The doctor's appointment went well for Ken on Monday. He had a hearing test and examination. The results were that he does not have "crystals" attaching to his inner ear that could be throwing off his balance and causing the dizziness. Instead, he has 30-40% hearing loss in his left ear from his years of doing construction and remodeling work with high-pitched power tools. Unfortunately, when Ken was younger OSHA didn't have "laws" on protective hearing devices, and quite honestly, Ken wouldn't probably have taken the time to put those on anyway! His medication that he has been taking for the dizziness and nauseousness does seem to be helping and this medication could potentially cure that problem altogether. It was recommended that he have a hearing aide, but that because a portion of his hearing is still partially good, that he wait awhile on that decision until after he finished the course of medication to take away the dizziness first. If the dizziness does not go away, then he will probably need the hearing aide. But, if the dizziness does go away, the recommendation was that he would actually hear things a lot louder with the hearing aide because of the good side of his hearing, and that the $1200 hearing aide would probably drive him crazy and end up in a drawer! For now, it wasn't a hard decision since we don't have the $1200!
The second night of orientation went well even though we were exhausted from being out all day doing errands, and a prayer was answered in that we told the Lord, "we are weak, please make us strong for You". We had 68 volunteers from the church show up to hear us do the orientation. They are on fire to reach the community behind the church, a squatter village, for the Lord! So, please keep this church in your prayers as they also continue to prepare for our short-term missions team that we will bring in to do three days of Medical Clinics, Children's Ministry and Children's Ministry Training in their church in January.
The Medical Clinic in Palomo; we had a good number of Youth volunteers show up with the Youth Pastor to help us out. We saw about 100 patients in six hours and did not run out of medications or vitamins. We brought in what we thought was enough food for just our volunteers as we closed the clinic for one hour to provide them lunch. At one point, Ken looked in the supply box and cooler and said, "I thought they would eat this, but we have more than I expected left"! So, he began cutting the loaves of baguette and making sub sandwiches for the kids that were there to be seen by the physicians. We had enough to feed every single child that was waiting! God so often multiplies our supplies that it is overwhelming to us! We were so happy and blessed to be able to serve the children sandwiches. Some looked like they hadn't been eating regularly.
Our family left the clinic just a little bit early to go to our friends house for Thanksgiving dinner. We really enjoyed being able to eat turkey which is very hard to find here and quite expensive, though we found a Butterball to donate to the dinner at a reasonable price this year. We had a lot of fun just relaxing and sitting around talking afterwards.
On Friday, Ken and I prepared the camp for a group that was coming in that afternoon, doing custodial-type work. When I was finished with that, I ran home to tidy up the "drop and run" house from a busy week of ministry and prepare it for a new ministry that we are involved in. Heather has always helped facilitate a small group Bible Study for Youth with the assistance of the Youth Pastor in our neighborhood. About six months ago, Heather decided that she felt she needed to step down from that ministry, having served in it for over a year, and give more attention to her homeschooling. At the same time that she was serving in that ministry, she was also teaching a Sunday School class during the church hour. We supported her in that decision and the Youth Pastor found someone else to lead the small group in the neighborhood with him assisting them. But, like most ministries in churches in Central America, it is difficult to find someone who will be consistent in ministry and the Youth Pastor after six months came back to Heather and asked her to consider leading the small group again, since they were not able to meet regularly and the group was falling between the cracks. She, along with Ken and I agreed, and every two weeks the small group of Youth meet in our house. Last night's group was bigger than the group two weeks ago and we thank the Lord for that! So, please add the Youth's small group meetings to your prayer request. Their next meeting will be December 18th in our home, and then they will return to their every two week meeting schedule in January!
Today, I am finishing up preparations for my sermon that I will share tomorrow.
Next week on Tuesday, we will be preparing the Celebration Center for a wedding that will take place on Thursday evening as two teenagers (in their 20's) who attend our church and have grown up in the neighborhood tie the knot! We will also be working on the final preparations for a short-term mission team coming to us from the Great State of N.C.; arriving on Saturday to stay for a week and do VBS! We need to do the grocery shopping and final preparations at the camp on Friday for this team.
On a frustrating note, when we returned to the States in August we bought a new digital camera and for some reason, it has died already! I apologize for the inability to post pictures on our blog. Please know with all the exciting things that God is doing here it is extremely frustrating for us not to be able to share that here!
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