lose power they only have to do their paperwork in school. I am hoping that next year we can get their books on time and be done with school by this time of the year. We have 25 school days left to go. YEAH!!!! This seems like it has been the longest school year ever.

Tomorrow, I will be going out soulwinning and then if the sun is out, I will be trying to get caught up with the mountains of dirty laundry that have accumulated since we haven't had electricity and sun at the same time in the past week. :-)

I am so thankful for the opportunities that God has given me to minister for Him. When I have days that feel like I am getting nothing done, I just have to take a step back and I can see everything that God has done. What a blessing that He felt that I could be used.

Easter Sunday

Today was a great day. Normally the church attendance is very low on Easter Sunday. Most of this is due to the fact that the whole week is vacation time and most people spend it at the beach or with family members. Today while it is normally the lowest attendance day of the year, we had a great attendance.

Miss Audrey Viveros has been staying with us for the past few months and has been a huge help in our ministry. Today, she got to lead the mother of one of our teenagers to the Lord. Margelia has seven kids, the youngest one being just a month old. Her daughter, Daisy, is one of the teens that God is really using to build a teen group on Ojojona. She came to the camp that we held this past week and brought her cousin. Isabel was not sure of her salvation and was able to receive Jesus Christ as her personal Saviour.

It has been a blessing to have Miss Audrey here with us. We will be very sad when she goes back home. We know that her church is missing her, but we wish she could stay forever. :-)

In an effort to save some money we traded in our satellite for an portable modem. Unfortunately, we didn't try it out enough before we made the decision. Some days it is fine, but most days we can't even get online. We are hoping that the cable company that strung lines behind our house in the past month will also have internet so we can do away with this unreliable internet.

Please continue to pray for our ministry. God is really moving. We have really started hitting hard the discipleship. We have four ladies enrolled right now and one man. We hope to have these soon trained so that they can train others. We would have more, but we need more discipler to be able to accomplish this.