Dear Friends,
Thanks for praying! We arrived back in Durango from our trip to
Canada all safe and sound. We got to see a lot of special places and a lot of special people along the way. Just one way from Durango to Canada requires four days of driving 12 hours. Now that we have barely been back a week, no one's too keen to jump back in the truck again for a 12 hour trip out to Lajas. But, that's exactly what we'll be doing tomorrow morning. Pray for us as heavy rains make the road very muddy and slippery, plus possible mudslides are always a concern during rainy season.
While we were gone Barry and Candy were able to get a lot of work
accomplished on their house. Some fellow missionaries were kind enough
to buy and donate to our team a small cement mixer, which served to be
an incredible blessing when Barry, John, and Kevin went out to pour the
floors in Barry's house (whilst we relaxed in Canada). However, even with all the trips Barry had made transporting gravel and sound out to Lajas, they still didn't have enough to finish the floors. Fortunately, they were able to scrounge around and find enough to finish. This left us realizing we still needed more to be able to finish the floors in our house. Hence, tomorrow we head out with another load of sand and then hopefully towards the end of August I can make a trip with John and Kevin to do our floors. We are trusting the Lord to try and live in Lajas by some time in September (we'll talk more about that as the time gets closer).
We've had a steady stream of Tepehuan visitors coming by our house
since arriving in Durango. Today Secundino and his wife dropped by.
Somewhere along the way in our conversation with them Secundino was
waxing eloquently about what a horrible place Lajas is with all the robbing, murders, rapes and other things that go on there. I finally asked him how amazed I am that a bunch of people who claim to be the children of God and claim to be able to gain God's favour, live in such misery, darkness, fear and hate. I asked him how is it that largely the Tepehuan don't want us to live in Lajas because they want to protect their way of life, but why would you want to protect "that" way of life? He had no answer but gave the classic reply that we all need to respect one another's beliefs. We told him we do respect the beliefs of others but have a hard time understanding why you would hold onto a belief system that cannot produce good in a person. For the Tepehuan God is a puppet that can be manipulated rather than a reality that gives us purpose and allows us to experience true goodness and wholeness. Hopefully they'll keep pondering these things and challenging their own beliefs. Pray for Secundino and his wife, that they would find Jesus to be the way the truth and the life.
We received news from Lajas the other day that a good friend, Severo, is
sick and is not doing well. It seems a tooth infection has gone further into his head. This is very serious and life threatening and we'd ask you to pray for him. We hope to try and get some medicine to him, or get him into Durango for help. Pray that the Lord would preserve his life.
Some things we can praise the Lord for... A great trip to Canada and a good time with family. We praise the Lord for a fridge donated to us by some fellow missionaries for our house in Lajas. We're thankful we were able to get all the needed repairs done to our truck.
Some things we can pray for... A safe trip to Lajas this week and good time with Tepehuan friends. We pray we'll be a blessing. Pray for my sister Allison who is spending the last month of her pregnancy in the hospital due to a tumor forming on the baby's lung. We're praying she can go full-term and that the baby will breathe on it's own once born. This will allow the baby a few days or weeks so that it can strengthen and grow in order to be more able to survive the needed surgery to have the tumor removed. We're hoping this experience will bring her and her husband Dave into a relationship with Jesus.
For Jesus,
Andrew and Anne Marie
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August 2006 report
