For His Glory and For His Children

January 07, 2014

For His Glory and For His Children

We praise the Lord for the two Work and Witness teams that came to work in Ecuador over the holidays. One of the teams was Nall Ave Church of the Nazarene from Kansas City. They worked in Chillanes in Bolivar Province, on a Child Development Center that our church is building in partnership with Compassion International that will serve 204 students. The Construction team poured two large concrete floors in two buildings. It was exciting to work along side some of the fathers of the children that will be attending the classes. The team also held a medical clinic in which they attended to more than 300 patients, with one doctor. When medicine could not take care of the needs of some of the patients they were prayed with and 5 people accepted Christ. Three of those five were from a family who was suffering from depression because of the death of their son, a child that was in the Compassion International program. The father, mother and brother accepted Christ and now have hope in God. District Superintendent Mario Paredes and his family along with some other students from Riobamba worked along with the team. There were so many God moments from the time the team left Kansas City and until they returned home Sunday night, it is hard to recount them all. God worked in and among the team and kept showing them that he was with them all the time.

Nall Ave Team with of their new friends

God Moments:

Some of the ways that God worked, the doctor on the team took Spanish 20 years ago, and she was writing words in Spanish that were correct in the charts and the prescriptions that were correct!. She also saw more than 300 patients in those short 4 days.

God sent Mayra, Mario's wife to help with praying with people and also help with the organization of getting patients to the clinic. She took a day off work to help the second day.

Luke Fischer was helping to pull the move the mixer from one place to another and the mixer fell on his foot. We were able to get right in a see a doctor for an x-ray and it was not fractured or broken! Soccer is his life and he will be attending MNU next fall.

On the flight from KC to Atlanta, it felt as if the plane hit a "curb" and then started swaying back and forth. The flight attendants were running the isle and at one time had the manual in their hands. They checked with the people in the emergency isle is they were for sure able to fulfill their duties. God straighten up the plane and they were able to arrive safely.

Mario, our District Superintendent, said that while the team was walking from the rented Compassion building to the project where they were working the doctor from the local hospital was watching them and stopped at the project to see what was going on. Mario explained the whole program and at the end the doctor offered free consultation to the children of the program every month.

In the tiny town of Chillanes where we were working, some family were visiting their family from other areas in Ecuador. While buying food at one of the little stores we made contact with a girl that was visiting and knew English, she came to translate in the clinic one morning for us. Thank you Christina!

Mayra and some of the team members prayed with 5 of the patients from the clinic to accept Christ. One was a older couple that was having marital problems. The other was the family mentioned above.

One of the team members was searching for a deeper walk and was sanctified while here.

The little girl of the Extreme family that lives on the property of where the Work and Witness team was staying in Quito, was having a seizure and the doctor on the team was able to treat her before they started for the hospital that was about 30 min. away.

God provided a very safe bus driver to drive us to Chillanes which is about a 7 hour bus ride, one way. Here in Ecuador you don't find very many careful bus drivers.

The team did ministry at the Carcelen Bajo Church on Sunday morning and 14 children accepted Christ. Some of the team members helped to build the church years ago.

One of the families on the team came in contact with a lady that had over 500 beanie babies and gave them to the family. Tonya, tried to find ways to get rid of the beanie babies before they came but it didn't work so they brought them. As each child was seen in the clinic they were given a beanie baby at the end. The look on their faces was enough to say how much they appreciated them as well as they hug they would give. It also made the parents happy because they would never be able to afford to buy anything like that for their children.

There are so many more and will continue to be more God moments in each of the team members lives. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!