Dear Friends and Supporters,
Greetings in the wonderful name of Jesus! We again apologize that we have not gotten a report out sooner. Things stay really busy here! That is not a good excuse, but it really is true. As I write this, I am at the hospital accompanying a coworker who needed to be brought to the hospital because of a diagnosis of dengue and fevers that have been very persistent over the last few days, so Dr. Enver decided we needed to hospitalize her for some rehydration and more intensive treatment. She is improving rapidly here at the hospital.

Will try to recap some of the highlights since our last report. Many thanks to all who have come and been a part of the ministry here, and to all of you who have given and helped to make possible all that is happening here.

November 11 – 17, 2018, Mercy and Truth from Kansas City, Kansas
We were able to reach out to the town of Cozoaltepec, a small village about an hour and a half from here, where a graduate of our Bible School is pastoring, Pastor Ada. She is doing a great job there! We had two great days of offering medical consults there. One highlight was a young woman around 20 years of age who did not seem to want to leave the clinic site. She was there most of the day, asking questions or just sitting and observing. The exciting thing is that before the team left, she made a commitment to Christ, and Pastor Ada began visiting her at her home and working with her.

The Spanish School was able to join us and ministered to the children in Cozoaltepec – lots of great interaction with the children and youth there, and they showed a movie in the evening which is a great evangelistic tool!

A highlight of the medical team´s time at the base clinic is that their physician, Dr. Warren Johnson, was able to remove a skin cancer from an American who had not found a good option for having it done here locally, and the patient was very relieved! He healed up well and was very grateful!

December 30 – Jan 8, 2019 – Chico State California Nursing Students
There is a Chatino town, San Martín Caballero, very near the mission base, about a 20 minute drive, but with many patients in need both physically and spiritually. Along with the Chico State nursing students, their instructor Fay Mitchell Brown, and Randy Brown, physical therapist, we were able to offer medical consults and physical therapy consults, teaching for diabetics, and also minister to the spiritual needs of a number of patients there. The students did a great job of using their skills and serving the people there.

One of my highlights was seeing an older lady for whose salvation I have prayed come to the Lord that day! Chely, Pastor Luís and Lidia’s daughter was covering the prayer room for us that day, and she happened to be out for a moment when this lady came into the prayer room. I stepped in to pray for her, and had the privilege of leading her to Christ! I did not realize until afterwards that she was the widow of one of our patients for whom we used to do home visits, and for whom I had been praying. God drew her in that day – what a blessing to see that answer to prayer!

Jan 9th – March 19th – Drs. Dave and Mary Kay Ness and Bertha were with us!!
Words cannot express how much the visits of Drs. Dave and Mary Kay and Bertha mean to us! They are really a part of our team who are with us for 3 months each year. They are able to jump in and really relieve our load for us, and add their amazing experience, knowledge, and discernment of patients’ medical, emotional, and spiritual needs to our team. Thank you Dave, Mary Kay, and Bertha for all that you add to the clinic team and the work here!

They drive for 6 days from upstate New York to be here and bring a truck loaded with many helpful things for the clinic and the base. Thank you for your dedication and willingness to endure that long drive every year to be with us!

Jan 9th – Jan 23rd – Marty and Robin Douglas
The teachers in the Multigrade K-12 School were super excited to have Robin Douglas with them for several weeks again this year. Robin worked with the students and helped teach classes which was a tremendous help to our teachers. Marty is skilled in working with his hands, and he was able to help with work projects and to give a class for local construction workers on how to use dry wall, a technique many of them had not learned and which could be very useful to them.

January and ongoing – We are so happy to welcome back Kevin, Laurel, Gabby, and Danny Penner, Wycliffe missionaries who lived up in the town of El Mosco, Ixtayutla, for several years beginning the work of translating the Scriptures into the Mixteco dialect of this region. I will not try to tell their story here, except to say that they had to be in Canada for several years, during which time they continued the translation work long distance and by Kevin making periodic trips down here, and Kevin also used this time to complete his doctorate for further preparation to finish the translation! They have been living here in Cacalote and making frequent trips to El Mosco since January, and are now preparing to move back to El Mosco to live full-time. Please pray for them, for all the adjustments required to return to such a remote village to live full-time there. We definitely see the hand of God on their lives giving them the grace to accomplish all that they have up until now, and for continuing their work of getting the Bible into the heart language of the Mixteco people of the Ixtayutla region.

Feb. 3rd – 9th – St. James UMC
We are so grateful to St. James UMC for their team led by Pastors Josue and Laura Araujo, bringing a wide variety of giftings and talents to bless the people of our area. In the clinic, Dr. Denise Roddy offered optometry consults and Dr. Cody Buchanan offered ENT services, both services very difficult for most of our patients to access, and Nedena Pimentel, FNP, offered medical consults. For the New Day Orphanage, located here at the Roca Blanca Base, the church had prepared very nice personalized gift bags for each child, so they had Christmas in February there! The team also spent some great quality time with the children. We are also grateful to Kenneth Pimentel and Randy Holt for all the work they put into getting our vehicles in shape again and fixing other things that needed renovation – what a blessing!

