Ministry Change

 

This week we celebrated arriving in Ecuador 24 years ago! What an adventure it has been! God has been with us guiding us step by step. Now we sense he is guiding us toward a big change in our ministry.

We will be moving back to the United States to make that our new base for outreach. Scott will continue to teach Hebrew online from Kansas to people in Ecuador and to all of the Spanish speaking world. Our leaders in Avant Ministries are encouraging him to look for ways to connect with people and institutions in all of the fields where we have fellow missionaries, and even beyond. Scott’s classes have already become quite international, and we expect that to develop even more from here on out. Kristi has spent the past 14 years teaching! She has loved it but each year it gets harder for her to continue in this capacity due to her arthritis. During the school year, teaching was pretty much the only thing she was able to do as she came home exhausted at the end of the day. So though she will miss teaching, she is ready to do something less strenuous. Many of you ask how Scott’s health is going. Here in Quito we live at 9,300 ft. altitude, nearly 2 miles high! We have been realizing these past months that Scott feels better when he is at a lower altitude. Thankfully he has gained back about 15 pounds since last summer when he was at an all-time low, but he is always struggling with ups and downs. We are looking forward to the added benefit of him feeling more normal as well. We are very grateful for the timing of this opportunity as it allows us to be closer to family in a new stage of life. We are feeling an increasing need to be available to help with care for our parents. And we are very excited about being able to spend more time with grandchildren. There is a LOT that we will miss about living in Ecuador, but we have peace that the Lord is leading us toward a change that is best for this season of our lives.

Speaking of family, each of our kids has made the effort to come and visit us once more before we leave. We have loved showing our granddaughters where we have called home for all these years! We have gotten to visit all the familiar tourist spots again and experienced them from their young eyes! One of the new highlights was feeding hummingbirds right out of our hands, completely surrounded by rain forest! Scott and Talia went whale watching and you can see the best moments here. Lindsey will be the last one to come in just 3 more weeks.

We don’t have an actual date set for leaving yet. We are hoping for the end of September. But remember the Ecuadorian identification card that you have been praying for? Kristi finally received hers, but Scott’s was denied again. So we are once again waiting to hear news about that–hopefully news that it has been granted. We’ll need it in order to be able to sell our car, so please pray for God to move in the officials’ hearts. Also pray for the many other details of closing a chapter of our life in Ecuador and reestablishing ourselves in the US more permanently. Please understand that nothing is changing in our relationship with Avant Ministries. We will continue to need your faithful financial donations to enable us to continue our ministry. Although we recognize that some might feel the need to make an adjustment in this area, we trust that God will prepare others to fill in the gaps that might be created.

Last week Scott preached in our English speaking church. Pray for him as he prepares to bring the message again next week.

Scott plans to continue to visit Ecuador every few months to take advantage of the many opportunities he has for in-person ministry here. There is also the possibility that he will be traveling to other countries to meet with students from time to time. He may find it helpful to meet in person with administrators and faculty of seminaries and institutes that are looking for his help teaching and helping to develop their Hebrew program. As you can see, there are several reasons for our upcoming change, and several exciting benefits from it. We're thankful for the amazing 24 years we've had in Ecuador, and we’re convinced that God is moving us toward another equally amazing season of life and ministry.

Your partnership is fulfilling her dream!

We appreciate every one of you and the role you play in this ministry. Your prayers and financial gifts to Avant Ministries are impacting the lives of many people, and today I want to illustrate that with the story of one of my Hebrew students. Heidy is a wife and mother of eight in Bolivia, and she comes from Jewish ancestry. She loves Jesus very much and loves to consider how her faith in Christ connects with her heritage. For many years she has longed to be able to read and understand the Old Testament in its original language. When she discovered the opportunity to join my Hebrew class she was thrilled. She does her homework with remarkable passion and with her eyes always set on the goal.

