Dearest friends,
We are about to end (again!) another year that has galloped through our lives…Yet even when times seem to be so short, we have so much to be grateful for, and in this final newsletter of the year, I wanted to recall the ways and paths the Lord allowed us to walk…and even run!!
Ariel, now 21, is finishing his 3rd year at the university, where he so enjoys studying Communications. He plays the bass guitar at church every Sunday, and helps out with the youth leadership at church, organizing retreats, musical events, playing in bands, and doing about most anything!! Nathalie, 17, and Sebastian, almost 14, are finishing another year of high school. Nathalie finally chose the clarinet as her instrument, so there it is, brand new and ready to start lessons!  She sings in the Sunday service back up music. Sebastian continues with organ lessons, though he has some drums and guitar experience. He is a great worker, doing all the gardening at home to earn extra $$.
Humberto and I have started a 3 year course on (Christian) family counseling. So…we have weekly assignments to work on. In the photo Humberto is teaching students at the AG Bible Institute.
Just last week, we team-taught for several hours at the second gathering of about 30 pastors in the mountains of Cordoba, teaching on the pastoral home, the pressures of the pastor and his wife, children, the ministry….those who are pastoring need to be pastored also.
Remember that I wrote about the possibility of a chaplainry school in Cordoba? Well, a school did start, PTL, and is now finishing its second year, and Humberto and I are teaching pastoral counseling for 8 weeks there, Fridays from 8 to 11 pm…long days for all involved, but so well worth it! Our students are about 30, involved in health areas, in the military, in the police forces, high schools and such. Like I often joke, “You don’t have a life long enough to learn from all your mistakes, so how about learning from mine?” or, like we say, “Take my advice. I won’t be needing it.” (!) Humor is such an important part of our teaching…like the story of two people talking: one says, “Did you know that we only use about 10% of our brain?” and the other answers, “Yeah, what would it be like if we used the other 30%!”
            One of the special blessings of this past year was meeting Paul Bendele and his wife Cheryl, from Missionary Ventures in the States. After many years of mission work, they moved back to the States just this past month, but we have been blessed in working alongside with them in several projects, like organizing musical programs to evangelize, as in supervising as pastors a ministry that involves feeding 70 children a week in a town called Guiñazú near our city…I translated for two events, one for couples, with Billy and Donna Hires from Florida, and another for leaders, with the visiting pastors Judith and Colin Carson from England, and Valerie and Fred Bennett, from Memphis Tennessee. This week we are also having the visit of fourteen people involved in the Christian Motorcyclists Association, as they have donated several much-needed motorcycles to leaders and pastors in Cordoba, and will be also evangelizing and sharing their testimonies…so we organized a yummy Argentine BBQ for them all…and I am doing some translation for them also. This week Paul Bendele returned from a missionary trip of two weeks to Cuba, right in hurricane weather!  We sent 50 of the children’s coloring books we published in September to give to Cuban children. (See sample of the book cover, above, drawn by a young artist in our city).
            Through Paul, we have been invited to the annual missionary conference that Missionary Ventures will be having the first week of January in Orlando, Florida, so Humberto and I are getting all our papers in order to travel for 2 weeks at that time. We are excited about this possibility. Humberto needs a visa in order to travel. So…anybody in the area that might be interested in getting in touch with us, just email us, please! We will be in Florida, already with some meetings and activities, from the 31st of December to January11th.
            One of my short terms projects was to help translate material into Spanish of a Christian sports program for evangelizing children, called KidsGames, which is used in international sporting events.
             
AHEAD FOR 2006…Pray about the possibility of helping towards the following:
*Funds for buying a projector (in the States, possibly) for about U$ 1,000 which will be a tremendous teaching and evangelizing tool…and with our son Ari’s expertise, he can quite do most anything visually as needed…Humberto finds his new laptop is wonderful to organize his life and Bible studies. Truly technology can be such a blessing!
*We still are praying for the U$ 10,000 to buy a property that may be used for retreats, for pastors and wives, and such.
*A camcorder for Ari, which is not only useful for his studies, but to make presentations for church and public events.
*A digital photo camera, as the one we had broke, and cannot be repaired.
So…we are ending this year being blessed and encouraged by all of you who have helped support our family and work in Argentina.