Visits from the US are always special.  A week ago we enjoyed fellowshipping with a student and teacher from Maranatha Baptist Bible College.  Jonathan has the desire to serve the Lord in a Spanish speaking country.  Around Christmas time this past year he visited Peru.  After surveying that country, he then turned around and visited us and the Secrest family here in Uruguay.

When he arrived at the new international airport, he discovered that he had flown in with the soccer team from Northland Baptist Bible College.  They were here to help with the Duarte and Vallette families serving with Gospel Mission of South America.  He also discovered that his two bags had been lost somewhere at La Guardia.  Fortunately, Jonathan could almost be my twin and so for three days until his clothes arrived he was able to borrow some of mine.

After taking him on a brief tour of Montevideo, we traveled the 2.5 hours up to Durazno.

Felicia loved having another Uncle to play with for a few days.  Jo Anna also enjoyed chatting and sharing insights on Uruguay.

Sunday night, Jonathan gave a lesson on, “How we got Bible and why it can be trusted.”  A few nights later he duplicated this lesson for our neighbors who popped in for a visit around 10pm.  Praise the Lord for yet another opportunity to witness to them as the direct result of Jonathan being with us.

Thank you Jonathan for your gracious testimony, your encouragement to us, and for bringing some much needed items down for us.  Our feet will be much better shod as we give out the Gospel of peace.

May the Lord bring you back to Uruguay as soon as possible.

Last night a national Pastor and his family arrived for a brief visit.  They are passing through Durazno on their way to preach several evangelistic services for Easter week in Paysandu.

This morning they went and visited a family living in Durazno that used to be neighbors in Montevideo.

This afternoon I stopped by their house once again with an invitation to our Easter Service this Sunday.  We also invited them to come to our house this evening for our weekly gathering with Victor.

Since they have no biblical background I decided to do a brief lesson on the Bible.  Over the course of the evening they heard the Gospel.  Tonight, M. made a decision to accept Christ as Savior.  His wife C. is waiting to see if she will see a change in the life of her husband before she makes the decision.  As it was quite late, I offered to drive them the few blocks to their home.  When we arrived I was invited to come in and look at their house.  This meant allot as it is privilege that is not easily given to any stranger let alone foreigner.  M. told me that since he has made this decision for Christ, he desires to use his house for the Lord.  He has opened it up to for Bible studies.

Praise the Lord for this double encouragement!

Please pray for M that he will grow in Christ, and that his wife C. will soon see the difference.

Howdy!  Here we go . . . I’ll try to keep some of these categories to lists for you to make it a bit simpler to share and pray.

Challenges

*Always looking for new contacts
*Scheduling as more Bible studies come on board with people who are not time oriented
*Juggling homeschooling and family with other ministry opportunities
*Wisdom to deal with secular philosophies that we are faced with concerning Felicia’s Uruguayan school

Needs

Prayer
Health as winter looms

Financial support due to weak dollar

Prayer requests

*Salvation of many different contacts
*That we be able to begin a Bible Study with P.
*Parents of children from VBS outreach
*Felicia’s adjustment to school, especially the fact that she’s surrounded by unbelievers
*Paul’s continued language progress (pronunciation, practice conjugating verbs, continued vocabulary acquisition)
*That we get to the bottom of why our fridge is not cooling the way it should. It’s been rather frustrating. No more spoiling milk or meat.  Please!?
*Attitude of restfulness for me as I try to juggle many things
*Strength to be a good example and Mommy to my daughter and others who watch everything I do.  “That I may be like Christ”

Schooling

I’ve mentioned a lot about this in other portions of my update. Felicia is doing K5 at home in the morning in English with Mommy and then goes to Spanish K5 at a private school from 1 to 5pm.  She’s in a class that has about 18 students and gets to wear a navy blue uniform that says “Chiquilladas” (Kids Antics-that’s the name of the school).  Her school has about 180 children ranging from 2 to 5 yrs of age.  We are impressed with their organization.  Within about 20 minutes they dismiss all those kids and the teachers get to go home.