Heidy interacting in our class via Zoom

Not too long ago she sent me a message and I got her permission to share it with you. Here is my translation from Spanish:

Shalom, brother. Last night I realized that I have now completed a year and two months in Hebrew classes, and I am very grateful to our Beloved Yeshua for you, your patience, and your generosity to allow me to learn and fulfill my personal dream. I will continue to pray for you, your family and your ministry. May you reap in abundance the blessings that JeHoVaH [the caps make reference to God’s name in Hebrew] has for you. Many thanks, brother. May Abba grant me life and health to continue learning with you. I long to be able to read and understand the Torah. That day will be Marvelous for me!

I hope you can sense a little bit of her heart in what she wrote. I want you to know how your partnership in this ministry is touching her and extending to others. She may not say so herself, but she is already starting to understand things in the Hebrew Bible. She is finding Jesus in the Old Testament and showing him to others. Since you are helping make it happen I wanted to pass along her words of gratitude—thankfulness that belongs with you as much as with me!

God loves us, we love others!

 

God’s word teaches us that love is the most important of several important character traits. We can always count on God's love, it never ends! February is a good time to celebrate that and also to express our love for others. We love each of you with Christ’s love, and we have seen you demonstrate your love for us in so many ways, including your prayers for our lives and ministry. A lot has happened for us since we last wrote.

We spent some time in Kansas over the holidays. Scott went early in order to help Joel’s family after Jaden had surgery. Kristi had cataract surgery on both eyes. Both were successful! She chose the single vision lens option, so she’s looking forward to getting glasses in a couple of weeks to correct her astigmatism and farsightedness. We were able to have Lindsey with us for 3 weeks during her Christmas break. Kristi’s mom always makes us feel at home during our time in Kansas. We were able to spend 5 days with our entire family. Our 3 boys and their families came from California, New Hampshire and Arkansas. We loved our grandpa and grandma time with our 5 granddaughters! Needless to say, we didn’t have a dull moment with all 14 of us together! Scott ended up staying a week longer as well. His parents are both in assisted living in Omaha and his mom was going through some health issues. He spent some days helping them out.

It feels like a blur since we’ve been back to Ecuador. Kristi jumped right back into her classroom after missing a couple of weeks of school. She has had more behavior issues to work through in the past weeks. Pray for 1 of the girls in Kristi’s class who has missed the past 11 days of school because of a bone infection. She’s been hospitalized and on IV antibiotics. She’s hoping to be able to go home in the middle of this week. We had 2 girls staying with us for a couple of weeks when we got back home. One of them is the new biology teacher and the other is a friend who was transitioning between apartments. Kristi is helping to plan Spiritual Emphasis Week for the elementary students. Our focus will be “Shine God’s Light Around the World.”

Please pray for us as we are trying to renew our identification cards which are an important part of living in Quito. We started working on this nearly a year ago. We were successful in the first step, transferring our visas to our new passports. Our cards expired in May, but we were unable to get an appointment until November. By then another step of paperwork had changed and become more complicated. We didn’t get that back until the end of January. Unfortunately, there were some mistakes and we need to redo it, but there is no way to make changes through their new online system and no other option. We spoke to the school's lawyer who is also extremely frustrated with the new system. She confirmed that at this point there doesn’t really seem to be a clear solution. Please pray!

Scott stays busy teaching as well! He had a great trip to Guayaquil. He taught on two themes from biblical theology: Discerning Good and Evil, Can One See God and Live? Both pointed very clearly and gloriously to Jesus. There was a good group of people who attended the workshop. They were exceptionally attentive and interacted seriously with the material.

Scott’s digestive issues have improved quite a bit. He is still eating a little carefully–things that are easy to digest, especially rice, potatoes, bread, bananas. What has helped him the most are foods rich in probiotics: homemade sauerkraut and kefir. A lot of good help on YouTube. He has gained back 15 very healthy pounds and would still welcome a little more. Thanks for your prayers!

Ordaining a Shepherd of Jesus' Flock

 

Yesterday I had the privilege of participating in an ordination service for a pastor in Riobamba. It was a meaningful ceremony and moving to see another pastor dedicate his life for serving the church. Since pictures and video are available on Facebook, I decided to share some of it with you!

Pastor Roberto (and his wife) came before other mature leaders in their church association.

