TRAINING IN PANAMA AND COLOMBIA
Before Thanksgiving, I traveled with my colleague, Mike Gunderson to Panama City, Panama for a training of church leaders. We taught our second course, 2 Timothy and had a great group of students. These students had started Pathways Bible Training just before the pandemic and they were eager to get back to it. Mike and I had a great few day’s training together and it was wonderful that we did the entire training in Spanish. One of our goals is to do all of our trainings in Latin America in Spanish or Portuguese and not have a need for translators. So, if you know a pastor who speaks either or both of those languages and would be willing to travel and train with us, I would love to meet him!
From Panama I said goodbye to Mike and headed to Santa Marta, Colombia. I had a wonderful time doing a Pre-Conference with a group of about 20 pastors and church leaders. I was able to share with them an overview of the Pathways Bible Study Methods and give them a taste of what we offer. Lord willing, sometime next year we will be able to start a network there as well.
I was also able to visit with old friends and co-laborers, Alfredo and Juanna Medina and Jon and Holly Boyd and their children. It was great to see how the church that started in our living room all those years ago is now healthy and thriving. It brought tears to my eyes to see what we had envisioned and prayed for all those years ago, come to fruition by God’s hand. The Boyd’s and Medina’s have faithfully served there in Santa Marta for going on 13 years and they have persevered through hard work and sacrifice to shepherd the flock there for God’s glory. I have the utmost respect for all 4 of them and their families and we pray God will continue to use them there on the Colombian Coast for His purposes.
I was honored to preach in both of the Sunday morning services. I hadn’t preached in Spanish in 10 years. So, thank you to those of you who were praying for that. I was a bit rusty but still ended up surprising myself a few times in being able to recall a word or conjugating a verb in a weird tense on the spot. Felt like my tongue was all tangled a few times as I don’t get to speak much Spanish here in Iowa. It also didn’t help that I was crying as I stepped onto the stage. We sang some songs that took me back in time and to hear a whole church full of people praising God in Spanish was something I have sorely missed.
I will give more details of this last trip in our next VLOG but we know many of you were praying for this trip so we didn’t want to much time to pass before giving you an update.
END OF YEAR GIVING
As we approach the end of 2022, we want to sincerely say thank you to all of you who give so generously and sacrificially. Your financial gifts allow us to continue to serve God by training and equipping church leaders around the world.
Your generosity has allowed us to train this past year in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Tanzania, Panama and Colombia. As 2023 is approaching, we will be a part of equipping even more church leaders in various countries and locations. As the Lord opens opportunities for trainings next year, would you consider an end of year gift towards our ministry? End of year giving fills in the gaps and gives us the ability to travel and train all the more.
We thank God for you, and if there are specific ways we can pray for you, please let us know. If you would like to give a final year-end gift please click the link below.