Update: Great News!

This week was a little less eventful then my last! But one great thing that did happen is that I got the boy who had been living with me, Vincent (bunso), into a orphanage! What is great is that it is run by a Canadian family and the women who directs it has been working with these kinds of boys for 9 years. After taking him there and seeing his reactions I was very encouraged! Also, one boy there shocked me when he went over and sat with Vincent and started talking to him. When I looked over my shoulder and saw them talking, I new instantly they were friends! I was so happy to know that when he goes he knows at least one person! The family that runs the orphanage has their family stay on the third floor, and the boys on the second and babies on the 1st. When you go there you can feel the atmosphere of a family, something Vincent may have never known. I am very excited for him but also the relationship I have with the family. They have so much knowledge and experience and its also nice to have some friends who are older Canadians!

Charity, the director of the orphanage, has a busy two weeks so she said to give her two weeks and I had to prepare him for coming. So that means doing 3 hours of school work a day, and waking him up on time and making sure he is home on time and making sure he is in bed. So I have had to play dad for the last few days and it has been quite interesting! God always seems to be in a hurry with me! With Vincent gone I will have 2 others staying with me, so 3 in total. I am hoping to get rid(in a good way) of the other boy and be down to two of us. My apartment is not close to big enough for four boys, and I have zero privacy and almost zero alone time. I am looking forward to having the place to myself a little more.

The next great news is that I passed my first exam for bible school! (if you being exempt is considered passing) The first exam was a english proficiency exam, and even after I thoroughly tried to convince them that I was an english speaker for some reason I still had to take it. When I was in the room about to write the test, a teacher comes in, who was also a foreigner, and tells me I did not have to write the test. I was happy that I did not have to write the 3 hour exam, and I went home! So now on June 2nd I will write the other exam which is more like a IQ sort of test, but with a bit of math. Now when I was in high school I thought I was going to build houses and not become a pastor so I took every class I could that was as far away from academics as possible. So that one really bit me in the butt since now I have to do just that! What I am getting at is to please pray for me!

I will let you all know how my next exam goes, but its looking like June 22nd I will be official a bible school student! Also the school is really nice and is in a large building right in the business district and only 5-10 minutes from my house! Perfect!

Brett

Baptism

On Friday we had our churches second baptism outing. We rented the same pool as last year and baptized 6 more youth! Because its summer some of the youth were away and could not make it so it could have been around 10. Hopefully before summer ends we will be able to baptize those who could not make it. We rented two jeepny's (just imagine a jeep with an extended back with two benches in it) and packed them full of people. It was a lot of fun and around 40 people came out!

The past few weeks had been very challenging for me. It started becoming clear that the church was becoming too much for Rodel to handle lately. We are not just serving youth anymore but have two service and have all ages. When we started it was manageable but we have really grown and had to accept the reality. It started really bringing us all apart because I was constantly frustrated and was not being led. So last week Joshua, my team leader and the advisor for all the pastors decided that he needed to step in. So joshua has taken the full leadership for one year, or until Rodel is more capable of handling the responsibility. This will give him the time to get to bible school and be better trained. Also joshua will be spending more time working with him and mentoring him. It was a wise move by joshua and I have already seen and felt the difference. Joshua is a strong leader and this will really help our church!

We do have one big problem that is only getting bigger. At the end of June the rent of our church will run out. The building will also not renew our contract which means we even have to find a new place. Its very very difficult to find a space big enough for us, and if we did it would be very expensive. Our church struggles because we serve the poor in the most expensive place in the city. Our tithes, which are really just the pastors and Rodels mother, just cover the most basic expenses of the church and utilities, us paying rent is literally impossible. We could maybe afford to rent a small office, but a place for our Sunday gather is almost out of the question. I am thankful that I dont have to think in realities of man, but can call on a God who has endless budget. When we were getting the building we are now in last year, it was a complete miracle, and I expect the same to happen again. To put our situation in perspective, our church gets around 150$ a month from tithes. Which is enough for utilities and to give a small budget to the ministries, and then its gone. To get enough space for our church we would need 1000$ just to pay rent, not to mention all the other expenses. My personal monthly support is down, and so you can imagine my worries. We really want to get a big place so that we can actually do sunday school, have a day care and be able to do other ministries for our community, but we are no where near capable. This is something that really needs to be prayed for, because we have invested a lot into this community and we really want to see real change here!

Join us in prayer, because as you can see we really need it! I am very confident that God will provide, He did once and i am sure He will again.

As always thank you all for your love and support!

Brett