Urbana

 

Emil is at the Urbana Convention in St. Louis, Missouri where he had the opportunity to hear David Platt speak.  Platt shared that there are three kinds of people...

"The ones who make things happen...

The ones who watch things happen...

And the ones who wonder what just happened."

 

As we go into the new year ask yourself, which one are you and which one do you want to be?

 

Thanking God for This Opportunity

In July, Emil and I had been praying about what the Lord would have us do next in ministry.  Different ideas arose, but the Lord seemed to close the door on each one.  Then He laid the idea of joining the Ecuador team on Emil’s heart.  The purpose of the trip was to upgrade the skills and equipment of the GRN recordists in the Americas.  We aren’t recordists or trainers and were not exactly sure how we might be of use to the team, but we offered our services nonetheless.  We were told that the team needed help with food preparation, childcare and accounting and we could fill those needs.  We love to serve and serving others as a family is especially sweet, but I had a difficult time believing the Lord would send us all the way to Ecuador for something so simple.  So we prayed that He would use us for His glory.

As I, Stacy, write this letter I am sitting in an airplane, headed for home, after 6 ½ weeks in Shell, Ecuador.  I can’t believe the time has already come to a close.  The Lord is so gracious.  He had so much planned for our family and it was through our obedience in going, that we were blessed.  Yes, we prepared food and took care of the accounting, which ended up to be a blessing for those on the team who already had so much to do.  And yes, we had the privilege of watching Hannah (age 6) and Keisi (1 ½) while their parents (GRN recordists in Shell) participated in the course.  Our girls fell in love with these girls and bonded quickly as sisters.

But the Lord didn’t have us there for just that, we were there to connect and grow.  Over the course of 6 ½ weeks there were a total of 25 people on our team working in eleven different countries.  All 25 work with GRN, all serving the least reached people with unique and varied ministries, all with a heart of obedient service to the Lord.  To learn about their lives, their work, their burdens and their love for those without Jesus Christ was certainly the highlight of our experience.  Connecting with each brother and sister not only encouraged us, but allowed our vision for our ministry to grow.  We saw what the Lord was doing around the world and how we, working in distribution for the USA, could join together to further this work.  We learned new distribution strategies and of new opportunities.  And as a result, the Lord has already begun to open doors to new adventures.

Praise the Lord for His grace and mercy in our lives.  We are so humbled that He has given us the privilege to be a part of such an amazing experience.  We sincerely thank each one of you who prayed for us, encouraged us and supported us.  The Lord opened the door and you supplied us with the tools.  We are deeply moved by the love of you, our ministry team, and look forward to the next step in our ministry together.

For future local outreach opportunities or short-term mission trips check out the pages to the right!

Adios y Una Sopresa (surprise)!

Tonight we met for dinner before saying goodbye to part of our team who is headed in the opposite direction.  We've gotten to know so many beautiful hearts here and look forward to working alongside each of them in the future.  Saying goodbye is never easy, but looking ahead to the work the Lord is preparing for us is very exciting.

We are leaving Shell in the morning and heading up to Quito.  We will spend the night there, then fly out Saturday morning.  Please pray for all the members of our team as they are headed to about 10 different countries and have items that are crucial to their work that need to make it through customs.

As we were leaving the restaurant tonight the Lord blessed us with a little surprise.  Mincaye (one of the Waorani men responsible for killing Nate Saint and the 5 missionaries in the jungle over 50 years ago) was walking up to the restaurant with his wife and grandson.  He and his wife were extremely gracious and greeted each of us warmly.  If you haven't heard the story of his life and the missionaries that were killed you need to watch "End of the Spear."  It is an incredible example of how the Lord uses everything for good for those called according to his purpose.

We appreciate all of your prayers and support and look forward to seeing you soon!

Mincaye is in the white shirt and his wife is to the left of him.

Growing Your Vision

We have been blessed with such an amazing opportunity to be here in Shell, Ecuador.  We have a team that is compiled of GRN recordists and staff from Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Thailand, USA and France.  Think for a minute how awesome it is to build friendships with those serving the Lord in 10 different countries, throughout one experience! Each of them are involved in unique ministries and are touching the lives of various unreached people groups in their part of the world.

