Growth

Meetings at the mission have often looked like this over the years, in a not-yet-finished building, improvising while looking towards the future. 

This one is with pastor Edwin in Danli, with Maria and Oscar, talking about the future Milk Project location there.  (This is upstairs in the new church meeting space, the Milk Project would be downstairs next to the parsonage we built there.)  

We don't have enough sponsors to start there yet...but this time we are working ahead, to be ready, or as ready as we can be, for when the time comes, which will prayerfully be sometime in 2025.  Depends on how fast new sponsors sign up, since we aren't fully sponsored in the other five locations yet.  

The work digging out the future fish farming location in Cantarranas has finished, (for now) and now comes the part of seeing how well it holds water, while making plans on how much initial investment we would need, and ongoing care needs.  

Hopefully this will be another area to advance in 2025, after we finish the house where Hector, the farm manager, would live.  We will be planting more fruit trees here long term as well, as we have funding and help available, possibly with more groups.  

Got two pictures this week from Jose Luis, the clinic spiritual development director, who shared a mix of Clinic/Church/Milk Project without intending...on the left is Xiomara and her granddaughter Emeli and her son Yostin.  Emeli is also in the Milk Project.  And Don Teodulo came to the clinic, and Jose Luis has been visiting him since, doing Bible studies, praying for him and his family, and this week blessing him with a Bible.  

The clinic expanding more into spiritual care this year has been huge, and the ability to use the rural clinics as well helping the community, churches, and Milk Projects is just kind of mind blowing to see, especially just thinking what we were doing just a few years ago.  

Marvin put together this handout for an upcoming conference on October 19th.  While the office building isn't ready yet, we are still trying to schedule what we can, where we can.  Next year though, we are hoping to do many of these, with different areas of emphasis.  

I am in the midst of trying to put together the budget for 2025, and while every year that is an interesting proposition for a mission like ours, this coming year looks to be even more interesting...in a good way!  Some things that we have planned for, some we want to plan for, and some as yet not fully seen. These pictures represent just a fragment of everything coming new/different/growth. 

I usually don't want to go into details about things that are not yet 100% sure/known, but we are definitely praying about hiring two new staff members to help handle the growth and spread some of the workload out.  We also have enough construction projects already going that we have priority lists for things that have to wait, and there are several other things possibly God will bring about coming in 2025 (including over 20 groups!)  

Pray with us going forward...for God inspired decisions, new hires, plans, and financial/manpower help to make it all come together!