This photo is my "claim to fame" moment when a local television station interviewed me regarding our medical and eyeglasses brigade in La Jigua, Copán!  Actually, this is not the first time we have made the news due to our efforts to help the poor and needy and I love taking the moment to lift God up and give him all the glory and honor for providing for the people of Honduras.  It is so wonderful to live and work in a country where one does not have to be "politically correct" and can give credit where credit is due!  

As you can see, this has been a busy month!  We are exhausted and have had moments of feeling completely overwhelmed, but knowing that our energy is being expended for God and His Kingdom causes us to push ahead and trust God.     

We are also dealing with the reality that our son, Harrison, will be leaving in a few days to begin his new life at Harding University.  Phil commented recently that it's hard to comprehend how an event that makes Harrison so excited and happy can at the same time make us sad!  We are very thankful that he is ready to leave the nest and move towards adulthood.  We will all miss him.  He is leaving behind a big footprint in Honduras. 

Our Laura will be leaving in a few days as well to attend Camp Deer Run near Longview, TX.  This is a special gift to Laura from the camp director and her airfare was given to her by a former camper who believes Camp Deer Run will be a blessing to Laura for years to come.  It is so affirming to me when God uses people to bless my children.  Living here as a child of missionaries has many benefits and blessings, but it also has challenges.  Being able to keep our children connected with their own culture is important to us and we are thankful that Laura is getting this opportunity.

I want to take the opportunity to introduce you to Wilson and share a little about his story in hopes that you will add him to your prayer list.  We met Wilson through one of the schools in our DESEO program.  His teacher asked if we would consider having one of our visiting doctors look at him.  Her request came just a week before the group from VCOM arrived.   

After working all day in a village, Phil took two of the doctors to Wilson's house to examine him.  Their analysis, without further testing is that most likely Wilson had an abscessed tooth four years ago and the infection began traveling through his sinus cavity, eating away bone as it traveled.  His condition puts him at great risk. We were able to begin an aggressive antibiotic treatment right away and Dr. Xiomara Erazo, who heads up the VCOM clinic in Tegucigalpa at the Baxter Institute is working on getting Wilson in to see several specialists in Tegucigalpa. 

Please pray for Wilson and his family.  His mother is one month away from giving birth to Wilson's little sister. Wilson is a very bright, happy, and good boy.  He wants to be a doctor when he grows up.  It is our prayer that we can be a part of bringing healing to Wilson so that he can realize his goals and that he will really know the love of Jesus.

For months now we have been reporting on the church building construction project at El Porvenir, San José de Copán. This month it was a special delight to take Bob and Ridglae Stephens from the Grand Central Church in Parkersburg, WV to visit the site. Bob was instrumental in raising $15,000 of the funds that we have used thus far in this project. We are very appreciative of Bob and those who responded to his appeal over a year ago to give to this project. This building is a blessing that will bless generations in this community. Thank you Bob and thank you to those who supported Bob in this fund raising effort.

New Church Established in Yarushín; Four Baptisms This Month

Cindy Sarahi Finally Has a Visa to go to Shriners in Tampa, FL 

New Church Plant - Florida, Copán 

Another Let's Start Talking Group in Santa Rosa - Big Success

We had a team of seven here from Bellevue, WA (two of the seven were from Bellevue but presently live in the Washington, D.C. area). Their efforts and those of the other LST teams that come here to Santa Rosa allow us to make friends and contacts with people in the community that would ordinarily not be possible.  

The bottom line, in our opinion, is that we cannot anticipate who will or who will not respond to the Gospel. Our job is to sow the seed in as many ways as we can practically and efficiently do so. LST is a great tool to accomplish that end and we are grateful to all of the LST'ers that come and work here. We are also grateful for the leadership of the LST organization and their continued efforts to recruit teams to come to Santa Rosa de Copán.

VCOM Medical Brigade Visits Ojo de Aqua and La Lima, Lempira

Helping Widows  

In December of 2009, Mabel Paz' father died suddenly. Her mother, Arsenia, borrowed money against her house to pay for her husband's medical bills and the cost to bury him. Mabel's parents had been faithful Christians for many years. In fact her father sold the church half of their property for almost nothing in order for the church to build a building in their small village. In February 2010, Scott Brown and the Legacy Church of Christ, Ft Worth, TX came and held a medical brigade in Quebrada Seca, where the Paz family lives.    

Scott spearheaded a fund raising effort and along with MUR provided funds to help Mabel's mom, Arsenia, open up a small store where she can sell merchandise to her neighbors. The funds were used to liquidate the debt that they had incurred in paying off the father's medical and funeral expenses. They were also used to purchase new windows and doors to secure the previously unsecure house and to purchase store inventory along with a refrigerator. A few other things like clothes for Mabel and her two siblings (sister Fernanda and brother Noe) as well as her mom were purchased as well. We are thankful to report that due to Arsenia's good management of her store they are prospering. 