 The Lord is at work in mighty ways around the globe.  Osmani, a brother on the team, shared one day how our vision grows when we leave our country.  That is so true; I have experienced that personally.  But for many, you don't need to leave your country, you first need to leave your seat or your home and reach out to your neighbors.  Others of you need to leave your town or your state.  And many of you are ready to leave your country.  Which are you?  If you want to see what the Lord is doing, you have to leave... leave your comfort zone and check out the view.  The Lord is at work around the world; don't wait for Him to send you an invitation to be a part; just jump aboard and enjoy the view!  I promise you, your vision is going to grow!

Our team had the privilege of sharing in church on Sunday.  The idea of growing your vision is what I shared.  The Lord has really impressed this on my heart to share with others.  I want to challenge you to pray about what the Lord wants you to do to increase your vision of His work around the world.  Then, watch for the door to open!

We are grateful for all of  you who have joined our ministry team through prayer and/or financial support.  We pray that the Lord uses this team to increase your vision for His work around the world.

Gustavo, our teammate living in Ecuador, preached on Sunday at church.  

Our team sharing in church.

The other part of the team (Emil and Becca were home sick).

After church we burned CDs to distribute in the market.  Stacy and Ines.

Our team divided up and went to the market to hand out CDs of the Gospel message in specific languages of the indigenous people.  Ines sharing that we have a free CD in this lady's Quichua language.

This is Eduardo.  He and I were on a distribution team in the market.  We gave out  CDs to the local indigenous people.  This man is listening to see that he understands the message in his language.

Here are your Words of Life!  People were very pleased to get the gift.  Here are Jon, Ines and Eduardo.

People are a bit skeptical when they see two gringas giving something out.  It gave me a chance to practice more Spanish.  (Tate and me)

Shell, Ecuador

Here are a few pictures taken around Shell to give you an idea of what it looks like

Walking through the neighborhood in the morning.

Main street of town

Nate Saint Memorial Park - The Center of Town

One of the two hanging bridges in town.

The girls walking Hannah to classes.

Panaderia (bakery) where we buy fresh rolls almost daily.  Notice how the house is upstairs and the store down below.  That is how all the businesses are here in town.  Many of them have a restaurant right in their kitchen!

Karen's Supermercado (grocery) where we get daily things.

Get Your Passport for Your Next Doctor Visit

Tate...hoping she didn't just hear the word for "shot" or "blood work" in Spanish.

2 Patients

2 Emergency Room Visits

7 Doctors

1 Urine Test

1 set of labs on blood

Motrin

Tylenol

Antihistamine

2 hours

and all for only $33.00!  

So, in the future, if you need to go to the emergency room it would be cheaper for you to fly to Shell, Ecuador and visit the VozAndes Hospital!  Just so you know, the girls looked good; nothing some Motrin and rest won't fix in time.  Thanks for all of the prayers.  Now, go get your passport just in case you have to go to the doctor in the future!

Steve Saint

Skype session with Steve Saint (Nate Saint's son)

We had the privilege of Skyping Steve Saint (Nate Saint's son) from Florida where he is recovering from a severe accident he had a few months ago.  GRN Ecuador is beginning to work alongside Steve's new ministry called I-TEC (Indigenous People's Technology and Education Center).  Steve has spent many years living with the same Woarani men who killed his father.  They have become his family.  While living with them he was able to see the effects of missions on their community.  The people were becoming dependent on the foreigners and didn't realize they were capable of helping their own people and spreading the Word to others around them.  The goal of I-TEC is to give very basic training to indigenous people in the areas of dental, medical, optometry, fixing mechanical equipment and flying planes.  These skills, combined with the recordings made through GRN, allow the native people to meet the basic needs of others while sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Steve Saint was kind enough to skype with us and welcome us to Ecuador and his facility.  He was encouraged by the work the Lord was doing and the future of these ministries.
He has recently released a new book called The Great Omission and a DVD training series called Missions Dilemma.  Both are focused on what does and does not work in missions and is aimed at changing our perspective on the way we do missions both short and long term.  I've read the book and loved it and Emil and I are currently going through the DVD series.  Our hope is to be able to share it with you at home in the near future. 

Praying Parents

Stacy, Graci, Tati, Fernanda, Becca and Emil.

This is Graci and Fernanda and they are GRN recordists in Brazil.  We have had the privilege of building a friendship with them over the past five weeks.  One of the blessings of us being here is hearing the testimonies of those on our team.

