I am challenged.

We had a missionary couple over for lunch today. They told us they would come early, but we weren't expecting 8am, and I was in my pajamas with a messy house when they called at the entrance to our neighborhood. Um...I got ready pretty quick and things were ordered enough 3 minutes later when they arrived. It was such a blessing to have them here. They have been missionaries here for 57 years. Geez!(This is a photo of the Ekstroms: the couple mentioned above)

Anyway, I have been really challenged over the last month as to what kind of ministry the Lord has for me here. I of course am going to be ministering to my family and children. I wanted to write a bit about some ideas that I have.

1 - I want to get some sort of ministry going with the children in our neighborhood. Most (if not all) of them are Catholic and so we may begin a weekly craft and Bible story hour in our home with them. I will need to talk with their parents first, and I don't even know them all yet.
2 - I want to have a movie night over at our house once or twice a month with some university students. We only know a couple right now, but they have friends, and they might come to watch a movie (we have ton with Spanish sub-titles) and free snacks.
3 - A friend of mine attends a very small church in her community and has asked me to help with a children's program on Sunday mornings. We can't do that, because we want to get involved in a church closer to home on Sunday mornings, but I do want to maybe get some people together and maybe do some kind of training with them so that they can do some of the things that I would do. (I have a million craft ideas, etc)
4 - I met with a Guatemalan couple who live in a little town near us and they are working with CAM churches in the area, especially with young people. We are going to try to get together with them soon to get more information from them on the current needs among these churches. (I want to write more about this later, but I have to go give the kids a bath!)

We have quite a bit more language learning to do before I will start anything that will take up too much of my time, but there are plenty of things that we can do to get more involved in the community without interfering with our language learning.

Please pray for us that we could begin to get involved and have appropriate boundaries, and that the Lord would continue to challenge us!