Holiday Greetings from the Fischer Family

Holiday Greetings from the Fischer Family

Dear Family and Friends, We hope this finds you all doing well and you are trusting in the hope that came to us as a gift in a small manager on a starlit night. The hope we can hold on to is Emanuel, God is with us.

The year started out being with our family to celebrate our grandson’s first birthday but at the same time, we were home for the celebration of life service for Jon’s dad.  He passed just after 7 months of a cancer diagnosis.   A few days just before our little vacation was over, we were invited to the engagement party of our younger daughter, Krista, and her fiancé Angel.

That was an emotional trip and full of celebrations all at once but when we are together once a year or every other year, life events just get planned during those times.

March/April brought two retired men from Oregon to volunteer their time and money to build 2 portable chapels. This is so much appreciated because it frees up the time of the shop guys to do other things.

The middle of April, Josh Williams, IT Missions Director, brought an IT team to help make much-needed adjustments to the WiFi at the seminary and the Work and Witness property.  They did much climbing and untangling of wires and now everything is working more efficiently. If you have IT talents and would like to help different places in the world let us know.

The end of April brought our partnering team from Crossroads Community from Goshen, IN.  They worked at Vera Cruz. We were glad to have Work and Witness Assistants Harrison, Jen, and Lizbeth Guaman to work with us with this team.

The month of May started with a flood of teams, 6 to be exact.  PLNU, Point Loma Nazarene University Love Works team was joined on their second week by a small team from SNU, Southwest Nazarene University. To end the trip we took them on a 5 hour trip into the jungle on a newly opened road, which was very rustic, to say the least.  It was so rewarding to work with the kids where ministry was just opening. The girl in the picture accepted Christ before our program started.

The Peoria, IL team came just days after, to work in South Quito at a Quichua church.  The church was well prepared, and we visited them weeks before when they were pouring the second floor. We had some super high work to do and God kept us safe throughout the whole time.  So much was accomplished as the church people and the team worked hard together. Again, our Assistants, the Guaman family was able to help us and Jen invited her two NILI students to come and help with VBS.

The next night we received the first of two back to back teams from AZ.  One from Turning Leaf and the other from Sun City. The leaders, Bill and Eileen Estile stayed for both teams. They worked at Montalvo where we have a church when started a year ago consisted of 200 children.  Now there are families, and with the help of parents and children, they put the roof on the second floor as well as helped with the fencing structure around the whole property. It was overwhelming with the number of children at first but so exciting to see the proud parents of the graduates at the graduation ceremony that was held.

Harrison was able to help us with the first team but for the second team, he and Jen hosted another team from NW, IL. They worked in Santiago and built the church from the ground up.

Next was the Westside Nazarene Church from Olathe, KS.  We were excited about the possibility to get to know some people from our area, but they got as far as Florida and their flight was canceled.

Before leaving Ecuador, for HA we learned the exciting yet heartbreaking news that Harrison, Jen, and Lizbeth would be going to Peru as Work and Witness Coordinators. We have worked together for 12 years and before that Jen worked with us as a volunteer in Venezuela so it is like telling our "children" goodbye. We are happy to have qualified people receive teams while we were on HA. The Communications Team from Olivet, an educational/ministry from Greenville,SC and a team from Lima, OH.

In July we left for Home Assignment which means touring and visiting churches to tell about our ministry. First on the schedule was a wedding. Krista and Angel had a beautiful wedding at Central Nazarene Church in Lenexa, KS where they work in the Spanish Ministry.  The wedding was accompanied by live music which was beautiful.  The only bloop was the re-lighting of the unity candle which went out.  The pastor thought that was some-what important and asked them to do it again.  They took a honeymoon to Guatemala, Angel’s home county.

July -Oct was full of traveling to churches and conferences.  The rest of the time we spent with family as much as we could. Jon did many side jobs for family and our kids. We had awesome grandson times and since Josiah worked the night shift he invited Grandma/Abuela "Abíla" to go on outings to parks and museums and Grandpa- "Bopa" enjoyed playing cars, trucks, and trains with Arden. At the end of our time, we took a family vacation to Mexico and had a fun relaxing time in the sun.

In November, Angel and Krista came for a conference that Angel was holding. It was a couple of days after Thanksgiving but we still celebrated.

It seems the year was long and at the same time it flew by.  God was with us every step of the way and that is how we want to live our lives. We have so much to be thankful for and more than anything for family and friends that support us in prayers. For His glory, Jon and Shirley Fischer