February 2014
Dear Pastor and Friends,
Greetings from PANAMA! We thank the Lord for his protection while we were traveling in the United States and back to Panama. We are happy to be home with family, friends, and our church. Since stepping foot off of the plane we have been non-stop staying busy in the Lord’s work! Thank you to each one who had a part in feeding us, housing us, allowing us to visit your church, and just for being a blessing to us while we were in the states. We also are very grateful to those who gave sacrificially towards our goal to buy land and building fund. We are excited to update you on what God has done since we have returned to our Mission Field!
Right away we held our VBS! This is always an exciting time in our ministry. For VBS Sunday we had close to 200 in the church and more exciting than that are the new contacts that we were made. We were able to present the gospel to many visitors and we praise the Lord for those who made a decision to put their trust in Jesus for their salvation. We are still working with those new contacts and seeing results from VBS!
We decided to come back early from our trip to the states due to problems our church people were having with the owners of the building we were renting. Upon our arrival the problems persisted and we saw no other alternative but to vacate the premises. We were completely moved out by February 28th. The Lord opened the doors for us to be able to use/share buildings with another church nearby and the best part is that they are not charging us anything. Last Sunday we had our “Back to School Sunday” where we gave out school supplies to the children that came.
We have been in contact with the owner of the land that we are looking to purchase for our church. There have been some inconveniences but they seem to be working out all in the Lord’s timing. We have to wait for some paperwork to come through which we were told would take approximately 2 months (we are praying for it to come sooner); once that paperwork comes through we can start with the buying process. Appreciate prayers while we go through this process.
Our church members are excited to start seeing some action from buying to building…we are ready! This week Panama celebrated their Carnaval, which is kind of like a Mardi Gras! This is a time of sensual, nakedness, drunkenness, and perversion. Our town, Dolega, makes a BIG celebration out of it and so all the more reason for us to keep on doing everything we can do to reach Panama for Jesus.
Please pray for our son, Rafael Jr , he took a tumble while running which resulted in a fractured elbow. He has a partial cast on for a week and then we must go back to the doctor for x-ray’s. If the x-ray shows that the bone has moved, he will need surgery.
Thank you and God Bless!
Your Servants In Christ,
Rafael, Tracy, Evelyn, Emily, Rafael Jr., Elisabeth
