Thanks for your blind prayer!

I realize that it has been a long time since I blogged so sorry but thanks for your prayers anyway, since they are being felt in my life here. For starters, I delivered my first ever real sermon in Spanish this last Sunday. I say real because when I preached to the churches I work with it always takes more the form of a small group Bible Study since they are house churches. But this past Sunday I was asked to preach at a local church that I had been attending since we don't have meetings Sunday mornings with the house churches. The sermon went really well. I think they were able to understand gringo boy's accent and all! But I spoke about our relationship to Christ being more like a marriage than a lawyer. So many times we think of things as if God is mad at us but Jesus steps and and takes the wrath for us. And that is part of it that there is a holy wrath directed against our sinfulness (not so much that God is mad at us but that God is just) and Jesus stepped in line of that wrath to save us. But if we think of it as a marriage it isn't what ought I do to avoid punishment but what can I do so that Jesus feels loved. Morality takes on a whole new light that way. And Jesus did talk about himself as a bridegroom and Paul did call the church the bride of Christ, so it isn't a new idea, but one that may be a little neglected. But anyway....that was the message.

Also the youth meetings are heading forward. From the time they started to now it's been rough. First meeting saw 4 people, then 2, then 1, then 0, then 2, and the last was up to 6 (but with two visitors who won't probably come back since they were too young and it was just that they were in the care of two of the other kids for the day). It's going well and I'm enjoying working with them but the pressure is on to begin training a leader to take over when I leave in late June. Ideally they will be able to take over in late May so that I can be there to help if things go wrong. So please be praying that God will raise up and prepare someone for this job.

Lastly I want to ask for prayer for my health. It feels like I've been sick ever since I first got here to Ecuador for the past few weeks (maybe almost two months now) I've had a lot of stomach problems. I was going to one doctor who just always gave me a new pill so I stopped going to him and have gone to another doctor. We discovered that according my test results I have no parasites but I had blood in my stool. So we're going with the lesser treatment now hoping it works which is a pill for amoebas. Even though they didn't show up they could be there (especially since I had them earlier). When I had them the first time they may have burroughed into the intestinal wall before I took that pill and therefore weren't entirely killed and are now causing the blood and general stomach junk! So I have to take this medication for a week and see if that clears up everything. If not, we'd probably be left with looking at a colonoscopy or Lower GI or something of that sort. I've never hoped I had amoebas in my life until now!!! But just be praying that either A.) the medication works and i get better or that B.) we can find out what is really going on here.

Thanks for all your prayer and support.