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Celebrating Father's Day

It's been very encouraging to see how God is working in Las Delicias. We have had several families ask to hold services in their homes. So each week we go to somebody's house for the service. We have been averaging around 40 people at each meeting. Here is a picture of some them gathering in this past Thursday.
Bro. Baudilio leading the service. Baudilio never learned to read and write and for the longest time he was always too afraid to lead the services. But over the last few months he has stepped up and started to help out more in the services and now he loves it!! He has been doing a great job.
Monday was Father's Day in Honduras. So we took a cake to share with everyone after church.
The Tiloarque gave money to buy gifts for all the father's in the three churches. Here are the father's with their coffee cups and bags of candy. They were so appreciative. They acted like we had given them a block of gold. They probably had never received gifts like this before. 
On Friday we celebrated Father's Day with the guys from Las Uvas and Tiloarque churches. We converted our living room into a banquet hall and Hannah cooked a fabulous spaghetti dinner with a fully loaded salad and garlic bread. Mmmmm sooo good.
Hannah made napkin "shirts" for each place setting, and ties for each cup. The hats on the table were given out as door prizes. (Hannah is hyperventilating and begging me to put a disclaimer here and say she apologizes for the mismatching napkins and bowls. They didn't have them in the same color and this was the best we could come up with)
Some more of the decorations she had on the table.
We served them buffet style.
There were 10 father's present including myself. We had a really good time chatting, sharing our testimonies and just having a good time.
Baudilio was one of the hat winners. He looks pretty good in it.
Hannah did an awesome job on the banquet, I was very proud of her!!! Thanks Hannah for all you do!!

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A Day with Joseph in Las Delicias

For a long time now, Joseph has been wanting to go with me to Las Delicias and help work. Well, that day finally arrived this past Saturday. I was a little worried as to how well he was going to hold up in the hot sun but he really did a great job and helped quite a bit.
He helped me wet down the molds so we could start filling them with mud.
He even brought a pack lunch with him. Talk about a hard workin' man! haha.
We made 192 adobes! I believe this will be the last batch to finish up the church. We have one and a half more rows to put on and then we can start on the roof!!
This is Joseph's little house that he made out of some old adobes. He is sitting on the "couch". 
Filthy from head to toe. This is what he was looking like by lunch time.
Trying to get scrubbed up before eating lunch.
We caught some tad poles out of the pond to take home and raise. We were really excited and looking forward to watching them grow legs but by the next day they were all dead.
One of the guys wanted to catch a turtle out of the pond and take it home as a pet. Well they caught a turtle and they also caught this fish. They call it a "dirty fish" because of the spots on it's sides. They fried it up for us before heading it. It was pretty good.
Two very dirty, tired, sun-burned guys. Oh but what fun it was being together!
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My Buddies

I love my boys! Aren't they so cool?
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Update on Las Delicias

Today was another work day in Las Delicias. We need to put one and a half more rows of adobes and we will be ready to start working on the roof. But today we ran out of adobes and it will take us probably another two weeks to make another 200 and have them dried and ready to use. But at least the end is in sight.
The people are anxious to help and are excited that they are going to have their own church. Some of the ladies came today to help haul water for mixing mud. It was a big help.
Even the kids were excited to help out.
A bird's eye view of the work.
Roberto has been on site just about every Saturday since day 1. He is a hard worker!!
The people were telling me about some really sweet watermelons that were for sale at a nearby farm. They all wanted to go so we drove down to buy some watermelons for .50 a piece!!Mmmmm and were they ever good!
This is how I felt tonight after we finished working.
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A Nice Family Day

My schedule has been really hectic lately. We hadn't spent a whole day together as a family for quite awhile and I felt it was about time we did so we went and had a picnic at a park. They offer horse rides where we went, Joseph had never ridden a horse so I figured today was as good as any for a first ride. It was a lot of fun! It was like being a real cowboy!
Hi oh Silver, away!!!
Hey guys look at me!!
Howdy ya'll, welcome to the pond!
Somebody is all grown up and mature now.
There is nothing like a good bath to finish out the day!
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Casting the Net

