The music classes started this week. It is nice seeing this building being used more and more during the week. We are hoping to get our shipment from Miami soon so we can start the Bible Training Classes. (written by Tim Mott)
 The young people were excited to see the music classes get started this week. We have one teacher, Othoniel, who teaches our morning class and another teacher, Moran Lampson, who teaches the afternoon class.
Most of the kids are starting with no experience in music, so the teachers have to start with the basics.
They have class on Tuesday and Friday and come to the house to practice during the week.
We are still awaiting our shipment from Miami. El Bluff is not a major destination so the ship does not sail there every week. For the past three weeks, they have been scheduled to go to El Bluff, but then they decide to go to another port. This week,  they loaded our stuff into a container, but still did not sail to El Bluff. They tell me now that they are definitely going there next week.
We can just pray. We need the keyboards. Right now we have six people using three keyboards in our afternoon group.
The kids are good-natured about it because until now, they had nothing to play or practice on. This is a major improvement for them.
The guys from Monkey Point came to our Hopewell Baptist Church leadership training again this week. Tim is planning a trip there with them to see if we can establish a group of believers there. Tim and Israel and some of the guys will go down there on a Thursday and come back a few days later.
Our hope is to establish a functioning church there and then work with them as they get their farming going again  there. The area is rich in farmland and fishing.
The plan is to go there with a huge ice box and fish while we are there, so we can take the fish back to Bluefields to sell to pay for the gas for the trip.
This is good because this makes it a self supporting ministry. Clayton told us that if they organize their co-op properly, they can get loans from the government to get their farms started.
Our Tuesday evening leadership training and our Wednesday evening discipleship Bible Study both continue to go well. We are in Acts 20 in the Bible Study.
We both continue to take spanish language classes and are making progress. It is kind of slow, but we are learning. We have a really good teacher who is very diligent with her lesson planning.
 This is supposed to be dry season, but it has been raining almost every day. This is good because it keeps our water tanks full.
We still have Alfred working on all kinds of odds and ends on the house. We probably have a year worth of details to keep working on.
We still need to paint the house and put the roof on the back porch. If anyone wants to come down for a week and help out, let us know.
Currently airfares are very cheap. We got our round trip tickets from Managua through Miami to Elmira, NY for less than $450 per person. Add in the little commuter flight from Managua to Bluefields, and you still have less than $600 per person round trip from most locations in the US.
Please keep praying for us as God continues to develop our vision here.We have the music training started. We will begin the formal leadership training c ourses as soon as the remainder of our books arrive.
We would like to be able to extend our ministry to the outlying communities that do not have pastors and bible teachers, but we are just exploring those things right now.
We have not done much with the cafe concept yet. As we get the Bible training ministries going, we will start doing small things there. It takes a while to get planted in a community and really find your place.
We will be in the US from May 7-18, but will be only in the NY area. We plan to make it back to TX later in the year. We appreciate your prayers and please be assured that you are in our prayers as well.
God bless you,
Tim and Kim |
