Dear Precious Friends of Destino del Reino:
Carlos and his son, Carlitos (12) and I will be heading to the US on Friday morning. We wil have a long layover in Houston and be able to have a dinner in a restaurant in the airport with some of the Houston friends. (If you are in Houston and want to see us, call Diane Cutaia at 281-351-1119 for details). We should have about 3 hours with the group there and that will be a huge blessing to us and great encouragement which we desperately need right now.
I wanted to tell you our schedule for all of you that live in the Augusta, Georgia area because we really want to see as many friends as possible. As you know, we always just send out the word that we are coming and then it is first-come first serve as people ask us to share with their churches, etc. We cannot visit every church and person that has been so good to us so we just trust the Lord to give us the opportunties to share where HE wants us. We have made up our schedule and it is a pretty full one but we would love to see any of you that we can if you can come to one of these activities.
Sunday, October 26 — Sunday School – – combined adult classes and college – Day Spring Baptist Church
Monday – all day we will be in Atlanta with friends
Tuesday – P.M. — friends at Trinity on the Hill Methodist
Wednesday – a.m.
7:00 — Carlos and Carlitos at Men’s prayer breakfast at First Baptist
8:15 – and 10:00 a.m. Speaking at chapels at Curtis Baptist Schools — elementary, jr. high and high school
Wednesday p.m. — 5:00 — dinner at First Baptist and speaking in church following
Thursday – 1:00 p.m. Lunch with group from First Baptist
7:00 – Board meeting
Friday – 7:00 a.m. – JAM at Greenbrier Junior High School
Saturday, November 1st — 7:00 p.m. — Open house for ANYONE that wants to hear about the ministry — Felllowship Hall at West Acres Baptist Church in Evans
Sunday, November 2 — 8:15 a.m. Sunday School – West Acres – Shirley Weathers class (for me) and my parents’ Sunday School class for Carlos and Carlitos
10:00 a.m. – Combined Adult Sunday School classes at Trinity on the Hill Methodist Church
If anyone would like to talk to us, you can reach us at my parents’ house 731-5216. We would love to have lunch or dinner or even breakfast with any of you, as time allows.
THe school was broken into again on Sunday night and it is the same man I believe because he didn’t steal much of anything and just wanted to damage us in his revenge– he just broke a lot of doors open so Carlos and the guys are going to spend a couple of days replacing all the door knobs. It is amazing that in spite of the harm he has tried to do, he has been limited by God’s power because he really doesn’t do anything but cause us a lot of work. Carlos has been in the process of securing the school better and re-inforce the school with iron bars on all the windows and higher bars on the gates, etc. . I think the Lord is warning us to get a lot better security in place here. We are looking into what kind of alarms we can put on the school and I think we will finally have to hire a night watchman (other than our very faithful 24-hour angels). Thanks for praying for us for the right person for this job. Many times it is hard to find
someone that doesn’t steal from the people he is “protecting.”
As you know we have had a very hard time financially this year, in spite of the fact that you all gave above and beyond for the land. Next time we have a big project like that, I think we need to remind people that we still need to eat — ha. But God was amazingly faithful to provide all we needed here in spite of the fact that most people gave their donations to the land project. We also were hurting because we don’t get our sponsors for the coming year in time to really prepare for the year. One idea I have for the next year is to try to find 30 sponsors to start paying in June for the new students who will start in August 2009. They won’t get their pictures of the new children until September but that way we won’t start out so behind financially when school starts. Thanks for praying for us as we need continual wisdom and confidence in the Lord. He has been faithful and as this place grows , He will continue to teach us and show us
how to best accomplish His will here.
In spite of the MANY battles we are in right now, the kids at school are learning every week about new countries and how to pray for them and having missionary stories and amazingly, God is starting to work on their hearts already about the possibility that they will be missionaries sent by God to these countries they are praying for. GOD is doing great things here and we need the faith and determination to stand when we want to quit. Carlos and I both this week have seriously thought we needed to leave but we know that is not from the Lord. We need to be willing to suffer whatever comes our way. We told the Lord two years ago that we promised that we would keep on no matter how bad the persecution gets and we need to stand on our promise to Him. We decided that the foundation of this ministry may be built of our tears and sweat and blood and failures and hard lessons, and persecution, but one day this will be an incredible glory to the Lord
Jesus and missionaries will go out from this place strong in the Lord and prepared to fight the spiritual battles they will encounter as they change the whole world for Jesus Christ. Thanks for your prayers and again, thank you for your encouragement.
Especially pray for MUCH encouragement for us as we are in the US. We are really going through a tough time at Destino and we need your comfort and encouragement more than ever. Thanks for being there for us always. We are blessed that you are remembering us in prayer. The battle will not get easier but we need to be stronger in our faith and I still lack so much.
In His grace,
Rhonda
