May 27 is a date that has gone down in history. It is the Sunday of our very first worship service! A new church has just been born! We can´t say how excited and thrilled we are. God was with is in a special way. We opened with prayer, Sis. Ingrid led in the singing, and we gave testimonies. It was wonderful. By the time I was ready to preach the sermon there were about twelve in attendance. I preached from Romans 6 entitled ¨Sin Must Die¨. We felt God´s presence and help. One of the ladies that came was one of the mothers of some of our Sunday school children. She had been coming to our Sunday school class for several weeks. Now she was here for our first worship service. She is a single mother of four. At the end of my message I gave an invitation for any to come forward to pray. She came to accept Jesus into her heart! Our first convert on our very first Sunday! How thrilling. Please pray for her and her children and for us as we disciple her. God is at work. Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow!

Getting everything ready for our first church service was so exciting. Hannah and I washed the floor, I bought some more plastic chairs, and we used one of our dressers for the pulpit. Our church is definitely ¨rough¨but hey it´s church! If you notice in the bottom left corner of the church picture a little machine sitting on a stool. That is our orchestra. We have a hymn book in Spanish with about 500 hymns and this machine is programmed to play the music. It has over 80 different sounds you can choose from such as piano, violin, organ or ensemble etc. You just punch in the number of the hymn and away you go! You can change the pitch or tempo of the song as it plays. It´s amazing. Who needs pianos, organs or orchestras? It´s all right there on that little stool.

Sunday was just an amazing day! Since our new church opened we can now also hold our afternoon Sunday school class there. It is so much more roomier and convenient. We had about 25 people attend with five brand new ones who had never been there. It was exciting.

Saturday we made a trip to the market to buy some material for the new church. We needed to make a curtain to divide off part of the room. I told the taxi driver to take us to a store that sold fabric. Once we got to the store and began to tell the worker what dimensions we needed and so forth, the lady behind the desk came around to help. She of course thought Joseph was just wonderful. I then asked her if she had always lived in Tegucigalpa,( hoping to find out if she was Arab, we were certain she had to be ) Sure enough, she was Arab. She was born in Bethlehem and moved here 34 years ago. Well when she found out Hannah spoke Arabic man things exploded!! I was lost in the dust of about an hour worth of chatting in Arabic. Alette was so excited to meet us!! She is Orthodox Catholic but is interested in inviting us to her home to have a healing service for her sister who cannot have children. ( This could get very interesting ) She wants to get together for Arabic food and also to throw a birthday party for Joseph when he turns one year old. She was so sweet. Please help us pray for direction that we can minister to her the gospel of Christ. It is definitely an exciting new development.

We were pleasantly surpised to arrive home to friends waiting for us. Sis. Ingrid was there with a good friend of hers as well as Mrs. Kafati and her maid. They had dusted down the house, mopped the floors and had lunch cooking when we arrived. Mrs. Kafati had brought her fine china as well as a beautiful bouquet of flowers. It was wonderful. We are truly blessed with super great friends. It was good to be together once again.

We came home to find our house with a fresh coat of paint and our ¨new church¨painted and finished. We celebrated with a little door closing ceremony. I officially locked the door that the workers used to come and go. It´s all done folks!! The first official adult worship service as well as the children´s sunday school class will be held here next Sunday May 27!! We are very excited about this new development.

It is finally here. Hannah´s long awaited washing machine!! No more scrubbing clothes on an old cement scrub board. No more wringing out jeans by hand. She has arrived to a whole new level of washing clothes. Civilization just wheeled its way into our house. Rejoicing and singing!! even shouting!!!

We had a good turn out for Sunday school. The kids were excited to have us back. One of the mothers even came to class. In this picture we are going over a new song, these kids love to sing they did very well. Hopefully we can teach them a new song every week.

It was a perfect day for a stroll through the park. The flowers were amazing!

Here is our wonderful mother opening her cards and gifts. She was so excited to have all three of us boys home. We all had a great day!

We want both of our mothers to know how much we love and appreciate them. They are just the best. Both are so loving, compassionate and caring. They are godly examples. We wish them the best Mother's Day ever! We love you very much. Happy Mother's Day!!

Prayer has been answered and we have met our goal for our vehicle!! Thanks to many of you who donated towards this project. Nearly $10,000 has been raised to purchase the necessary transportation to use on the mission field. We deeply appreciate all those who gave and prayed. We serve a big God!!

We ask now that you help us pray for the next step and that is to find the right vehicle for the right price!! God supplied the money and now we know He will guide us as we make the purchase!

Our visit to the states will soon be coming to an end. Our original plans were to return to Honduras on May 3rd but due to illness that struck that put our return home on May 17th. We have really enjoyed our time despite sickness, we have pretty well accomplished everything we purposed to do while here. Our documents are in hand that we needed to get, certain supplies have been purchased for ministry, and now its just a matter of packing it all up. Please pray for us as we head back to finish our term. The Lord willing this will be our last visit for another year and a half. Pray for a safe journey this coming Thursday flying from Baltimore, to Houstan Texas to Tegucigalpa. We are getting anxious to return.

A few days ago we took Joseph to the park. This was his very first time to play at a park. He loved it! I think he had more fun getting dirty in the bark mulch than anything.

While in Ohio we decided to do some family shots to take back to Honduras. Here are some of them, which do you like best?

Our time in Ohio with Hannah's family is soon coming to an end. We were able to stay longer than planned due to illness. Our return trip will now be for May 17th. So the time we have spent together has been so enjoyable. Here are some pictures from last night. We ate at a Mexican restaurant called Toro Loco ( crazy bull ). Everyone is pouring over their menus looking for a scrumptious dish to eat. The rest are of Joseph enjoying a hug from his grandma, aunt Sarah and uncle Nate.