God is Good

Here I am Lord! Send Me...

2 Cor 5:14a....

"El amor de Cristo nos obliga"

"For Christ's love compels us"

So tonight was staff bible study and we talked about what motivates us. 2 Corinthians 5:14 what definitely a verse that stuck out to me. Christ's love has to be what compels me. Please pray that my motives stay focused on Christ. 

The new teams arrived on Monday and went through their orientations yesterday so therefore today was the first full day at the sites. Today also happened to be the hottest day yet that I have experienced. I have 5 students (1 from Bakersfield, CA and 4 from Canton, Ohio) working at the construction site. The plan for this outreach is to continue to work on the house that is sponsored by the church as well as start construction on the basketball court at the Base. Today I worked with the Dominican crew laying block while the students and Jose went and picked up 2 loads of dirt from the Church. The dirt was brought to the house so we could level out the floors of the house before we pour the concrete. Getting the dirt took the first half the day. Near the end of lunch one of the guys started complaining of dizzyness as well as numbness in one of his legs. Long story short he ended up getting worse and worse to where we decided to send him to the clinic. It ended up being that his blood sugar had shot up (over 350). He was about to go into a coma when he got to the clinic so at that point they rushed him off to the hospital and he was admitted into the ICU. Thankfully he is stable now, they are keeping him overnight and hopefully by mid-day tomorrow he will be back at the base. He most likely has diabetes. Please keep him in prayer. He name is Justin. 

Over the weekend I decided that I needed to make more of an effort to learn spanish. I had looked into getting Rosetta Stone Language Software (the best computer software for self-teaching a language) awhile ago and I decided to revisit that idea. Since my sister Janine wanted to learn spanish as well so she can teach her son Wesley I decided it was worth the investment to buy the program and have it shipped to me down here. I am totally excited to get started and I think it will make a huge difference to start the program while I am down here. Please pray that I stay motivated to learn. 

Well it is getting late here and tomorrow will be another long day...

Thanks for your prayers....

~Jeff 

Gloria a Dios

Back to work...

Well I woke up this morning with enough energy to go back to work. Praise God! All that is really affecting me now is the medicine when I take it because of how strong it is. I finish the meds on Saturday though so its not too bad. Be in prayer about health down here. There is some kind of virus or flu going around. There are a lot of people getting sick. Thankfully though they didn't have amoebas like me though. Those are much worse. 

Today at construction we poured a floor for one of the local churches that some of the missionaries go to. The area we poured is for the pastors office and the church office. It always awesome to be able to help out the local churches. 

Tonight we have community outreaches. This summer we have 3 different outreaches that we do. We split the teams up into 3 groups and rotate through 3 different cities. The 3 outreaches are a Volleyball outreach, a kids club and a Prayerwalk. I will be going on the Prayerwalk tonight. The idea with the prayerwalk is that we go and prayer over a city before the other 2 outreaches make it to that city. 

Please be in prayer about the outreaches. Also be praying for the students as they only have 2 more days at their sites before they head back to the States. 

Thats all for now...

First week plus an amoeba...

So I am now just over half through my first outreach. The first week went great. Tuesday was full of orientations for the students and then wednesday, thursday and friday we were at our sites. The construction site is a very flexible one though. Wednesday we were collecting very large rocks all to help support one of the roads that gets washed out when it rains. Thursday I was the site leader because Jose had to be in town all day long. We were gardeners that day. We mowed the lawns at 2 of the other ministry sites. Friday we were hauling away broken up concrete from one of the local churches as well as a load of trash for them. Saturday was the excursion day. We took all 52 students to one of the water falls in the area that has a pretty nice beach area. That was fun. I am thinking this is where I got the amoeba. I most likely accidentally swallowed some river water. Saturday evening we took the students into town for shopping and dinner. Sunday was church in the morning and then we took the students up on a hilltop to pray over the city. Monday morning is when I got sick. I was in bed all day. Not fun at all. Then today Tuesday I am starting to feel better but still pretty weak. I am on some pretty strong meds to kill off the amoeba. Hopefully I will be able to go back to work tomorrow. 

Well thats all for now.