It is not often in our experience that this type of help leads so quickly to a widow with dependent children becoming profitable in such an endeavor. It usually takes much longer if it succeeds at all. Please join us in prayer for Mabel and her family asking God to bless and protect them as they make their way through life without their beloved husband and father.

Evangelistic Campaign in Santa Rosa de Copán 

The church in Santa Rosa de Copán was blessed this month to have 46 students from the Baxter Institute, which is a four-year school of theology and ministry preparation, to work in an evangelistic campaign.

The week began with a door-to-door canvassing of a targeted zone in our city. In addition, the Baxter chorus held two mini-concerts in the central park featuring the a Capella music that we use in our assemblies.  

Mission UpReach, through generous donations from people all across the US, provided half of the funds required for this event and housed the students in our Biblical Institute (CREO). The local church in Santa Rosa paid half of the cost of the event from their offerings. We here at Mission UpReach were excited on several counts: one is the fact that 21 new souls were brought into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, two is that the local church rose to the challenge of paying for half of the cost of the event.

Conversions to Christ as Lord are always exciting to witness and represent the most fundamental type of growth that a church needs in order to thrive however the local church rising to the challenge of paying half of the cost of this major event represents another type of necessary growth that many mission churches never realize.

Unless a church in a mission field learns how to produce new disciples of Jesus and at the same time assume leadership and financial responsibility of the process of making disciples in their area; it will never be a strong church nor will it ever be a powerful force for bringing people to the Lord in their respective area. We are thankful that in Santa Rosa de Copán we are seeing real, integrated growth and maturity.

Grand Central Church Holds Eyeglasses Brigade in Public Schools 

The week GC church was here each day began with a devotional with the kids in each school. Later each child was given an eye exam via an auto refractor. Those who were indicated as needing eyeglasses where then processed by two different individuals using lenses that determine the power of the glasses that the child needed.

All the glasses were donated by the Lions Club and brought in as extra luggage by numbers of people traveling here over the previous months. Not one child in these schools had eyeglasses when we began this one-week effort. By the end of the week after being in four different public schools, where our DESEO program is in operation, there was 18% of the school population wearing glasses. These statistics should indicate to you as they do to us that this type of program is a great blessing for these poor communities.  

While here one of the "fun" activities that this group chose to do was to visit an orphans home and play with the children. It was a moving experience for those that participated. This one orphanage has 70+ children all under the age of seven. While they are given basic care it is impossible for the staff to attend to each child in the same way that you would want your children to be cared for. In spite of having to leave all of these babies behind the GC group left knowing that at least for a day they had shared the love of Jesus with little children just as He would want them to do.

Legacy Church Holds Medical Brigade in La Jigua, Copán 

Once again we were blessed to host a group from the Legacy Church of Christ, Ft. Worth, TX as they held a general medical and eyeglasses brigade in La Jigua, Copán.   

As we reported earlier in the year we helped plant a new church in this small town. The preacher and the new church members there handed out 800 tickets to people in La Jigua and the surrounding communities.  

Ultimately we attended to 920 people with doctor consultation and medicines as well as an eye exam and glasses (donated from the Lions Club) if they needed them.   

Some people like this lady (18 years old with two children) walked three hours to get to the clinic site. Her baby 10-month-old boy was nearly dead from dehydration. The doctors in the clinic and a large numbers of the ladies that made up the team were not about to let this little boy die on their watch.

The doctors did what they could and the ladies did what they could to re-hydrate the very sick little boy and at the end of the day the mother left with a backpack full of two large cans of formula (the equivalent of two weeks of a man's pay in her village). The formula should last them for several months.

Pine Tree Church, Longview, Texas Sends Group of Teachers to Help with Special Education

Dr. Quentin Woods, PhD in Education and Principal of an elementary school, came this month with a group of ladies from Longview, TX and Ohio. The ladies all brought their children and worked with Dr. Woods in the four public schools where we have our DESEO program in operation.  

In addition to some fun activities Dr. Woods held meetings with the teachers and principals where he shared many techniques on how to help children with special education needs. All of the teachers that received the mini-seminars offered by Dr. Woods were very appreciative. Not one of these professional teachers had ever received instruction or training on how to teach special needs students.  

We are grateful for all that Dr. Woods accomplished in his time and we are also very grateful for his team of mom's, some of whom are special education teachers by profession, they made the whole experience very fun and practical for both the kids and the teachers.