It has been a very windy week, and much cooler than normal. We found ourselves wearing sweatshirts last evening. The lows each day have probably been in the high 60's, but it feels cool compared to the normal weather here.
 We started a leadership study for one of the churches in the book of Acts on Tuesday evening. It gave us a chance to start using our classroom.
We are making Acts the first study we do with all the groups because there is such a need to understand the original purpose and function of the church. Traditionalism has virtually paralyzed a lot of the churches here.
We decided to make a few changes in the classroom. We turned it to face the other wall in order to get more tables into the room. The existing tables were a lot wider than we needed so we are cutting four of them lengthwise to make eight tables. You can see the new table on the left and the original table on the right below.
 They will be more like training tables, enough to put a notebook and a Bible on. This will give us eight tables, and will allow us to accomodate 24 students at a time.
We can always push two of them together to make a wider table if need be, or we can easily push them against the wall if we need to set up chairs in the center of the room.
The key with our facilities and equipment is to make everything multipurpose. We have to make the most of everything.
 We also built and installed a good strong handrail on the stairs so that when we get really old and decrepit we can still make our way up to the classroom (at least that is what we tell everyone).
The guys worked on painting the outside of the house. We are going to complete the painting work ourselves so that we can devote our money to ministry needs.
We are also in the process of getting the music room set up so that we can start teaching people to play  the instruments. We are going to try to get them playing Christian songs right from the start.
On Monday we are going to pick out some choruses that use just a few basic chords that they can learn and play quickly. As they get proficient in the basics, they move on to more advanced techniques.
We are awaiting the shipment of of a load of textbooks and Bibles for our classes. We found that we could save about a thousand dollars by combining them with a shipment of stuff that we are waiting to send out from Miami to here.
Kim is still sorting through all the boxes of stuff in the attic (sure glad we put that attic in, wow!!). Tim is still working on cabinets, teaching Tues and Wed evening and preaching on Sunday morning. We are definitely busy.
We are back to our Nicaraguan diet of oatmeal in the morning and rice and/or beans with meat for the noon meal, and leftovers for the evening meal. It sometimes gets monotonous, but it keeps us from overeating and when we get to the US we REALLY enjoy all the variety of food. Hey, if we are going to live in Nicaragua, we need to get used to the regular diet here.
Thank you as always for your prayers.
God bless you,
Tim and Kim |
