Hey Y’all,
As always there is so much to report on the goodness of God and His provisions for us at Destino del Reino.
We are so happy to have Jose and Samanta back with us after being away for 3 1/2 years. They have adjusted so quickly that truly is miraculous. The other kids are so good with them and have made them family again immediately.
Last week, Fernando had a very high fever that just wasn’t going down after 2 days. After church on Tuesday night, Carlos and I took him to the emergency medical clinic. The doctor that treated Fernando that night began talking to me about the ministry. He is a precious Christian doctor and offered to come anytime or all the time, even every week, to check the kids at no cost. We brought him out on Thursday, just two days later, and he checked all the children and looked in our own pharmacy to see what medicines he could use. Only 2 did not need medications — we have lots of allergies and colds and three had infections and I didn’t know it yet. He was very concerned about Samanta and Jose. Their hair is falling out and Samanta has marks on her skin that is another sign of malnutrition. We have them on iron and vitamins and more milk, etc. Please pray for them to heal quickly. They are so small and skinny. It is such a miracle though that God would give us our very own free doctor every week for Destino del Reino. He started charts here for them and I am going to make them folders for him to review each time. This may be the beginning of his new ministry, ha. I told him how we want to have a doctor at the medical clinic to come once or twice a week in the future (once the medical clinic has been finished), at least until someone comes permanently one day to live in the clinic. It is just amazing how God works and leads people to help us.
Carlos started teaching the one-verse method of evangelism that I learned from Pastor Wade and the people are so excited. We will review it again and practice with one another next Friday night at church. It simply uses one verse: The wages of sin is death,but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” You take all the major words, one at a time. First you present “The wages (what we have coming to us by law) “of sin” is “Death” — that is the bad news– and then you present the second half of the verse, outlining “BUT” “the gift” “Of God” is “eternal life” through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is hard to explain to you in an email but it makes an amazing diagram and so simple for people to understand the bad news of the first part BUT because of the Love of God, he sent His savior and the GIFT of God is eternal life (the good news). Anyway, it is a great tool and we are training everyone we can right now. We are also training the kids in AWANAs to use their memory verses in evangelism. Carlos’ biggest gift is evangelism and he is so excited to train others. Please pray for us. We have noticed an oppression over us with many more attacks from Satan since we started this — but we will not stop.
Another thing that we believe has brought on the attacks of the enemy lately is that for one month we have been on the topic of LYING in the discipleship class. We are talking about not only obviously lying to others, but also the lies of Satan to us and how we believe that the world has something more to offer and we are lying to ourselves when we try to live with one foot in the world and still saying we love God. He declares clearly in James 4 that if we love the world, we have declared ourselves as enemies of God. Ever since we have started this study, we have had all kinds of horrible conflicts, etc. but in all of it, we can see that God has allowed this to purify us first and then to help others. When Carlos was praying for me one day, he heard the Spirit say “HYPOCRISY” to both of us. Well, that really bothered me because I do sin but I am always so honest with God about my sin and confess it. I don’t pretend to be anything I am not, so I just didn’t understand. For one week though, I went around feeling such conviction over me and didn’t know what was wrong. I got in the Word more than usual and begged the Spirit to show me if I had hypocrisy in my life. He started a great surgery in my heart last week and it has been painful but so hopeful at the same time. He started showing me things in my life from even childhood where I have blamed situations and others for my struggles and justified my problems, but in fact they were caused by the wickedness and sin in my heart. The bible says that “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?” I found out that if you really really invite the Spirit to let you know your heart, it hurts so much and it is so embarrassing to really see what is in there, but he is so ready to cleanse us and make us new. The hypocrisy he started showing me was the desires I still have for things of the world and for attention and man’s approval of me and desires I have for self-satisfaction. The Bible calls us to a hard road of discipleship and following Jesus but we have watered it down to fit our comfort zone and God cannot accept that — He wants us to let His Word cut right to the heart and do the surgery that only he can do to make us pure before him. I am so grateful but need a lot of prayer still. God is not finished with me and I don’t want to stop the process just because it hurts too much to see my own heart and wrong motives and desires. Thanks for praying for me. Carlos is going through the same process right now and I can tell he is tempted to cut off the process because he doesn’t want to hurt either, but pray for him to let God do all the work in his heart as well. He is such a servant of God and so real and God wants to do a great work in Carlos so we can change the next generation. I asked Carlos the other day what he thought God was going to teach us to enable us to raise up a new generation who will not be compromising with the world and will be disiples and followers of Jesus, who will suffer whatever it takes to live for him — I think the secret is going to be learned in us as we let God do the work first in us. Please pray fervently for us.
I had an amazing prayer time with Wendy (Carlos’ wife) this week and God has turned her heart around as well so pray for all of us as we feel very fragile right now and need the protection of God until he completes this surgery in our hearts.
It is amazing how we let the world lie to us that it has something to give us — real joy and satisfaction, when only our Creator knows our hearts and offers forgiveness and wholeness and absolute joy and satisfaction. We have to start recognizing those lies and receive the truth of God’s word even when it hurts.
I know this is not like my regular newsletters, but this is where we are and it is really more important for prayer than anything else that is going on right now. Please hold us up before the Father in prayer and we will see even greater things at Destino be birthed from the newness in us — walking in absolute wholeness and satisfaction in God alone.
Love in His grace,
Rhonda
