December 2016 Update

Feliz Navidad from the Miller's We had a great Christmas season with our new friends and family. The month was full of events and opportunities for us to continue to become part of the community. Lacey and Sophie went to their first Ecuadorian wedding. I got to more involved in sports and Sophie got to sing with her classmates during the schools Christmas party.

Clint finally got to build a house in Balsas.  We made and handed out over thirty of these Nativity scenes during the Christmas season in Balsas with Isaiah 9:6 attached to it. It was a great way for us to share our faith with a simple craft and special Bible verse. It was also a great opportunity to meet new people.

Balsas is introduced to American football We had a great time teaching the kids how to play football Americana. They love it and we play about 3 times a week while Lacey teaches the other kids English and Sophie plays with her friends. This has been a great opportunity for us and we are praying about other things to do with the kids like having a VBS and making other crafts.  We got to spend a day at school! Lacey and I were invited to host and judge a spelling bee at the local high school. What were they thinking! We are from Alabama and have terrible grammar! Non the less, we had a great time hanging out with the students and teachers. I got to play basketball with some of the students afterward and then we had an opportunity to share our faith and testimony with the English teacher at lunch.  Enjoying a different culture for Navidad We started celebrating our first Christmas Eve at 9AM with some of our friends and their families and ended our last party at 1AM on Christmas day. We celebrated with three families in which all were different and a new experience for us. It was great to see how different cultures celebrate. The tradition is to eat dinner and open presents at 12AM. We had three huge meals within a six hour span which was needed since our gas for cooking ran out on Christmas day and we were stuck eating peanut butter sandwiches for our Christmas meal.

We had a great day as a family celebrating our first Christmas in a different country together.  We did not have a lot of presents to give or receive this year. We did not even have a green tree (see picture). However, our place was not lacking any gifts as we enjoyed celebrating the true meaning of Christmas while listening to Sophie reenact the birth of Jesus with her little wooden Nativity figures.   News and Prayer Requests "Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will go God." Romans 8:26-27 ESV   We are excited to start the year off by focusing on prayer and meditation. We believe that we cannot equip or disciple others if we are not spiritually nourished ourselves. If we are going to reach others it will be by God's grace though prayer and our trust in Him. The Church Of The Highlands hosts 21 days of prayer every January and we were able to attend the past two years. It had a huge impact on our life and although we cannot be there in person, we look forward to praying with them live every morning online. We want to encourage you all to start the new year off by praying and possibly fasting so that God will be in front of all of our decisions and resolutions. You can join them or watch online every week day at 6am and on Saturdays at 9am. It will start January 4. Our Prayer Requests and Needs  God has blessed us enormously since we became Christ Followers almost ten years ago. He has given us more than we could have ever dreamed of. Therefore, we want to surrender our prayer requests and needs for this month to others who are in the most need. We DO believe that all of our prayer needs are important to God and we also know that there is no prayer to small for God. However, we also know that there are people all around us who are suffering more than our greatest need and a lot of them do not have a relationship with God. We pray that we will all spend time this month surrendering some of our basic prayers in order to have more time to focus on others who are in need of a miracle. This is tough for us to say because we have a lot of needs right now, but we believe that God knows our needs and will give us peace in all circumstances. We also believe that we already have everything that we need and that is simply a confirmation of our eternity by God through our faith in Jesus.