Tuesday, May 14, 2013

May Update

One of the important aspects of ministry is partnering with other ministries to advance God's Kingdom.  During the past 2 months we have been working with Oasis World Ministries based in Minnesota.  Their founder, Tom Elie, has developed an evangelistic tool called the "One Minute Witness" that is very effective in helping people share their faith.  We have assisted him in setting up meetings with pastors and leaders in Guatemala who are very eager to have the training conducted among their churches.  It is exciting to see the excitement of the pastors to evangelize their nation.

We have hosted two group during the past couple of months who came to build homes for families in San Pablo La Laguna who lost their homes in the earthquake last November.  These families do not have the resources to rebuild and were very appreciative of the generosity of the group.  One of the mom's commented, "I do not understand this kind of love that would travel so far to help a family they did not know.

"During the month of May our base will be hosting 5 women from the Kona, Hawaii DTS.  They are from Sweden, Norway, Canada and the USA.  They are working alongside of our ministries in several locations.  We are always eager to receive fellow DTS groups who are on outreach.  We believe we have some great ministries that they can be a part of and we are blessed to have them join us.

We had to say goodbye to two of our staff members, Cooper and Erin Evans as they are returning to the USA to help Cooper's dad take care of the 5 children still at home in the family.  Cooper's mom died unexpectantly from complications of Dengue fever while they were recently serving in the Dominican Republic.  This has left a huge weight on his dad's shoulders and their return will be a great help to him.  We will miss them but know that God has everything in his control.

We have a new staff member, Dessie, who graduated from our last DTS.  Dessie is not a teenager, she is retired and is the oldest student we have ever had attend a DTS and our oldest staff member.  She loves the Lord and we are happy to have her on board to help us with our ministries.

Our DTS class is filling up and we will soon reach our capacity for this year!  We thank God for the increase in interest and look forward to our next group of students.  It will be a bilingual DTS Spanish/English.