December News Letter

Dear Friends,                                                                                 Print Copy

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Church: This Thanksgiving we decided to have a meal with the church. Thanksgiving is not a holiday celebrated in Panama but they truly had a great time celebrating it this year. We were anticipating eighty; one-hundred at the most. We had around one-hundred eighty in attendance and ten first-time visitors. Everyone commented on what a great time they had.

Panama celebrates Mother´s Day in December. We had a special service followed by a meal for everyone. We also gave away a small gift for each mother. We had a little over 180 in attendance with 52 mothers present.

In past letters we have written about a young man, Cristian, and his wife, Lisbeth. Cristian got saved and baptized (his wife was already saved and baptized). Just about right away he and his wife started going out with us on Saturday visitation. Little by little he has invited his family to church. Now his grandparents, his brother along with his wife and child, his sister and her boyfriend, his aunt along with her little daughter, his aunt´s other daughter and boyfriend all attend. Some have made the decision to trust Christ and have gotten baptized. What a blessing it is to see how he has been growing in grace. He has a very low income, his daughter is often sick with respiratory sickness, he lives in a bamboo house which many times makes it worse for his daughter. We would like to start a project to replace the bamboo with concrete blocks. We are calculating $3,000 for this project. Please pray and ask God if He would use you to help us bring this project about.

School is out for our summer months: December-March. Needless to say we have been busy with Christmas parties for our two feeding centers and Christmas activities at the church. December 23rd we gave presents to all of the kids at church between the ages of 0-12. We had one saved, four baptized in our AM services and two more baptized in our PM service. Praise the Lord for this spiritual growth.

Please pray for another vehicle, 12-15 passenger van that we can add to our ministry to help us pick up people for church. We currently have $3,000. Please continue to pray for the funds for this van. The other day on the way to our mid-week service we fit 27 in our 12 passenger van. We probably should not be broadcasting that out but so you can get an idea that the need is great.

Thank you very much for your faithful prayers and support. We covet your prayers!

Your servants in Christ,

Rafael, Tracy Rodriguez and kids