Well, we are back in the good old US of A now and we’re enjoying the holidays with family. Please keep us in your prayers this holiday season as we are needing to raise our monthly support so that we can go back to Ecuador where we have plans for next year waiting for us. We’re hoping to get back within a couple of months, but really are planning to go back with the monthly support we need so that we can plan on working with the ministries and really be a lasting benefit to the work that is going on there.

Although we are excited to see where God leads us this next coming year, we are really glad to be back. To have hot running water, carpet, signs and menus in english, spicy food, family, and all the other comforts that we have here!

We look forward to getting together with you so make sure you get a hold of us so we can set a date to go out to coffee, lunch, or dinner! We pray you have a wonderful Christmas today and eat lots of good food with a lot of great people!

We’ve got some pretty exciting news for you all on this cold and foggy morning! We’ve recently set up an online number with a Utah area code (above) which only will cost us about $20 bucks a year and we can call/receive as much as we want from anywhere in the world! We just have to have an internet connection, so if you call us and we don’t answer, that is probably why. So just leave a message and we’ll get back to you once we’re back online and the phone adapter is plugged back in.

Also, we are at a staff retreat/planning weekend planning for this next upcoming year and evaluating our goals, vision, and call. We’ve got a lot coming up, and are excited to see how the Lord is going to work, so please keep the ministry here in your prayers!

We are also getting to come home in about THREE WEEKS! We’re excited to see all of our family and friends and spend Christmas at home. We really want to meet up with you personally to share with you our vast collection of pictures, videos and stories (although we’ll try not to make it seem too boring!) but we’re sure that our schedule will fill up pretty fast, so be sure to shoot us an email so we can block it out on our calendar!

“I thank my God fin all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began ha good work in you will bring it to completion at jthe day of Jesus Christ.” Philippians 1:3-6

Anthony & Caylin Lagoon

Shuar Church Planter from Anthony Lagoon on Vimeo.

God is working in a mighty way here in Ecuador! Our recent church planting conference was a huge success with potential pastors and current pastors from the jungle, the coast, the sierra, and other Latin American countries too!

This man, Octavio, explains what he went through to get to the conference in order to get training, and get our help with the different ministries to come to his region.

Help us in the ministry be getting involved at www.aclagoon.org.

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!!!!

We have all of our paperwork corrected and notarized, so it should all go well, but as anyone who travels knows, complications always arise.

We’re also having a going away party this Saturday at Adolfo & Rose Guangorena’s house (Directions). Call Adolfo if you have questions about it at 801-205-2714. It will just be a great time to hang out one last time! Show up at 5pm.

So if you can, come on out and say goodbye to us before we head off to Ecuador.
God Bless!!! Got to board the plane now!