Hi everyone! I wanted to hop back on to share some updates from this past week!!

Answered Prayers!

Since my last blog a couple of my prayer requests have been answered!! The first one is the VBS we held last Saturday. We were being told to expect around 300 kids, since that is how many tickets we handed out through going on house visits. I honestly wasn’t expecting that many kids to actually come, but we ended up having around 600 kids and 100 mothers that came!!! And we were able to provide a meal and snacks for each person there. It was also just so amazing to see the kids that I had gone to visit that lived far away from the property actually show up.

The second one is that in my prayer requests last week I asked for prayers that people felt encouraged to come to the church hosted on the farm we are staying on. And this past Sunday we had a full house, we were even having to pull out more chairs to fit everyone that came! In the past month we’ve been here this hasn’t been the case, and I started praying that the Lord would fill each seat and it was so sweet to see Him fulfill that prayer.

Through both of these prayers being answered, it reminds me that God gives in abundance. When we give Him a small act of obedience or small amount of faith, He is able to use those things to give to us in abundance.

“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew‬ ‭17‬:‭20‬ ‭

One thing I wanted to mention with the VBS is that the mission group we are working with didn’t have enough money to cover the cost of holding the event. Yet they still acted in faith that the Lord would provide for them, and He did. Through their act of faith we were able to have an abundance of people come to learn more about Jesus. This reminds me of the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fish. The Lord is able to take the small resources that we have to provide in abundance. And we get to trust that He will make the little that we have to offer Him enough for us. Ultimately, God is a God of abundance and He satisfies our needs completely. I saw this characteristic of the Lord through the seats at church too. Not only did He just fill each seat, He brought more people than I had prayed for to come.

“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us…” Ephesians 3:20

Updates!

Since last week we’ve gotten to go to a couple schools to have mini VBS programs in addition to the large one we had Saturday. And yesterday we had the opportunity to go higher up in the mountains we are staying in to visit more houses. We were dropped off at the top of the mountain around 9:00am and stopped at different houses as we walked back to the farm. We ended up getting back home around 4:00pm, so it was a pretty long (but good) day. One family we met stood out to me, it was the first house we went to and we got to meet Santiago & Maria Louisa! Santiago immediately welcomed us into his home, and said that we came at the right time. We soon came to learn that Maria Louisa’s liver is failing, and they had been taking many trips down the mountain to visit doctors. It wasn’t until today when I talked to the pastor that’s over the mission group, that I fully grasped how much of a financial toll that is on their family. Each time they take a trip down the mountain it costs around $100, then they have doctor visit and medicine fees on top of that. That is money that this family does not have, and Santiago (Maria Louisa’s husband) has also been staying home to care for her so he hasn’t been working for 3 months. We learned that their 12 year old son is the one that has been providing money for their family. Even though all of these bad things are happening to them, they were still so open to us sharing Bible verses with them and it was evident how much they were wanting to trust in the Lord. We were able to pray healing over Maria Louisa’s liver & I would love if you could pray for her and Santiago too. But how cool is it to think about how the Lord brought us to the mountain and to their house while they were in need of prayer! God does really have perfect timing! This goes along with another family we got to meet, our paths crossed right in time with a mother and her two daughters who had been walking back from a nearby town for three hours. Even though she was tired, she still invited us to her home and talked with us. It’s crazy how if we had been walking slower or they had been walking faster, we wouldn’t have gotten to meet them.

Later in the day, it started pouring rain and hailing when we still had two hours left in our walk back. We even had to cross a river on foot in order to keep walking where we needed to go. Safe to say that my socks and shoes were soaked! Even though I was uncomfortable and tired, the Lord provided me with the endurance I needed to complete our walk. And it was very worth it because I got to see the Lord move in so many ways! Now looking back on it while writing this, I’m being reminded me of how important good community is. If I was told to complete that walk on my own, it wouldn’t have gone as well as it did with my group. Something my group has been leaning into a lot is the fact that we all make up the body of Christ. Each person in our group plays a role and has gifts that we can use together to bring people to Christ. And that was evident yesterday, without the encouragement and helping hands of my group, my walk would have been so much less enjoyable. Even in the houses, each person played a role that helped us minister to the familys’ needs.

Prayer requests:

• Healing over Maria Louisa’s liver!

• Eyes to see the Lord working around me!

• The Lord continues to provide funding for Catracho Missions!

**If you are wanting to donate to the Catracho Missions (mission group I am working with) so that they can continue their work, feel free to reach out to me & I can find a way to get it to them! Your donation would be appreciated so much!

Thank you for reading!! Like last time I have attached some pictures below if you want to see what I’ve been up to!!

VBS & School Visits!

From our walk yesterday!