Overcoming Obstacles in Work and Witness

Praise the Lord for the Valley Shepherd, Meridian, ID Church of the Nazarene for sending a Work and Witness team and choosing to partner with the Buena Fe church on the North Coast District in Ecuador. The trip was made up of 13 from ID, a couple from WV, and a former Mission Corps, Kim Haddon from OR. The team had many obstacles at the beginning of their trip. Due to flight complications the flight was delayed and only one person's luggage from the ID area arrived. The team traveled to Buena Fe a day later after retrieving all but one person's luggage.  Their encounter with obstacles is kind of the same experience the church body of Buena Fe had experienced through the years of trying to keep going.
This was a special trip for Work and Witness Coordinators Jon and Shirley Fischer since the leaders of the team were Craig and Gail Zickefoose, their mentors of 15 years working in Venezuela together. Craig and Gail Zickefoose are former Global Missionaries from Haiti, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela. Team member, Kim Haddon also served in Venezuela with the Zickfooses and Fischers. Yes, the suitcase did arrive in Buena Fe four days before the team left!

After the team met their new friends from Buena Fe, together they started clearing some of the land for Sunday School rooms, putting on the roof and pouring the floor of the sanctuary.  To finish it off they put up the windows and the beautiful white door.

Team member Debbie Whiting had her Caravan group make Salvation Story Bracelets kits for the kids to put together.  Thank you to the Caravan group.  Julia is helping to model them!

  

Putting the finishing touches on AND the most important thing is putting up the church sign. 

Pastor Jefferson and Rosita and their two kids along with a young guy from their church, Hector, were a great help with the team.  Especially finding ice.  The only ice was in a neighboring town 20 min away.  So we made our own!  

The names are being written down for future contact after watching the Jesus Film.  

This was the closest to a turkey we had for Thanksgiving day.  What a sacrifice. 

Haline is sharing the story that will give each one of these precious children hope for their future, the story of how Jesus paid the price for their sin.  Haline was a MK and born in Brazil.  

The last night more than 45 people from the neighborhood came to see what this little church was all about. 

Pastor Jim worked like a young kid. 

The team wanted to show the love of the same Jesus that the community had seen through the Jesus Film the night before so they made 7 large care bags of food and few personal necessities.  Pastor Shonzon, a few ladies from the church and a few team members went to the homes to pray with these families and give them a care bag. 

After a week of hard work and building relationships in the community this is the finished church building. 

This was our job site bathroom. It had everything we needed. Including blue toilet! Thank you pastor Shonzon.

The team left Pastor Shonzon a happy pastor with seeds sown in the neighborhood and a place to teach the community about the love of Jesus.  A video was made with Pastor Shonzon telling the story of how the church started that will be posted later. 

The team evangelized to more than 40 beautiful kids in this small neighborhood. The team had a difficult time finding cold water.  When they went to a small house-front store they invited the boys that sold them the water the the children's activity and took the boys to the church on the way back to deliver the water! 

Jamie, a senor in High School, chose to make up her school time and come to serve in Ecuador.  If she keeps up her grades she will be Valedictorian of her class.  What a sacrifice!

Gail preached at the Ibbara church.  Craig knew the introductory story so he translated the story.