life

Well, it seems to get harder and harder to put together an update. In trying to get the house finished, we're falling way behind on our communications. Please forgive us. We don't have a phone line out where we live and it can sometimes be pretty difficult to get online at all.

It is now Tuesday and I am trying to get caught up on administrative duties, communication with potential staff members, etc... We are also working like crazy to finish the house. Our goal at this point is to make it livable so that we can move in. Our contractor is doing good work but I have decided that he is terrible at math. We are now so over our contract amount that we are close to having to shut down. Third world calculating finally catches up with us. Anyway, I am spending as much time as possible working on-site myself both to make sure that workers continue going strong and so that I can get as much done myself as possible. The roof is 98% complete, the flooring is 80% complete and hopefully we'll have a functioning water system and bathroom in the next week or so. We could definitely use prayer in this. We want to finish and move so that our living situation is stable and we can put all of our energies into our work rather than being so distracted. I keep reminding myself that this is a short time which will increase our long-term effectiveness.

As for church, things really seemed to go well this past Sunday night. We had a pretty large crowd...the largest in quite some time, and everyone really seemed to connect and enjoy the night. I took a slight detour from our ongoing study through Romans to talk about faith. We have just finished Chapter 4 where Paul spoke about Abraham being made righteous because of his faith. There's a lot of talk in our culture about faith, but all too often, faith is an end unto itself. We spent a couple of hours Sunday night looking at faith from a biblical perspective before we head through the rest of the letter to the Romans. I really enjoyed teaching and everyone seemed to enjoy listening and discussing as we went through the study. My hope is that we will continue to grow closer as a body and that we will also begin to grow. Please pray for us and for our effectiveness. Please pray for the new Christians as God molds them into new creations.

Finally, we'll also be celebrating a baptism this next Sunday afternoon. If all goes according to plan, Sebas (who has been part of our church since the beginning) will baptize Anastasia whom he shared Christ with early last year. It will be an exciting time.