Last Saturday after doing some work on the Delicias church a few of us guys went out to this pond to do some net fishing. Now I love to fish and it had been a long time since I got the chance so I was pretty excited to go with them. The only thing was is that they were going to net fish since they don't have rods and reels. That was a whole new experience but a lot of fun. I only got one small fish after a few tosses so I left them handle the nets and I carried the fish. haha.
One method was to set up a trap with the nets while another guy comes along smacking and splashing the water to scare the fish into the nets. This was the least successful method.
The bottom border of the net is weighted down to make it sink quicker into the water. The most successful method was walking through the pond casting the net. They pulled out some real whoppers!! I couldn't help but think of Jesus when He said, "follow me and I will make you fishers of men". Thinking about the different ways they tried to fish I can't help but relate it to ministry. Setting up traps and trying to scare people into repentance just is not a very effective method of reaching people. But with the solid preaching of the gospel and with lots of love we can usually see some real trophies of grace won to Christ.
We took home about 20lbs. of fish that day and oh man were they delicious!!!!
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A Review of the Last Month

Wow, the last month and a half has gone by like a whirlwind. I'm not even sure where to start recounting the events. Going back to January we had Hannah's cousin, Dr. Tony Robbins come and stay with us for a week. He is a pastor in Ohio and came down with a work team to Honduras. After the team went home, he came and visited with us and helped out in a lot of ways. We really enjoyed having him here.
One of the first things we did while Tony was here was head to Las Delicias to work some more on the adobe church. The old walls had been covered in plastic and when we tore the plastic off there were about twenty scorpions laying on top of the wall!! One of the workers got stung by one.
I was so excited to be able to lay the corner adobe to begin work on the church.
Trying to keep cool on a hot work day.
The guys worked hard all day, hauling dirt, water and laying adobes.
A job well done!!
While he was here he treated us to some of his awesome Chet Atkins style guitar pickin'. He also preached in several of the services. He was a real blessing!!
We couldn't let him leave without trying some good Honduran fried fish. He really enjoyed it!!
We enjoyed a trip to Amapala, Honduras. An island on the Pacific side of the country. The sunset on the way home was awesome!
Three days after Tony left I boarded a plane and headed to Hobe Sound, Florida to be part of the Spanish camp and the 25th anniversary celebration of Spanish Ministries. There were over 600 Hispanics at the camp. God's presence blessed the meetings as Glen Reiff, Sidney Grant and G.R. French spoke during the services.
The H.I.M. Spanish pastors who were present at the camp. They each received a certificate of appreciation for their service.
It was great to catch up with Guillermo and Violet Camposeco. When I was 13 years old she was teaching Spanish at Penn View where I was attending school. God had called me to be a missionary but I still wasn't clear as to what country He wanted me to go to. During a chapel service at school Violet stood and testified and with tears pouring down her face she asked us to pray for her people in Honduras. God used her testimony to make it clear to me that Honduras was where he wanted me to go!!
I was glad to see my conference president Harry Plank. 
My brother Steve and his family drove down from Tampa. I really enjoyed spending time with them and catching up on all the news.
When I flew home from Florida I had some visitors waiting for me. Doug and Sarah Rine and family!! Doug and I have been best of friends, we grew up together and we have done everything together. What a blast to have them come for two weeks!!
I put Doug to work at Las Delicias. If he isn't busy he is a handful. hahaha. 
I also got him to help me fix our stove outlet. It had burned up.
Here we are singing a duet in Spanish at Las Delicias. 
Something really fun we did while they were here was to spend a night at some cabins near a waterfall. We actually got a guide to take us in behind the falls to some caves. Talk about a wild experience, it was awesome. We then jumped off a thirty foot cliff into the river below.
We went zip lining right over the waterfalls!! Soooo much fun.

The day they left Maria invited us all over for seafood soup. It was delicious!! We really enjoyed having Doug and Sarah and Chloe and Caiden. We hope they come back soon!!!!
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