I shared a message from 1 Timothy 4 on the character of a pastor.

Roberto received several important and symbolic gifts. I was chosen to present him with a new poncho.

He even received a sheep to represent his responsibility to care for God's flock.

We gathered around to pray for him.

Several choirs gave special music.

We enjoyed a good meal afterward!

If you want to see some video here are the recordings available on Facebook:

The ceremony

Choirs

The meal and an interview with Pastor Roberto.

Pray for Pastor Roberto and others like him who are working to reach more of their people for Christ.

We are very thankful for God’s faithfulness

 

Oh give thanks to Yahweh, for He is good, For His lovingkindness endures forever. 1 Chronicles 16:34 (LSB)

We want to publicly express our thankfulness to God. He is always good! 1 Chronicles 16 speaks of how he was faithful from the time of creation to the time of Israel’s patriarchs and all through the rest of her history. We have seen his goodness in the last year, and really through all our life up to this point. “Forever” is a really long time, and yet we can be confident that his future steadfast love will never waver even for a moment. My (Scott) students continue to make progress in their study of Hebrew. One group is working on Lesson 72. I recently combined two other groups, and with them we began Lesson 35 on Tuesday. During that class several students agreed it seemed like they were arriving at a whole new level. They felt a little intimidated by the challenge of the new material. Nevertheless, when we got to the end of the lesson we read through Genesis 47:1-3 and they were encouraged. One student commented on how wonderful it was to understand the text! Even though the wording is longer and a little more complex than they are used to, she was pleased to see that she could actually understand it all! I (Kristi) am having a good year with my sixth grade students. The class is both easier and smaller than last year. I’m thankful for my co-teacher and for our smooth teamwork. Next Friday we have parent/teacher conferences. I’m expecting it to be much easier than last year, but I would still appreciate your prayers regarding those meetings.

Our family continues to grow as we add grandkids. David and Shelby had their third girl in April. Caroline is growing faster than we can keep up with, and her two older sisters are doing a great job helping her learn the ropes of life.

A few weeks ago, Joel and Jaden finalized the adoption of the two newest members of our family! We are very thankful for the blessing of Talia and Natalie. The four of them are still learning what it means to be a family. The adjustments are definitely not easy, but all of them (and all of us) are thrilled about how good it is to be together.

I (Scott) will be teaching in Guayaquil next weekend. I plan to be there from November 22 to 24. We feel relatively safe in Quito, but Guayaquil continues to have an escalated level of violence. The risks aren’t high enough to give us reason to change our plans, but I will need to take extra precautions and use extra wisdom. We will appreciate your prayers for safety, as well as a productive time of teaching. One of our big reasons for thankfulness is you! Yahweh is using your prayers and financial gifts to touch lives in Ecuador, other parts of Latin America, and even other parts of the world! Thank you for your faithfulness; it testifies to the faithfulness of our Lord!

Video Update

Instead of our normal update, this time we want to share a video. Here's a 5-minute glimpse of our lives and ministry in Quito, and some current prayer requests. We appreciate you!

Summer in the States

 

Greetings from the US. We are back for a few weeks to have some time to connect with family and supporters. So far we've helped celebrate a wedding, visited family, and spoken at three supporting churches. Of course, there are always details to take care of related to personal issues and health too. Pray for God to make this time as effective as possible until we return to Ecuador in early August.

Scott is trying a new low-carb diet to help with his stomach issues. (No potatoes, rice, pasta, bread, fruit, bananas, sugar, beans, nuts, starchy vegetables, etc.) He feels much better and is no longer losing weight. Please pray for continued improvement in this area. We've made some progress on our visas and residency documents, there will be more to do sometime after we get back to Ecuador. For now we have to wait because of a backlog of cases in one of the government offices. We gained a new granddaughter, Caroline Grace, on April 26. Thank you for praying for a healthy baby and a safe delivery!

We'll be traveling for much of the next three weeks, visiting children, grandchildren and seeing several of you. As always, it won't be possible to see everyone, but please know we are extremely grateful for the part each one of you plays in touching lives in Ecuador!