Wow, what a Januray

I know it's February, but I have to do a "catch-up" on January. Wow...we are in awe how the Lord works. I think the place to start is a HUGE PRAISE THE LORD!!! Our first container (which was supposed to be delivered on Dec. 3rd), has now arrived. We had a team here at the time, and they came from their work project to help unload and sort, and stack and separate all the items on that 40 foot container. It was a HUGE job, but with the help of our regular crew and the team, it was accomplished in a little over 2 and a half hours. What was on that container??? The Christmas Bags and food and all sorts of other things to give out to help the people here. The team had their work cut out for them. We not only had to stack the Christmas bags in the dorm, we had to COUNT them, and put them in separate piles, so when it's time to deliver them, we can go to each stack and get the ones we need at that time. Praise God we had several missions and national pastors come and get their boxes full of bags. That saved us tremendous work and space. Here is just a sample of what went on...The guys worked really hard that day, there were a ton (actually, many tons) of boxes to unload. We took a break about half way through for some rest and drinks. And then one of our team had to show us what happens when a pile of boxes causes an avalanche. We had one in each side of the dorm...from the boxes being handled so many times, they were not the solid straight things they used to be, and it was hard to keep the piles from tipping over.
On the container was also a lot of boxes of food from Feed My Starving Children. And once we were done unloading, it was time to start delivering them. So, Christmas Bags and food went out to quite a few places in the 2 days after we unloaded. So many happy faces everywhere we went.
You have to understand that with the Christmas Bags, we also include scripture (a book of John and Romans, and tracts), but also, the kids get a special coloring book with the message of salvation in it. This tool has won many to the Lord.
These next two pictures speak for themselves. That dog he is holding is a puppet. When you move his mouth, he sings songs. This thrilled the pastor as well as the kids.
These happy faces were all over the place when they got their Christmas Bags. This is such a wonderful project, and so many benefit from it. I'll write more on that in another entry.
This is a picture of a new orphanage we have taken on. Don went out with Stan to give them some Christmas Bags and food. The director and her husband came to spend time with us tonight. Don and I both feel this is a very worthy project. So we will be helping them in any way we can. This woman took these kids off the street, gave them a place to live, puts them in school, and teaches them about the Lord. Can you picture these kids on the streets? Such a sad situation. But Praise God, they now have Miss Lynda to help them. Her husband is a pastor and they both have huge hearts for the children. Pray with us as God puts yet another project on our plate. But what a worthy one it is.

Now, this next photo is one of our team members. Who can resist such a sweet baby? The team were all taken with the children around the project site. They came to work on the other orphanage project we back, IDADEE. They did a great job on ALL they did while they were here.
Our team left today and we are now "teamless" for the first time since Dec. 30th. It's been a long haul, but a great one, too. We have had some fantastic teams who did so much. They were all blessings in so many areas. Truly God's Servants in a lot of ways. Our special thanks go out to all of those hard working teams, including the MFI team who did the retreat for the missionaries and nationals. We are worn out, but awesomely blessed by what was accomplished.

For now, I'll close and probably send more photos in the very near future. God has been good, as always, and we are so happy to be where He wants us to be.

Blessing to all of you. Until next time, keep your eyes on the Lord and keep praying and praising Him, for all He has done!!!!!!!!!!!!!