Hey Everyone,
AGAIN, thank you for your prayers for us. God is always doing great things in and among us and we are so grateful that you are praying for His will here.
I am amazed at the growth in the church, not just in numbers but in spiritual depth and desire to really commit ALL to the Lord Jesus. The people are so poor and so precious and eagerly learn from Carlos’ teaching. He never preaches less than an hour and the people just soak up the teaching. Carlos involves everyone in his teaching and asks them lots of questions and they are so open and real. It is a joy to live with and worship with these people. Last week I was a little uneasy when Carlos started preaching to them about the reason they are poor — he used the Word of God though and talked about laziness and not using whatever God gave you to become more fruitful, etc. It was so great though after I thought about it because so many of the poor are using their poverty as an excuse and don’t even try to seek God and to do something for His glory with their lives. It was really good and straight from the Spirit of God for the people. The people are amazing too in
that they give out of their poverty. We are always collecting food for the “poor” and they give so generously. Thanks for praying for this small group of believers that they will continue to grow and let God have ALL of their hearts and they can become missionaries to their own people.
Praise God — we are up to about $44,000 now with money in the bank and promises to give as soon as we are ready to purchase the land. We still lack $56,000 BUT I think if we get up to about $75,000 we can pray and make an offer. We are praying (and please join us) that people will give as the Lord puts it on their hearts and then, secondly, that whatever God gives to us will be the exact amount that the company will accept for the land. God is the one that moves hearts so we KNOW He will do this in His perfect way. Thanks for faithfully praying for this situation. More and more we are seeing ways that we can use this land for His glory. It will be great to have it in the name of Destino permanently and we can just grow and grow as God moves us to continue with more projects for His kingdom and preparation for missions and leadership in Honduras.
We are really busy in the school right now — finishing up the school year and getting ready for kindergarten graduation. The moms all worked really hard to make food and sell it so they can have a nice graduation for the children. Continue to pray for us as we prepare for the new school year too. There is a lot to pray about — we need the 3 English teachers, we need two more Honduran teachers for 2nd and 4th grades, and we need to make some big decisions on curriculum. I especially want to pray for the curriculum in English. I don’t know anything about this but would imagine there are schools all over the US that are changing over to newer and better curriculum for their kindergarten and first grades and we would LOVE to have second-hand books — their rejects will be fine — I just don’t know how to go about getting our hands on some used books. If anyone has any ideas, let me know, and if not, please pray with us about this. The curriculum will be a new big
expense for the school as we change over to bilingual but I know God will provide all we need in His way. Thanks for praying.
The kids are all doing well. We finally got through a virus going through the house. When you have 16 kids, it seems that viruses will never die out in the family. Finally, though everyone is healthy and full of energy again. We are probably not going to get the baby boy that we had planned on having. Maybe the Lord just used us to save his life. I talked the mom into not aborting him so we could have him live here at Destino with his sister, Abi. She agreed to do that and once he was born, she decided that since he was a boy, she would keep him. She gave two little girls away in the past but now says she wants to keep him. I doubt that she will stick it out with him so we’ll see in a few months if we don’t end up getting him here with us. We are just trusting GOD to put the chidlren at Destino and only HE knows who will become leaders and missionaries and who He plans to use in the future — so we will leave the decisions up to HIM as to who will live here
with us. Thanks for keeping that in your prayers always as well.
The group from Trinity on the Hill will be here in less than 2 weeks. Carlos found some villages where we had taken a VBS last year but have never had medical brigades and very little evangelism. Please be praying. We can stay in the same location for the four days of medical up there but they will announce to different villages each day so we can reach over 2,000 people with the gospel and medical help. Pray for a HUGE harvest. We will use the team at the school one day so that the families of our students can receive this medical attention. We are really looking forward to a week of great blessing and lots of ministry and help to the Honduran people. Thanks for praying for this week. May 18-25.
Please continue to pray about our trip to California. We leave on May 29th for a week and are praying for opportunities to share about the ministry and get some more prayer partners for Destino as well as interview a prospective teacher and look for other opportunities to recruit teachers for Destino. I am really looking forward to the time with family members because I think it will be a healing time for me after the death of my sister. Thanks for your prayers for all of us. My family is still really struggling a LOT and we would appreciate your prayers continually as we get through such a hard time of grieving.
I broke my second-to-the littlest toe this week and have been in a lot of pain. I broke the toe right above the place where I broke my foot in November — I never got it cast and it has never quit hurting and now I have added the pain of my toe as well. I think I need the Great Physician to heal my foot so please pray for that — and throw in a prayer that I will quit being so clumsy. ha.
We are working hard on finishing up some projects at Destino right now. We have a hard time finding good workers. Carlos had three of his nephews working for us during the past few months and they all quit, looking for better work — but there is no work out there. Now they are all unemployed and eating off Carlos’ parents. We love these young men but they have grown up with absolutely no discipline and Carlos has tried to train them to be good workers and he is very discouraged with them. We have two men working on the basketball court right now though and they are good hardworking men who are part of our church and are growing spiritually. Alex, our bus driver, let Erick drive the bus in our yard this past week and Erick hit the public bathrooms outside and crashed the wall in — we are taking money out of Alex’s pay each week to fix that again, but it is just another project we didn’t need to have to do right now. Thankfully, the bus didn’t even have a
scratch on it.
I pray that you are all doing well. Please remember to send me your prayer requests as well — I would love to be a part of your lives as you are a big part of our lives at Destino.
Love y’all and praise God for your love for us at Destino.
In His GRACE,
Rhonda