NTM

     Our ministry of producing Bible lessons in Popular Guarani began in 2001.  The project has included thousands of pages and hours of work, and in the latter part of last year we weren’t certain it would be finished by our target date (April 2009) to leave the field of Paraguay.  Then a couple of things happened; one was that our principal lesson checker, stated that he could be free to set aside a block of time to concentrate on completely finishing the lesson checks.  We had already completed all the lessons but without the vital checks needed.  The other thing that happened was that a large donation was given to completely pay for our language checker and his daughter’s wages for doing these checks.  In less than 2 months all the checks were done!  That was an immense boost to finishing our project.  Since then Nellie has done all the spellchecking of those lessons and Dean is working on the final inserting of pictures, formatting and printing of master copies for our print shop.  This should be finished within a month, so we are far ahead of schedule.  We want to give the glory to God for His obvious hand in accomplishing this task!

     In light of the fact that we are finishing our project early, we have been praying about how to use our remaining time here in Paraguay.  We don’t feel that we should leave Paraguay early, and have explored where we might best be used until we go.  It became obvious as we talked to our son Mike and his wife Trish about their ministry in mobilization (especially concentrating on involving local Paraguayan churches in reaching tribal groups in Paraguay) that there is a huge amount of work to be done in that ministry.  It seems there are no end of opportunities for involvement, and that we could fit into a number of these.  Mike and Trish’s future coworkers are presently engaged in another ministry, and they stated they will be delayed for at least another year and a half before being able to be deeply involved in mobilization.

     Our leadership team have stated that they are in favor of our move to help Mike and Trish out in ways to be determined after the move.  We are happy with that and also glad that there will be a missionary home available for us for up to a year (starting in July) while that family is on “home assignment”.

     While Dean finishes the final stages of the lessons Nellie is busy sorting, packing and other related tasks. It takes time to get rid of an accumulation of over 40 years of stuff!  All the furniture and other items will have to be sold and then the house itself put up for sale.  We project being done with packing and selling in order to move sometime in August.

     We still plan to leave for the U.S. next year, but we want to be flexible in case we need to stay a little later than April.  Once the missionary family is back from the U.S. we will have to vacate their house, so we don’t plan to be here later than mid 2009.

     Thank you so much for your involvement in our ministry through prayer and giving.  We are seeing the results of your partnership as the Lord works in our behalf.