 

 

Feb. 7th – Mar. 9th – Ralph and Ann Classen
Ralph and Ann Classen are another couple who are really a part of our team although most of the year they are in Meade, Kansas. They have been coming down for about 25 years on a yearly basis offering their skills for the clinic and the base. Ralph is a paramedic and gives consults in the medical clinic and teaches CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) for staff and Bible School students each year. Ralph also has done many carpentry projects for us and Ann has varnished many of the pieces Ralph makes and refinished and restored many other pieces of furniture. Ann also sews beautifully, and has made curtains, cushions, and other items for the clinic, and together they have started garden projects to help us to produce more of our own produce. This year Ann got a project started of planting fruit trees and a new garden for the base, which is going well – lots of new fruit trees around! What a productive couple they are, and what a blessing they are to us!

Feb. 15th – March 1st – Elim Gospel Church
Many thanks to Hayden and Esther Bennett and the team from Elim Gospel Church who reached out to the towns of Mechoacan and El Mosco, both Mixteco villages with great medical needs. El Mosco is the village mentioned above where the Penners are doing their translation work, quite remote with their nearest hospital being about 3 hours down the mountain. They were able to coordinate and visit El Mosco together with the Penner family. Their team also ministered to the children, painting faces and arms, telling illustrated stories, and bringing lots of smiles and laughter! Your expressions of love to these children go a long way – many of the children in these villages receive very little affirmation at home.

 

March 10th – 16th – Grace Chapel
What a treat to have a church from Laura’s hometown – almost! Grace Chapel is in Pickwick, TN, about a 30 minute drive from Corinth, MS, her hometown. Led by Pastor Don Elliott, and also accompanied by Laura’s brother, Dr. Leonard Pratt, and sister-in-law Anita, we had a great week treating patients at the Corban Clinic and visiting the town of Puerto Angel. At the Corban Clinic, Leonard was able do lots of minor surgical procedures which are normally not easily accessible, so he had lots of grateful patients. In Puerto Angel, we were able to team up with Pastor Oscar Pacheco and his wife in their outreach to the town there. Both of them are graduates of our Bible School. We worked at the City Hall – the people were not too trusting at first, but were won over when they saw that the consults really were free and caring medical and dental care. New families are being added to the church there from this outreach, which is very exciting!

Convocazión 2019 – April 16th – 18th
This is an annual camp meeting type festival in which several thousand people attend each year. This year, there were around 4,000 people present for the event. There are powerful times of praise, prayer, and preaching of the Word and many testimomies of salvations and healings.

In the clinic, we saw around 300 patients, and the ophthalmologist who visits about every 2 months was available for eye consults, which is a very needed service here.

April 30 – May 6th – ORU Nursing Missions Team
It is always a blessing to have Professor Troy Sledge and students from the ORU College of Nursing with us. This year they visited the towns of Llano Grande and El Venado.

Both of these towns are places where a number of years ago our local church, the Cacalote church, had outreaches, but has not been able to be active there in recent years. So we coordinated with Pastor Mateo and his team from the local church to do a clinic outreach in each of these towns while the ORU team was here. Pastor Mateo went with us and took two of the Bible School students from our church to help, and they evangelized and prayed for each patient after their medical consults. It was great to reconnect with some of the people I had known from years earlier. The Lord gave us some divine connections in both of the towns. In Llano Grande, one of our first patients was a lady named Delfina whose house we had used some years earlier to hold a cell group, and found that she still has someone visiting to share the Word there at her house. She gave us the meeting times so that we could invite others who came for medicine. In El Venado, we were praying for the same kind of connection. There was one older lady they call Sister Chica whom I vaguely remembered having known years earlier, and we discovered that her husband had built a small church building before he died, and the believers in the town are still meeting in that chapel with a lay pastor who visits from Rio Grande, a town about 10 minutes away from them. We invited others to go to the services they have there, and our pastor, Mateo, will help with follow up visits to those who made commitments to Christ during the outreach.

There are additional photos from several of the outreaches mentioned above. You can view them if you click on the drop down menu above under this June 2019 post. We hope you enjoy them, and recognize many of the helpful people there!

April 20th – May 20th – Our Bible School students spent this past month serving in different churches in our region, doing visitation and evangelism, praying for the sick, and holding special services and events for children and adults. Three of the students were supported this year by donors from a Bible Study group in Corinth, so I asked the students for some reports of their experiences.

We received glowing reports of ministry to children and evangelistic events with up to 300 people present, and a report of one particular home visit that impacted the life of an elderly man, and also impacted the students who made the visit! They walked for about an hour to get there, and about 2 hours to return because it was uphill, and found a 96 year old man in much need of healing and a touch from the Lord. After the students ministered to him and prayed for him, the man’s headache was gone, the pain in his arm was gone, and he was able to hear better. Praise the Lord for what He can do when we are willing to be His vessels!

Praise Reports:
– God’s faithfulness every day.
– Spanish School going well.
– Multigrade School growing and adding some new teachers.
– For the local staff we have working in the clinic, we are thankful for a unified team and their hearts willing to serve.
– God’s protection in a recent accident in our vehicle.
– For the fruit that we have seen from the medical outreaches, both locally and in the villages.

Prayer Requests:
– For more English speaking teachers for the Multigrade School.
– For wisdom to know how to be more effective in reaching out to our local town.
– For an increase in monthly clinic support.
– For the right missionary or local personal to be added for certain needs in the Spanish School, Multigrade School, and the Clinic.

God’s kindest and abundant blessings to you! We’re grateful for your help and prayers! Until next time…

Dave and Laura