Begun in Faith

We bought our new church building on Thursday the 7th, started cleaning it on Friday, moved the pastors in on Monday, and received a short term team from California on Tuesday. Because of planning complications, the team was only five members-the perfect size to help alleviate our chaos without adding to it. They toured and prayed over the city on Wednesday, then dove into a VBS program from Thursday through Monday. We have never done a VBS here in Cordoba and, judging from people’s reactions to our invitations, they are not a common community event. We had seven kids the first couple days, but after the kids/parents began to understand what a VBS is, attendance jumped to fourteen-sixteen the last three days. The lessons and activities were a huge hit. The kids were on a two week winter vacation from school; like we have in the States but without Christmas. We are looking forward to planning a VBS for the summer vacation in January. The highlight for me was showing our church members

Almost exactly one year ago, we signed the papers and started moving into our church. Even then, we knew we had to leave that building as soon as possible. Because of inflation, rent increases at least 15% every six months. That means our monthly rent that was $375 a year ago became $430 in January and would be $500 next month. Would be, but it’s not. We had our last service in that building yesterday and are racing to finish the remodel on our new building this week before the Encounter retreat and inauguration of the new building this weekend. The new building is OUR building. With funds raised through alabaster offerings, 40/40 donors (you), and Extreme church fund-raising, we bought a building three blocks from our original church. Front of the new church building The first adventure was finding and choosing a new church. For six months we kept our eyes peeled for For Sale signs whenever we were walking through the city. We called countless real estate agents and toured a

Last month, we organized an event called Salva3 (save three) in our house of prayer where we planned a special dinner and asked our regular participants to each invite three friends. In the weeks leading up to the event, we prayed over the names of the three friends we were inviting. Of the twelve members of our group (including Pastora, Ashley, and me as hostess and leaders) only two of all our friends actually came: Beatha’s friend Angie and Erica’s husband Gerardo. That’s right-none of the people Pastora, Ashley, and I invited could come. We weren’t excited with the results, but we enjoyed a delicious meal and a lovely time together. This Salva3 event was a soup dinner with homemade tomato, squash, and pea soup. Angie is a Christian without a church who moved to Cordoba from Haiti three years ago. At the Salva3 event, she was a social-language butterfly that flitted from group to group speaking Creole with Beatha, Spanish with the Cordobeses, broken English with Ashley and