Ministering is so fun!

We've had some exciting ministry advancements in the last week.

"Teach 'em how to fish" update

If you remember from a couple blogs ago "teach 'em how to fish" I talked about my friend Cinthia and how I so badly want to help her but I do not want her to become dependent on us but instead my goal is to enable her to be successful on her own. I had talked about buying her a sewing machine and classes on sewing. Well after doing more research and being ready to talk to her, I went and had a very frank conversation with her - explaining that I wanted to help but I was only willing to help once - that if it I helped her and she squandered her money, that was it. Well she said she was nervous about sewing because she's not great at it - hence the classes I said. So we're still considering that for the future. But in the meantime her idea was to sell some things out of her house - like a mini store. She lives right on the main road so it's perfect for selling things she said. My concern is if she gets robbed then she's back to square one - and her house is not secure enough to withstand being robbed. Or if her brother or husband gets mad at her and decides to eat all the chips or something. So that was the concern but she really wanted to try it. The first week I gave her 25L ($1.25) - we're starting small :) - with that she could buy enough ingredients to make 150 tortillas to sell - she made them and sold 49 tortillas - earning back 24L and having 100 tortillas for her family to eat - not bad for a start. The second weekend she made another 150 and sold them all earning 150L!!!!! Success!! She has saved 25 of it to buy for next weekend and was able to buy something her sons needed at school! I'm so happy! I've also given her 200L ($10) to start her store and she's been selling chips, cookies, and suckers and making money on that as well. She feels so good about herself! She is keeping track of it all on a notebook. Monday's she's coming to Bible study and we're checking up on her selling and buying. I'm feeling so good about it - that she is helping herself and learning how to make money on her own. (PS - making tortillas to sell requires her to get up at 4am and walk down the hill to the corn mill to grind the corn - come back up and make the tortillas on her hut fireplace and then to get her 3 kids up and bathed and still she has clothes to wash by hand etc!)

Youth Building

We got a call a few days ago from a lady in OK that paid for Oct's rent and is working to find permanent supporters for the rent of the building. It was so encouraging to hear! We have signs ordered and bought material for curtains, fans etc. We also might have 2 couches coming as well! it's coming together! We had an awesome youth event this Saturday (a video coming soon) that the kids loved! We did a video/scavenger hunt throughout the pueblo and then had food and homemade icecream afterwards. It was a blast and it was so fun to have the building as a central location. Jeff starts English classes tomorrow which will be a good draw and Tristan has 4 guitar students currently.

Feeding Program:

Everything Thursday we still all get together and cook for the public school up the terrible dirt road (we need 4wheel drive to get up it). There are 70 students and we've been ministering at that school for years so we have good relationships with the kids. This school is so poor! The kids are so cute! Last week we finished putting in the play set that we've had for them (otherwise there is nothing to play with). We bought it from a family that was leaving Honduras and we used working on it as a ministry as well - we had boys over to work on it - sanding it, varnishing it, and then installing it at the school. Tristan is so good at leading these boys to work. The kids at the school just love the playset!!! we also got to watch these kids march in the Independence day parade on the 15th - I think they were happy to see us there cheering them on!

(Isaac - Cynthia's son in the Independence day parade.)