Moving along . . .

Where did the past month go? Kids are back in school (all schools started on Sept 7 here in the mountains of Ecuador), from what I hear, some trees are even starting to turn colors up in the US and fall is just around the corner.

We have a few things going on here too:
1) C-section for Isabella's birth is still scheduled for Tuesday! We can hardly wait. We need to be at the hospital at 11 a.m. and surgery is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. We appreciate your prayers. All has been going well at our appointments and Ruth is trying to take it as easy as possible.

2) with school starting, we have a new group of high school students who will be coordinating the Kids Club at the dump. We accepted a great group of 18 students - representing a number of different nationalities/countries. We are excited what God has in store for them this year. Ruth will be taking a break during the first semester, but hopes to get back into the swing of things soon.

3) As part of taking that break, Ruth's goal was to have all the crafts lined up for the first semester (all 18 weeks of them!). She is very grateful for a group of ladies who came from Nebraska on a short-term team this summer who organized most of those crafts for her. What a HUGE blessing!

4) Santi has various projects lined up in the computer department at HCJB. They will be upgrading all the HCJB computers for the radio and hospital (400 or so) to a new system, newer version of Microsoft Office, among other things (Santi tried to explain it all to me, but I either don't remember it well, or just didn't understand but you get the idea - lots of work!)

5) We are helping to host a short-term team from Calvary Church in PA the last week of October. Santi will be helping every day at the construction site. The team is coming through Extreme Response and will be adding on to a small church building in a very poor community called La Paz. This church was started by the church we attend regularly (El Inca). They need more space and have a small plot of land to expand on. We hope that this church building will help. This is about the sixth daughter church that our church has started in the past 10 years or so. What a blessing to be a part of a church that is reaching out.

6) We are also gearing up for the Annual Christmas Outreach with Extreme Response . . . .this year it will be December 1 - 8. There's still room on the team if you want to come and help. We are expecting around 70 volunteers from various places in the US and Canada to come and help with this week-long outreach to poor communities. It's a wonderful way to start the holiday season! And we look forward to a number supporting churches and individuals coming on this team!

We appreciate everyone's emails, prayers, words of encouragement and excitement about Isabella's arrival. We will post info and photos as soon as possible! We are so grateful for modern technology that allows us to do that.

In the meantime, we continue to move along . . . waiting anxiously for Tuesday!