Making Connections

The day started at the work site with a tour of a neighbors house. Yesterday Roy struck up a conversation with Gus and Gus wanted to show Roy and us his home. In his house he has had painted incredible murals of Houston, Texas(he lived there for 8 - 10 years), and of nature. He is very proud of his home and his paintings. In the afternoon we were able to invite him to church on Friday evening and he indicated he will come. He also offered to take us to the top of a nearby mountain to show us the church construction site from up high. It is a great connection for us and for the church. Gus gave us his address so that we could send to him photo's of his house.

Another significant part of today was time spent over lunch with the leadership team of the Nicaraguan church. They travelled from Managua to meet with Marshall and then join us for lunch. I(Pastor Doug) spent about half an hour with German(pronounced Herman) talking about church life, leadership and church planting. Many of the challenges faced in Nicaragua are the same as we face in the United States. It was a good conversation and email addresses were exchanged. The only complication will be language. But I am sure Marshall will translate for us.

In terms of construction work we made very good progress today. We completed filling in 2 -900 square foot sections of floor. We raised the one a solid 6 - 8 inches and the other about 12 inches. We finished two sections of wall and made good progress on the third. Our hope is by the end of Friday to have the building completely walled in(up to 6 feet high). We will need to finish laying the block and then pour a lot of cement into forms to complete the pillars. We will see what happens. Most exciting is that on Friday night the church service will be held in the building(albeit far from completed), but it will be a great celebration of progess made.

Tonight we went to church. It was held in the home of a lady who attends the church(she is a nurse). Not much of the service did we understand but we were able to put enough together to have a sense of what was being talked about and sang. The congregation sang many songs, had 7 special musics, took and offering and had a sermon. A neat part of the evening was Linda Hillard giving her testimony to the congregation. Marshall translated for her. She did a great job. It was a great evening. Another special part of the evening was the kids who came and sat on our laps. Both pastors kids enjoyed sitting on Roy and Marlenes lap as well as on Dougs. In the end Marlene held a beautiful baby girl who fell asleep being held by Marlene.