God Answered Our Prayers!

God has answered our prayers.  A quick “off the shelf” exam at the doctor’s office yesterday indicated that Isaura might be pregnant.   The doctor requested a blood exam, which Isaura did this morning and a little after 5pm it was confirmed, ISAURA IS PREGNANT! She’s about 4 weeks along with the due date in early October.

God is good and faithful!!!

In about 8 hours we leave on a week-long trip down the Amazon, and have some packing to do.  Write some more when I get back.  

Off to a good start

On January 8th we left to our first missionary trip of 2010, a 7 day trip on the Amazon River.  It was a good trip!  We had a team of volunteers from the state of Minas Gerais lending us a hand.  They helped with triage of patients, child evangelism, showing the people how to do stretches, etc.

We visited 6 communities, where the nurses saw 280 patients.   On the spiritual side of things, 9 people accepted Christ as their savior (2 with the nurses, 2 on the evening services, and 5 on home visits), and 2 backslidden believers reconciled with  God.   It was a good trip indeed!

Each of these 6 communities had some water filters needing attention.  Some were just dirty and needed some cleaning, others were plugged up and required a reinstall.

Here is a few photos of our trip:

Our team

 

On two nights we showed evangelistic films

 

One community, where the temple is only beginning to be built, we had the service under stars.  105 people showed up. 

 

Isaura and Katie, consulting a family with health problems.

 

 

Sylvia (in pink) and Carol conduct an eye chart exam.

 

Paul (in red) and Carol show a local church work how to do stretches.

 

Carol teaching the kids how to brush their teeth properly.

 

One of the many child evangelistic activities during the trip.

 

Isaura and Katie (in grey) taking care of an open wound.

 

Isaura teaching a family proper oral hygiene

 

 

In one of the communities the main boat had to stay on the river while we took a paddle boat on a small canal leading to the village.

 

One of the many filters that needed attention on this trip

2009 Highlights

Here is a slideshow with the photo highlights of 2009.

 

It was a busy year for our health ministry team.  We visited 43 communities, where doctors gave medical attention to 2,210 people,  nurses treated 1460 people of things like worms, cuts, bruises, etc.  and  dentists  improved the smile of 1,612 people.  All of this is good, but what made the exercises worth our time and effort was the honor of being used by God to usher some 284 souls into His Kingdom.

Since we joined the Water Filter Project in June,  we visted 27 comunities, that toghether have close to 1,000 filters.   Of these, 315 filters needed some work to be done on account of the extra hard flood season we had this year.   We trained 29 local church workers on how to maintain the filters working in top condition.  

In July we temporally closed the filter factory so we could concentrate our efforts on the filters compromised by the flood.  Consequently we were only able to make 625 new instalations in 2009.  This brings the total number of filters installed during the 10 years of the project to 10,065.

Be sure to check our picassa album for photos of 2009.

One Year of Married Life

On December 13 we completed one year of married life.  We went to Alter do Chão (a village one hour drive from Santarém with some of the most beautiful beaches in Amazon region) for the weekend, leaving Saturday night and returning Monday morning. 

We spent good part of the day on Sunday at the beach …

… and on the evening we went out for a nice meal.  In all it was a very nice get away.

Water Filter Update

It has been a very busy post flood season.  We estimate that almost 2.000 filters were in the affected areas.  As soon as the rain stopped and the water began to recede, the work to recover these filters began at full throttle. 

Our strategy has been to select key communities, take all the material necessary (hundreds of kilos fine sand, coarse sand, and rocks),   invite church leaders from neighboring communities, conduct a basic training on how to recover the filters, split into small teams and them we work on filters for two to three days, so everyone has a chance to get hands on experience.