Hey everybody!!! We just got back from a small community in the Napo region of Ecuador. There’s a summer group here from various parts of the U.S., so we took them to the jungle to get things started. We held a kids outreach, a soccer tournament, a community dinner, and a film backed by the Gospel message. Overall it was a huge success, and God really blessed our socks off! (if we wore socks here)

Along with our summer group, we brought 5 Ecuadorian youth from a Christian foundation where kids are either orphans or dropped off because a parent can no longer take care of them. They were awesome!! They’re all believers, I really saw the Lord mature their walks and grow them this trip. This was the 1st time Ecuadorians have come to something like this, so it’s kinda groundbreaking! The whole point is to raise them up to lead their own people and to go out & make disciples.

The village we took the group to is called Chichicorumi, they are a family of believers surrounded by witches/shamans for neighbors, so please be praying for us & them for the Holy Spirit to fill us & for wisdom as we continue to enter these spiritually dark regions. The village is a Quichua museum that gets a lot of tourists, they are trying to use it as a ministry opportunity with visitors. This village is also complete with all the wildlife you could take, including a little devil monkey named Lucas.

Part of our outreach was a work project of re-painting an elementary school. Lots of neighborhood kids showed up to help, I mean, who doesn’t love to paint? (everyone except Pastor Joe) The kids outreach was so awesome! A missionary woman named Linda flew down specifically for the children’s outreach, she presented the Gospel with different age groups while we had diffferent stations set up with games, face painting, bubbles, etc. That day, 9 kids made first time commitments!!! Praise God!!

On the sunday morning at the local church, our team was presented with bracelets as a memory of the village along with much gratitude for the outreach projects, I (Caylin) would say that one of the biggest rewards was when the president of the community stood up to thank us, telling us that he is Catholic, but hearing the Gospel and the hope that we possess, he now sees that there is something more and wants this hope that we have!!!! I was blown away by that!!! So, God is definitely stirring the hearts in Chichicorumi.

I bet you’re wondering why this blog is titled “Padrinos”? Well, our last night in the village, we had some awesome worship time singing some songs in 4 languages!!! Spanish, Quichua, English, and Vietnamese!! We had a Seattle Bible College student who is originally from Vietnam on our team. There was a traveler from Belgium named Hendrick, he had been staying in that village for a few weeks volunteering with manual work. He was there at our worship night, Steve got a chance to talk to him beforehand and he believes the “all roads lead to one place…”, well, by the end of worship he had been singing along and expressed that he is doing some soul searching, so please keep him in your prayers.

Anyway, back to the Padrino story, after worship, we were saying our goodnights/goodbyes and one of the sisters of the family asked me if Anthony & I would want to be Naomi’s (a 9 month old baby) godparents, I said: “Huh?” and she asked me again and I didn’t feel like I could say no due to the insult that it would cause and I certainly did not want to damage the new relationship with the village, so we agreed. They asked Steve to pray over her and bada bing, bada boom, we were godparents!

We were also able to go to the Mission Aviation Fellowship where Jim Elliot and Nate Saint worked out of which is located in Shell Ecuador. One of the pilots gave us a tour of the facility, and even took us across the street to the Nate Saint house. We were able to go inside this old building and we saw some things that he used to use during his flights including a basket, his headphones, etc. It was quite a humbling experience to think that you are working in the same general area as these missionaries who gave so much for the glory of Christ.

The whole compassion connection staff is super excited about this new bond the Lord has formed, and we look forward to see what fruit He brings of it!

Well, that’s gonna do it for now! We love & miss all of you so much!!!! Please keep us in your prayers, with ministry opportunities, spiritual warfare, and our marriage to stay solid. Thanks for reading! Thank you for your love & support!!!!! God Bless!!!!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 5:37 am and is filed under Newsletter, blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.