Graci, at the age of five, heard a missionary share at church and ask the children if anyone wanted to grow up to become a missionary and serve God.  Graci raised her hand and they prayed for the Lord's leading on her life.  Her family continued to pray and as a teen she began her mission adventure.  She's only in her early 30s, but has already lived with a tribe for five years, learned their language, developed an alphabet for them and taught them to read!   While with the tribe she had a GRN recordist come to make a recording of the gospel message for these people.  When she saw the impact it had she decided to join the organization and become a recordist.  She works in hard to reach jungle areas alongside Fernanda (also in the picture).

Fernanda is only 29 years old.  Her mother prayed before she was born that she would be a missionary.  She too was called in her teens, went to school to become a nurse and joined the GRN team.  She serves the Lord in ways most of us only read about in books.  These young women are truly godly humble servants of the Lord.  They are also great examples of what happens when parents pray!  The Bible says that it is our responsibility to train our children in the way of the Lord.  Let's pray for our children!

Becca's Big Day

Here is Becca sharing what the Lord has done in her life.  This is the room where the training takes place each day.  You can see the picture better by clicking on it.

Today was Becca's big day.  She shared her testimony with the Ecuador team.  She was offered the opportunity and took it with shaking knees.  She spent time in the Word and then wrote out her story.  She did an outstanding job speaking and we couldn't be more proud of her taking this challenge.  Not only did she have to make sure her words were well thought out, she also had to learn to stop, while speaking,  at appropriate places to have her story translated (by Gerry) into Spanish.   As a parent you think about the plans the Lord has for your children in the future, but the Lord has made it obvious that he is already using Becca for his glory now!  We are thankful that she was kind enough to not list all the ways we've messed her up!  We praise God for his work in our daughter's life (despite us)!  If you want to read her testimony visit her website and click on "my testimony."  Her blog link is on the right hand side of this page.

Cuy

Guinea Pig on the grill.  They look a bit frightened.

This is all part of the adventure!

We did it!  We ate Cuy today!  Cuy is guinea pig and is a delicacy here.  $3.00 got us a thigh and a leg (with claw).  Tate, Becca and I each got a few bites while Emil watched.
You'll never guess what it tasted like.....Chicken!

Who doesn't like guinea pig in between bites of their chocolate covered banana?

Exotic Foods (By Tati)

This is what we would normally eat for breakfast.  Frosted Flakes and milk (which comes in a box).

This is really good  yogurt  that is also drinkable.

It is strawberry.

Everyday for lunch we have soup.  

One day the lady who makes our lunch showed me how to make maduro (a fried yellow plantain) because I love them.  They are sweet.

This is a quail egg next to a normal one.

We tried to cook it, but it was really hard to crack because it was so small.

This is one day's lunch.  It is shrimp, platacones (fried green plaintain) and tomatoes.

On Sunday the team went for lunch.  This is a traditional Ecuadorian dish.  In it is has beans, crunchy corn (like corn nuts), tomatoes, onions, banana chips and a hunk of tuna on top.  It was pretty good.  This is Jorge and he is from Colombia.

This is a fried banana with cheese.  A lady makes them in a little booth on the side of the road.  They are $1.00 each.  I did not really like them.

This is corn with cheese.  They call it choclo.  I did not like it very much.  None of my family did.

This is good chicken with a green sauce.  They are called pinchos.  They are also made in the booth on the street with the corn and bananas.

This is a lady cooking Cuy (guinea pig).  I did not eat it.  My family wants to try it soon.  NOT  ME!

Don't Be a Chicken!

 

Is this you?  Do you feel like a chicken with its head cut off?  Have you lost your sense of direction, your focus, or the Lord's vision and purpose for your life?  Well, I know why...

... You've lost your connection with the Head!

Colossians 2:19 says,
"He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow."

If you have lost connection with the Head, the Lord, you better reconnect.  Get in the word daily.  Pray continuously.  Be obedient to what the Lord wants you to do.  You need the head to grow.

If you don't hurry up and reconnect there are always consequences.  I mean really, we all know what happens to the chicken in the end!

Don't be a chicken!

A Non-Spanish, Spanish Lesson

As many of you know, I(Stacy)  have been slowly practicing Spanish over the past year.  I've been attending a Spanish Bible study and working on Rosetta Stone.  Now that I'm here, in Ecuador, a Spanish speaking country, I've been dunked into the language at full speed.  I've learned a lot more vocabulary and phrases and it's been a safe place to practice (by safe, I mean, safe for my ego), as people here have helped me tremendously.  The past four weeks have been an awesome Spanish class with many lessons, but the biggest lesson I've learned has been while speaking Spanish, but has nothing to do with the specific language...

