November Newsletter

“This is relevant”
“We need this here.”
“Where can I buy your book?”
“You have some awesome ideas.”
“Wow those are cool.  I can use that idea.”

This is what Brenda often hears as she teaches workshops for Sunday School Teachers and Children’s Ministers in Panama.  

She’s been given the joy of training workers at a couple of denominational conferences, and her workshops have been well received.  The gratitude that overflows at such moments affirms our calling here in Latin America.

Panama is not a country with vast resources, or a Michael’s at the local corner. 

Individuals or churches can‘t easily spend $200 on the latest curriculum.  

In fact, 1/3 of the country lives below the poverty line; some surviving under $36 a month, so there has to be some creative way to communicate the gospel on a budget smaller than a shoe string.  

Brenda has designed particular crafts that can be made out of egg cartons, toilet paper rolls, and Styrofoam trays.  

These are recyclable materials found through out the house and often take $0 to complete the craft. 

Can we turn this into a book?  Perhaps we can.
Can we create a DVD of “how to”?  Sure.
Can we post video’s on YouTube?  Working on it.

We have two upcoming events where Brenda will teach.  

One is Mid December at a local church to the North of Panama City.  Chris will be doing a seminar on Child Evangelism.  Be in prayer for us that Chris can communicate in spite of his “heavy” Spanish.

The second one in is in the works for the Volcan / David area of Western Panama this coming January, right after Chris gets back from Nicaragua, helping Young Life.

Brenda is busy creating new crafts using food items like uncooked rice or pasta.  

Pray for her creativity these next few weeks as she prepares the crafts, writes up the how-to sheets, and if time allows, we’ll even put the YouTube videos together.  

Pray for Chris’s prep time for the work in Nicaragua, and for this conference here.

Pray that our kids will have fun while we make a mess on our dining room table during testing and creation of these crafts.  They enjoy painting, cutting, and gluing, but we use our dining room table as our work table.