Language Studies

Formal studies for both Paul and Jo Anna are DONE!  Felicia is doing great and can already tell the difference between the vowel sounds in English and Spanish.  She has a great start to reading in both languages, however English is by far her mother tongue.

I, Jo Anna, passed the internationally recognized DELE (Diploma of Spanish as a Foreign Language) exam that I took last November.  Yeah!  I just found out a couple days after Pastor and Nan were here.  To take the exam I had to travel to the capital and present myself at the International House London Institute.  The reason it took so long to get my grades is because the exam was sent to and graded in Spain.  The Cervantes Institute and University of Salamanca are responsible for the writing and grading of the exams and also the giving out of the diplomas.  For trivia’s sake, the exam has also been offered in the U.S. for about 15 yrs., but I was not aware of it and would not have been prepared to take it.

My strong points were the oral exam (no surprise) and grammar and vocabulary (thanks to great teachers and a lot of hard work).  My weakest point was reading comprehension.  I believe there are several reasons for this.  It was the first section of the exam and I still had the jitters, plus I was having a terrible time concentrating due to other things going on in the classroom.  I grew up reading literature in English which is vastly different in style.  All the underlying meanings and innuendos have proven to be hard for me to grasp.  We had to piece an interview together by matching the questions to the answers and I knew that I had a couple wrong for sure but chose to designate more time to the writing composition which proved to be a very good choice.  All in all, I was somewhat disappointed with my rendition in certain tests within the exam, but I’m praising the Lord for allowing me to pass.

The exam took place over two days and was a total of about 4 ½ hrs. long.  The oral exam was one day and the rest was from 9am to 1pm the following day. We had one 10-15 min. break on the second day. I’ve got to say that I’m glad it’s all over with, but I’m so grateful to the Lord for giving me this wonderful opportunity and for putting professionals in my path so that I could fine tune my language skills.  My desire now is to be able to honor Him more with the knowledge and abilities that He has granted be it by aiding my husband (and other missionaries) with further study, confidence in public speaking, translation work, subbing/workshops in Christian schools while on furlough if the opportunity arises, etc.  It would be to my chagrin if I didn’t thank my husband and little girl for helping Mommy as she studied for over 100 hours of class time from July of 2008 to November of 2009.  I love you both very much!

If anyone has questions about the exam, etc. I would be glad to answer them.  Just send me a note and I’ll get back to you.

Thanks for bearing with me!  Lots of people were praying so we want to let them all know. 

Just a general update on everything

DONE!

Well S., I hope this was what you were looking for.  Maybe too lengthy . . .  you’ll have to let me know what works best for another time.  Thanks again for all you do on our behalf.  I have a missionary couple coming to visit for the first time tomorrow.  We get to go to the zoo for a picnic!  Gotta take advantage of the nice days while we still have them.  Right?  Please tell the ladies that I miss them and I’d love to hear from them too.  Thank them for their faithfulness.  It means a lot to those of us who are far away to know that things are still being accomplished to reach those around our sending church.  Blessings!  That’s what the Christian deaf community says here when they say good bye.

Love,

Jo Anna
Romans 5:8

Sun!  Wonderful sunshine!  Unlike our last VBT here in Durazno we are experiencing wonderful weather for this weeks VBT in the park.  Thank you for your prayers.

Once again we are using a Wordless Book theme to be able to clearly give the Gospel.  My goal is that each child hear the Gospel at least two times from two different sources in a two hour time slot.  The time goes by so quickly.

Pastor Daniel Rojas (aka Cascarita the Clown) and two teenagers from Paysandu are helping us this week in addition to Victor M.  Without them we would not be able corral some of the more energetic children.

On the first evening we had 42 children slowly trickle in over the coarse of our two hour VBT hosted in Plaza Guayreña.  Friday evening, we had 45 children, and on Saturday morning we had 43.

Friday morning we followed up some of the parents from VBT#1, and reinvited their children to VBT#3.  In addition, we invited the parents to start individual Bible Studies with us.  So far we have not had any takers but on the other hand we only had one definite “no”.  Please pray that we will have some parents say “yes”.