More work at Luz de Vida

Hola amigos! My apologies for the lack of blog posting. We had great internet connection at the beginning of the week but Wednesday night it died. I found my way to an ethernet chord to give you all one more post before we embark on our 29 hr. trip back to Southeast Texas! I can't believe we have come to the end of our trip. I still have much more to tell and I will post the stories when I return to fast wifi! So please tune back in next week. I will be traveling until Saturday night and can't wait to see Trinitarians on Sunday!

For now I will leave you with this. Luz de Vida, the new church we worked on, has one staff member. Her name is Nancy and she lives in the house that they are using as a church. She has had an extremely hard life. The people at Emmanuel recognized her gifts and potential and put her in this evangelistic position at Luz de Vida. To say the least, the church has been a saving grace for Nancy. She constantly smiles from ear to ear! You would never know that she has experienced sorrow in her life because she is joy personified. After getting to know her and growing to love her, we had to say goodbye for now. Please remember that we speak to one another through a translater for the most part. She pulled out a notebook and I expected to simply write down my contact info for her, but first she wanted something else. She wanted me to write down the name of my church, she knew that I was not a part of St. Paul. She told me to write down the name of the church because she was going to pray for us. She was also going to pray that we could come to Bolivia. Then she asked me to pray for Luz de Vida. Of course I agreed, but only through my tears. This is the church my friends. This is what Paul was saying when he wrote to the church in Philipi saying:
" I thank my God every time I remember you, ⁴constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, ⁵because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. ⁶I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. ⁷It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defence and confirmation of the gospel. ⁸For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. " Philipians 1:3-8

My friend, Nancy!

This is the garage if the house that they worshiped in, until the building material took over.

So we carried boards and rebar and more boards. We carried them three blocks over to a church member's house that is adjacent to the construction site.



Then we moved a HUGE pile of dirt and trash out of the backyard into a truck in the front. Ashley knows how to use the shovel!

I had to get a running start to charge up the ramp into the truck!

They did a beautiful job painting! It looks like a whole new space.



After the paint was finished we moved the big ovens into the new space. It is starting to look like a bakery!

Tune in next week to see the end results. Thank you for your prayers and support! It has been amazing and life changing!