Thursday, August 10, 2006

It’s been a very long time since I last wrote. It’s been crazy down here. I got married on July 15th and since then it has been a wonderful experience. God has many things in store for us and we are excited about our married life. Sure, it takes getting used to sharing the same tube of tooth paste. She squeezes it in the middle and I squeeze it from the back. But life would be boring if we did everything the same.

We are back in Manaus now living in a little apartment. It’s on the third floor so anything we bring to the apartment is like working out. The other day we bought a small refrigerator. She and I carried it all the way up. By the time I got to the door, I didn’t want a refrigerator anymore. Then we plugged it in and noticed that it was empty. So we went grocery shopping. By the time we got all the bags up to the third floor, I didn’t want to eat anymore.

The church is doing great. We have been working hard these past few weeks on the facilities. We moved to another building so there is lots of work to be done to make it look like a church. I even pretended to be an electrician and ran all the wiring for the place. We needed to put in lights and outlets in the place. We spent about three weeks just moving and getting things ready to hold services. A lot of people came throughout the weeks and helped out with everything. Now we are in the process of building new bathrooms, an office, and a classroom. There is still much work to be done, please pray for us for wisdom and financial help to do these projects.

Later this month we will have an outreach event in the community. We will be bringing dentists and nurses to the church campus to volunteer. We will also be giving free haircuts and many other things.

The youth here are doing great. I’m learning a lot about youth and the difficulties they face every day. It’s tough to be a teenager during these times. The internet has captured their minds, and some have become addicted to it. Most don’t have a computer at home so they go to cyber cafes and spend the little money they have on the internet and computer games. But the youth in the church are slowly catching on and are growing spiritually. I can see how far they’ve come and how much God has done in their lives.