Greetings from Nicaragua,
Praise the Lord! He is such an amazing God, and an absolutely awesome Father! It is such a great honor to be a part of what He is doing here in Nicaragua. I am also excited for you guys that you have chosen to be a part of it too! I wish I could do a better job in these updates to portray the excitement that goes on here, about how God is always ahead of us and has everything already prepared for us, so I will make an attempt at it.
Since the time He called us to come He has taught us so much more about not forcing our way through things that we are convinced is what He wants to happen. First off was when we thought we knew what ministry we were going to be working with down here, because it just made sense. Even though it was very hard to understand why things were happening that caused it to not work out, it has since become so obvious why. The Lord had plans to have us connected with this other ministry (at least for a time) to get the connections we need to operate affectively, and who is familiar with the Miskito people, so that we can learn all this valuable information and the language before we get out into the village to live.
We are now so thankful that we didn’t go ahead and go with the first one and just try to make it work, because after we gave that up and stepped out on faith, believed that God was going to show us where we should go, He did, and from there on everything is just falling into place. It is impossible for everything to be so lined up ready for us, without God having prepared it in advance. Through circumstances He causes things to happen or not to happen to guide us in the right direction, and I am convinced by now that I am foolish if I get frustrated when things don’t work out the way I think they should. Because His way is always better!
Many times we have the option to plow our way on through, or to slow down and pray and ask God for guidance, and then let His Spirit reveal to us what is best. Then if we make the right choice, He gives us a peace that surpasses all understanding as conformation, but if we continue to force our way through, or make a wrong choice, that peace is not there, and we continue to struggle.
Now for some more good news! WE ALL GOT OUR RESIDENCY CARDS!!!! And we have all of our belongings out of customs, and here on the east side!! And because of your praying and giving, there was enough money in our account to pay for all the many costs associated with those two things! And we all survived the trip to Managua and back with the truck! And the new children’s home here at Verbo Ministries is done and 75 children moved in yesterday! And we have a team coming in 3 weeks from our church to help build our new home in Krinkrin!! And tomorrow we get to help cook the Christmas feast, and hand out the gifts for the 111 children in the homes here! And tomorrow we also get to help cook the Christmas feast and hand out clothing for the 500 children at the feeding center!
Next Thursday we plan to move to Waspam so that we are close to the river, for going up to Krinkrin while we build our house. The following week a few of us plan to go and get our house started, and ready for the team coming the week after that. If things go the way we plan, we hope to move to Krinkrin the last week in Jan. or the first week in Feb.
We praise God for those of you who give regularly, and who gave so abundantly these last several weeks, because without it we could not have gotten our things out of customs, or gotten our residency. It seemed like there was no end to handing out money the last several weeks. Hopefully the funds can go towards the building projects and doing ministry now. At the moment we have almost enough to finish our house.
For those of you who haven’t heard, our oldest son Moses just got engaged to Anna Venn! So it looks like Leah and I may be coming to the states for the wedding the last part of March, if we have the funds to.
So, that’s a short overview of what is going on in our lives at the moment. Thank you for standing with us in our time of need and in our time of joy. We are honored that you would be on our team! We appreciate all of you so much. We pray yall have a wonderful Christmas, and may the Lord bless each of you richly. Eli
