edify

The pastor's meeting this month was a national pastor's meeting, held a couple hours North of Tegucigalpa.  Development and care of the pastors is something we need to focus more on, especially once the office building is finished.  We are even hoping some specialized groups or parts of groups in the future will be able to pour more into pastors, leaders, Milk Project staff and/or all three.  

A lot of times, meetings and encouragement/training times don't photograph well, but for the future of the churches, of the mission, we need to do more, better, and consistently.  

Two year anniversary this week of the Milk Project in Las Botijas.  We had some dental gift bags a group had left to distribute (seen in the picture some of them getting those)  

It hasn't been easy, but the expansion of the Milk Project into the churches, as fast or as slowly as that seems to be unfolding, was not something we saw at the beginning, but definitely now can see how it fits into not just pouring into the communities where we work, but also by extension the church going forward.  

I have a picture from the clinic spiritual development progress, but don't want to share that publically.  Instead, enjoy this picture from Sampedrana one of the kids learning to treat the wounds of a classmate in the Milk Project. 

The clinic spiritual work has been doing so well since starting in January.  The picture I am not sharing, is of a patient that came to the clinic suffering from depression after the death of a love one.  She lives about a twenty minute walk from the clinic.  For three months, Jose Luis has been visiting her, talking, studying the Bible, and praying.  One of several such pictures and stories not being shared here.

Some that were just here might be seeing the picture above and saying...What?  We just poured concrete there!  Yes we did.  

We are opening those holes to put up columns to support a new pad up above, to tie into the new building and mission house patio.  

What's up?  Well, to keep a long story a little shorter, we are using some group funds and building funds, to put up the second story on the office building.  Not the concrete and third floor concrete roof...but metal walls and a metal roof.  That will be good enough for the next 5-15 years if not more.  And if we need to go higher soon/sooner, we can take this down, and essentially move it up to the next floor.  Easy peasy...ish.  

This will keep the building cooler, eliminate our water issues with the way the roof was poured (still not happy about that) and essentially give us some breathing room/storage.  We will be working out how to keep a porch with a view long term, especially to avoid a revolt from groups. 

Likely, eventually we could build out that space for groups to use, bedrooms, bathrooms, instead of or addition to, the duplex, but that remains to be seen.

How are all these above items connected?  I don't think I'll write a great essay to probe that, but in my mind, they definitely are.