Mission to the Americas

Tuesday afternoon, we joined the team from Crestwood Presbyterian Church (Richmond) in an outreach at one of the children’s homes.  The stories of how kids wound up there were somewhat gutwrenching, but the team shared its drama and message with them as well.

We spoke with a young boy, 14 years old, who was in the detention home because he had been snagged by the police for robbing people.  When I spoke with him longer, he was stealing in order to provide food for his family.  It was clear that the Lord was touching his heart during the drama and message from the teenagers, and in our post drama conversation, he offered his life to the Lord — receiving God’s forgiveness for his actions (the state will be another matter).

The team also got to know a young woman from Somolia, separated from her family — who all had been killed in the fighting.  She was smuggled out of the country, but when she landed in Panama, she was promptly captured, arrested, and because she is underage she was sent to this home.  Her companions on her journey were thrown in a Panamaian jail while immigration figures out what to do with them.

Each story at this orphange is unique, and uniquely sad.  I’ve been there before, but it doesn’t get easier hearing the stories of each child as to why they are there.

Join us in Prayer and Support

Continue to pray for our ongoing work of our family in Panama.

Continue to pray that we increase our levels of monthly support to keep working in fulfilling our calling here.

Consider joining our monthly Support team or make a special gift to help us continue?

Keep up with our news and get instant updates by clicking here.

Tuesday the missions team from Richmond came back to the city and conducted a street campaign at Cinco de Mayo.  Their outreach made Thursday’s newspaper in Prensa.

We got to join them for that outreach.

During setup, several of the team members broke up into little groups and went inviting people to the drama.  Brandon served one team to help give the invitations.

As with the church planting park outreach on Saturday, the Crestwood team used the same dramas:

• Ragman
• Man of Miracles

Crowds gathered to watch, see and hear.

Different teens gave a brief testimony and then one of the adults gave a brief invitation to conversation and prayer.

After the dramas and invitation, the team broke up in to little groups and went and prayed with individuals.

The Sovereignty of God in Evangelism

As we conversed with people who wanted prayer after the dramas, the sovereignty of God became very obvious.  People who were

• desperately seeking God found themselves hearing of God’s love for them.
• running from God found themselves confronted with God’s pursuit of them.

For example, in our conversations:

1.  An immigrant from Nicaragua seeking employment in Panama City left his church 3 years ago, but this day felt God’s tug on his heart to walk in the ways of the Lord again.  We’ve invited him to join our church plant.

2.  A teacher from the rural province where I taught in the Darien was in the city after abandoning his family felt God’s call to repentance and return to his family and church.  We referred him to pastor where I preached his hometown.

Those were our conversations.  I only heard about one team who spoke with a gang member who left the church a few years ago feeling confronted by God’s love to leave that life and get back to walking with the Lord.

I’ve yet to hear some of the others from the team about what they had.

Join us in Prayer and Support

Continue to pray for our ongoing work of this church plant.

Continue to pray that we increase our levels of monthly support to keep working in fulfilling our calling here.

Consider joining our monthly Support team or make a special gift to help us continue?

Keep up with our news and get instant updates by clicking here.

We have started working with a new church plant here in Panama.

While we are not yet meeting on Sundays, we’ve been meeting as a leadership team for several months praying for our neighborhood (Corregimiento De Bella Vista,  Church planting in Our Context), building relational connections with people, and even celebrated a baptism in our pool (Why we do this).

Beginning in late July, we’ll begin meeting in a house on Sunday afternoons.

Partnering with a missions team.

This week, a missions team from Richmond Virginia helped us with a park outreach and some other street outreaches.  They provided the dramas, brought us some literature to distribute and it’s been a blast having them.

The goal of our partnership was to help us make contact with people.

Saturday’s Park Outreach

We are in rainy season here, so for nearly 30 days, we had been praying for a dry afternoon.  Yet in God’s sovereignty, we experienced a thunderstorm about 2 hours before our outreach was scheduled to start.

This caused a skateboarding festival in the park to be delayed for hours.  The end result is that instead of families being in the park, we had nearly 200 young skateboard enthusiasts.

That was our audience, but once their games resumed after the ramps dried up, they had their attention elsewhere.

We made meaningful contact and conversation with about 10 people.

We learned about the skating subculture here, and I had conversation with some 20-somethings about their faith and about their struggles.  We are making follow-up connections this week working at recruiting these new contacts into our weekly bible study.

Brenda ran some crafts for the smaller children that eventually arrived and served as translator for the team when they spoke.  Here, one of the young people is giving a personal testimony about their faith in Christ, and Brenda’s translating for them.

Personal Joy

Part of the joy of ministering as a family is watching my kids serve as well.  Brandon’s fluency in Spanish has grown to the point where he could provide some translation work on a conversational level.  Watching him serve that way brought joy to this dad.

Anakarina and Brandon both were distributing literature (Who would deny taking stuff from a kid?) and helping out with the crafts and dramas.  Anakarina played the lost sheep during an improv skit.

Join us in Prayer and Support

Continue to pray for our ongoing work of this church plant.

Continue to pray that we increase our levels of monthly support to keep working in fulfilling our calling here.

Consider joining our monthly Support team or make a special gift to help us continue?

Keep up with our news and get instant updates by clicking here.