The Cave

I hope all of the Cave Dwellers have a great day!

I am currently in St. Louis for the Missouri Baptist Convention.  My hotel room has a beautiful view of the Arch and the Mississippi River.  I guess it is a good thing they do not know I am a Cub fan, or they may have not let me in the room.  If you have a chance say a prayer for our convention over the next couple of days.  There is a lot of controversy in our convention right now and we need all the prayers we can get.

On Friday we had a visit from the family to show off their new toy as they were making their way to Branson for a few days. Here are some pics from the event.

Here are some pictures from our trip.

This is the sign that greeted us on the front wall of the church as we arrived for the first time.

Here are some of the folks fellowshipping after the Sunday morning service.

Some of the beautiful children we got to serve. My buddy Lupe is in the back holding the baby, and the pastor’s daughter in is the light blue shirt on the left.

Pastor Aaron preaching with our interpreter Susie.

Eryn and Susie sharing the gospel with the children at the local school.

Yours truly preaching with Pablo one of our interpreters.

Rolando, one of our drivers for the week and also a pastor near San Salvador, presents some young boys who accepted Christ in one of the services.

One of the evening worship services.

Time for our flight home.

Waiting for our final flight from Houston to St. Louis. You can see Jamie’s famous sombrero that received many laughs and funny looks as we returned home.

The last two days have been so hard trying to say goodbye to all of my new friends in El Salvador. I have grown to love all of the people here and the church we worked with has just been amazing. The pastor has such a heart for the Lord. Even though he pastors a small little country church he is already making plans for how he can plant more churches in their area. He drove us through a small town today that does not have a baptist church and he wants to plant one there as soon as possible.

I will especially miss two of the girls from the church. Lupe was one of the teenage girls at the church and she was a sweetheart. She noticed that I was wearing a Willow Springs maroon bracelet much like the light blue and white one she was wearing. As we were leaving I gave her my bracelet to remember all of us by and so she wanted to give me hers. The other girl was the pastor’s daughter and her name was Alyishia. She was always around and just had a really sweet yet feisty spirit about her. She played the drums for the church during the times of worship.

I am also going to really miss our translators Pablo and Susie. They both did a wonderful job and helped us out so much during the week. You could clearly see their servant’s heart. Both of them may have opportunities in the next year to come to Missouri and we are going to be praying that God will allow that to happen.

We will arrive back home late tomorrow night. After we are home I will post some pictures here from the trip. Thank you again for all your prayers.

Our week is going by so fast, it is hard to believe that it is already Thursday.  Last night was the best service we have had here.  We witnessed 8 folks saved last night so that makes a total of 10 so far this week.  One of which was a lady that my evangelism group visited on our second day here.  She is the daughter of one of the leaders in the church.  She shared with us that she has some problem with the church and that was keeping her from the Lord.  She told us at that point she was not ready to make any decisions, but that she would start coming to the services each day.  Last night she came forward to trust Christ as her personal Savior.  It was a touching moment to experience.

I have developed several friendships with some of the kids and early teens in the church.  Several of the younger girls seem to enjoy making fun of me and they loved seeing pictures of my daughters.  We have a good time calling each other crazy and talkative.  The children are just amazing.  They are so precious and they are very good during the services.  Being able to interact with them each day has been one of the many  highlights of the trip.  Tomorrow we are doing a youth event involving soccer.

Thank you again for all of your prayers.

Today we started off our trip by seeing some Mayan Ruins.  It was amazing to see their design and structure and to be able to walk around and wonder what things were like so many years ago on that land.  The Ruins were only about 4 blocks from the hotel where we are staying.

Following our tour of the Ruins, we were able to attend a local school for kids in elementary up through 9th grade.  The pastor of the church arranged for us to have 30 minutes of their time, so they gathered everyone together in a large area and allowed one of our team members to pass out tracts and do a full gospel presentation.  We had a good time playing with the kids and passing out candy to them and seeing all of their smiles.

This afternoon we hosted a deacon and leadership training seminar for the church we are working with.  One of the deacons on the trip led the study and then many others on the trip shared thoughts and ideas that hopefully will be helpful to this church.

This evening we had a worship service and I was able to preach again with the help of Pablo.  It was a lot easier preaching the 2nd time around with an interpreter.  I felt more confident on where to stop and start, and things went a lot smoother.  The folks from this church have really been amazing.  They are so humble, genuine, and sincere.  Every member that comes in to the service kneels down and spends several minutes in prayer.  They also really sing out loud during the service and all really seem to love to worship together.  At the close of the service, their pastor shared with us that he had just learned that Alleluia was the same in Spanish and English and wanted us to all sing it together to end the service.  It was really touching to hear everyone singing together.

When we returned to our hotel we had a traditional El Salvador dinner of papusas. They are 2 tortillas  put together with cheese, meat, and/or beans in the middle.  They were quite good.

Thank you again for all of your prayers.

We made is safely to El Salvador.  We are not too far from the Guatemala border in the Santa Ana region.  I had a great plan of downloading the pictures I took today and posting a few of them here on my blog.  However, dummy me forgot to bring the cord for my camera.  I am going to see if someone else’s cord will work.  If not, you will just have to wait until I get back to Missouri to see the pictures.

Today was a wonderful day.  We arrived at our church, The First Baptist Church of New Jerusalem, this morning in time to be a part of the worship service and it was such a blessing to share in their time of worship.  They are very sincere and humble people who truly love the Lord and you can see that just about all of them really get what worship truly is.  The other pastor on the trip preached this morning and I preached this evening.  It was a real blessing to be able to preach in their church. Although I will say it was quite awkward having to start and stop so many times.  But I had a really good interpreter named Pablo that helped me a long.

This afternoon we divided up into 3 groups with each group having a translator and a guide.  Each group went to a different area of the city to do evangelism.  On our very first visit we encountered a teenage girl named Jessica.  We talked to her for quite awhile and she said that she knew who Jesus was and what Jesus had done and there was nothing standing in the way of her salvation other than she had just never taken the time to trust Him.  We had the honor of praying with her and seeing her life changed by the Lord.  She came to the services that night and shared with the church of her salvation.  Our other visits were not nearly as exciting, but it was a great experience to be able to visit in the homes of several families.

Thank you to all of you who have been praying for our trip.  I will provide updates and possibly some pictures as often as I can.