The biggest lesson that I've learned is to THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK!  I've had brief lessons in this at home that have ended with me and a mouthful of foot, but this is different.  To speak Spanish I have to actually stop and think about what I am about to say.  It's been a difficult lesson for me to learn.  When I don't think before speaking I fumble my words and it leaves the other person with a confused look.  When I think before speaking I tend to butcher the language a bit less and am able to communicate more clearly.   Wow, what a revelation!

Isn't it awesome how the Lord uses unconventional ways to teach us life lessons?  Now I just need to bring this new lesson home!  Pray for me; I'll need it!

This is Cessia and Leonor.  They bring lunch for us each day.  We start with a different type of soup each day, followed by meat or seafood, veggie and rice.  Lunch is the biggest meal of the day in South America.  They make fresh fruit juice each day too.  They teach me more Spanish each day... names of foods, recipes, fruits, etc.  It's one of my favorite Spanish lessons each day.

Becca's Blog

If you haven't yet checked out Becca's blog click on the link to the right.  She'd love you to visit!

From One Foot to One Toe

Our Team at the Nate Saint House

Every morning one person from our team has been sharing their testimony of what the Lord has done in their lives.  Emil and I shared last Thursday and Friday and I was grateful for the opportunity because it made me really reflect on what has made the difference in my walk with the Lord.  Some of you know my testimony and many of you don't, but without getting into details I was a believer at a young age.  In junior high, high school and college I was involved in church but always had one foot in the world and one foot at church.  I was really the worst kind of Christian there is.  The one the Bible says causes others to stumble (and the Bible says that it is better for those who cause others to stumble to tie a block around their neck and throw themselves in a river than to face judgement).  I would party with my friends one day, then go to church the next.  I would gossip and talk about others, then proclaim to have Jesus Christ in my life.  I would concern myself with having the bigger and better things in life, then act like God was first.

It wasn't until we began going to Rancho Baptist Church that these things began to change.   It wasn't the church that changed me, but the Lord used the people in the church to get a hold of my heart and my mind.  I had different friends come alongside me and hold me accountable.  If you didn't catch that, I said I had people in my life hold me ACCOUNTABLE for the things I was and was not doing.  They did it in a loving way, by pointing me to what the Bible says.  I guess if you don't read your Bible on a daily basis (as I wasn't) you don't know, as a Christian, how you are supposed to live your life.  The Bible is pretty clear and when we are not reading and following it we are being flat out disobedient.  The more I read, the more I learned.
And slowly I went from having one foot in the world to maybe just my big toe!

I am definitely not perfect (and I won't be until heaven), but I can say that the Lord is at work in my life and moving me forward.  I am grateful for those people who still hold me accountable.  That is what loving Christian brothers and sisters do.  I don't ever want to be a stumbling block or the reason someone doesn't turn to Christ.  Lord, I will have to have your strength for that!

Tate's Job (aka Tati)

One of my jobs here in Ecuador is babysitting.  My sister and I watch two little girls after we eat lunch.  One is 6 years old and her name is Hannah and the other is 1 1/2 and her name is Keisi.  They both speak Spanish so it is pretty hard because we don't know a lot of Spanish to communicate with them.  Hannah is learning English, like animals, colors,and greetings.  After lunch she gets home from school and eats.   Sometimes she has homework that we help her with and sometimes she just colors.  She has become my little brown sister and me her older white.  After she eats she has an hour until she goes to school again for (every day it is different) music, are, P.E. or drama.  After one of those classes she goes (on Wednesday and Thursday  to English for a half an hour.  One day a week she goes to the Good News Club and we go with her. Keisi comes home from childcare when Hannah is in music.  She either takes a nap or plays with Becca or me.  she is really cute, but can be pretty sassy.  Some days we ( after school ) take them to our home and play, paint nails or watch a movie. Then  their parents pick them up.  I love watching little kids and I am glad to be watching Hannah and Keisi.  They have become practically family.  We love them and they love us.  It will be really hard to leave because we have become so attached to one another.  It will be difficult for us and for them.  I don't want to leave because this is like my second home.

Becca doing Hannah's nails

Tate and Keisi

Tate and Hannah

Team Ecuador

This is our team.  Three more weeks to go.  Please continue to pray.  We appreciate you all!