First draft from printer

Today I received the first draft from the printer for us to check that the book is all OK. It looks great and we are really excited that this project is becoming a reality.

This is the first book that we are printing, however hopefully not the last. Our aim in printing this book is to provide people in Equipping Servants and others in Ecuador to have the opportunity to read about justification.

We have already been through a draft and made some corrections to typo's, and so having this version will hopefully mean that we can go to print afterwards. Lord willing, the books will be finished in early September, ready for the ESI group who will need them then.

And how does your child get to school?

Flag the school bus, this is a cool way to get to school. Just kinda glad it's not one of my kids.

Bible study in Bethlehem

Bethlehem is a suburb at the entrance to Loja.  As you arrive from the airport and hit the outskirts of Loja, then start descending into the valley, you know you are close. And when you see the pigs heads hanging on hooks in the eateries on the side of the road, you know you are in Bethlehem, in spanish otherwise known as Belen.

I was asked a while ago to help a family who goes to our church with leading some bible studies for a couple of months. We made our way through a compilation of studies that our pastor and I had developed as an introduction for new believers in the church. Over seven studies, it covers things like new birth, security of salvation, stewardship and how to make biblical decisions. It is a good little book for helping those new in the church understand some important aspects of the Christian life and how to approach these areas in a biblical way. Many ideas that people have are generally things they have heard culturally or what they have previously been taught growing up in the catholic church, without having investigated for themselves what the bible says about these things. This book in a small way helps with developing biblical ideas, rather than perhaps just ‘not-catholic’ ideas in their new found faith.

This family, like many in Loja, have grandparents, children and grandchildren all living in the same house or very close to each other and they were keen to invite neighbours along who aren’t christians too. My arrival at the house was a cue that bible study was happening that night and it was time to go round people up. 

The discussions over time have been interesting. One evening as we talked about new birth, the grandfather brought up the fact that we need to not idolise Maria. True, but maybe not so welcoming to the catholic lady he was sitting opposite to. 

And another time I headed up the hill to Bethlehem and I found myself in the lounge room playing marbles with the grandson, listening to the grandfather play the guitar and the grandmother in the kitchen cooking tortillas de maize. We then sat around eating fresh tortillas, which were much appreciated as being of a superior quality to those you can buy in the market. After all of these preliminaries, we then got stuck into the next study. It was an event not to be missed. So in the midst of it all I stopped myself from playing with the marbles long enough to take these photos.

I realised as we went along that there is still a lack of clarity for these guys in what the gospel actually is. And for those neighbours who aren’t christians, they need to hear more of Jesus. For now, we are having a break from the studies, but perhaps next on the agenda will be something like Simply Christianity, discovering together who Jesus is and the difference he makes. 

Personally I find that being able to enter someone’s house and share God’s word and build them up in the faith they have is a real encouragement to me. Even though sometimes I would rather be at home on Friday nights relaxing, it has definitely been worth it.  

Before leaving Bethlehem, and descending back down the valley, it’s worthwhile to pause and look up. The sky is immense and full of bright stars. It reminds me we serve a mighty God who by his Spirit will continue to make himself known to this family and their neighbours. It’s a process of learning we are all involved in. 

Holiday Bible Club

I've had a fun week with the kids at the Holiday Bible Club this week. 160 kids over 5 days coming to have some fun playing games, doing craft and learning about the Lord. We taught about different aspects of God's character as demonstrated in the lives of different kings of the bible....King Joash and how God has a plan, King David and God's power, King Solomon and God's wisdom and King Jesus and God's victory.

I now know 4 more memory verses in spanish, have remembered the spanish word for slug (on the day I was filling in time by getting the kids to guess which animal I was) and got sweaty playing freeze tag.

We sang some great songs with lots of movement (still didn't understand all of the words by the last day but certainly did a lot of spinning and jumping at the right time) and got to love on kids and tell them a bit more about our great God.

One of the groups of kids that I taught with Paola, they were lovely

Paola and me at our fruit kebab stand on the Saturday morning fair

This is how Mattias spent alot of his time during the big group time, practising his fighting moves with his mates

We had ice cream to celebrate the end of the week

 The word for slug is babosa.