February 2018. Video Series ABWE

Hello friends and family, The weather is nice and cool here in Florida and we are loving it!
This year Jonatan and I spent Valentine’s Day apart but we are going to spend some days as a family this next week sharing our love.

We thank God for the love we share with our family and also His unwavering love towards us. This past month Jonatan was able to focus on studying for his pilot instrument rating. A big prayer request answered, he found an instructor that is helping him finish up his training to get this rating and we hope he can finish soon. Natasha also had some huge answers to prayer. You may have seen a post on Facebook and we will share it on here as well:
“Today I’m so overwhelmed by how much God loves me. It has been over 2 years since I have had this passion inside of me to do something with birth training and helping pregnant mothers. I had no idea how it was going to happen with a newborn at the time (Isabella) and my husband focusing on his training. So, I just prayed... I want to implement my knowledge in the Amazon with hopes of having a crisis pregnancy center, if it’s Gods will... TODAY I have my first doula clinical and birth assistant training...So many emotions!!!!”

Natasha will have her first birth as a doula at any time and we ask you to help us pray. If you don’t know what a doula is, it is a certified personnel that specifically helps the mother during birth. There are birth doulas and postpartum doulas but Natasha wants to focus right now on being a birth doula. She also had the opportunity to become a birth assistant at the birth center where she gave birth to Gabriella. This is an on-call position and isn’t a full-time job, which is perfect now with having a toddler and newborn. We will see what all God has in store for her future! We leave you with this month's video. We love you all, take care!

 

January, a good start to the year - Enero, un buen comienzo de año

We hope everyone is having a great start to the new year.

We started it off with a bang! The first weekend of January we attended a missions conference in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. Jonatan had the pleasure of leading a session and sharing about our ministry. We made good contacts and also spoke at the local church.




The second weekend of January we had our annual Proyecto Global meeting for the non-profit we are part of. It was a great time sharing with friends and learning from our mentors. We had an all-day meeting Friday and Saturday we had a dinner fundraiser at our church with a great turnout. We are so thankful for how God is moving and providing for the continuation of the ministry in the Amazon.

We are also thankful for Jonatan’s parents staying with us during the first two months of Gabriella’s birth. They got to enjoy many of Gabriella’s firsts and cherish unforgettable memories as well. They leave this week and our lives will slowly get back to normal.

We are starting to make plans to visit more churches and continue our prefield journey with ABWE. This month we are not going to show a video in our series. Look forward to that next month... please keep us in your prayers as we organize the next couple months, prepare for the trip to the Amazon during May and June, share in churches and with friends and also for God to work in our lives. Being called to be a missionary is not easy and Satan is pulling us in many directions to distract us. We covet your prayers.

A busy December. Video Series- Proyecto Global

What a wonderful and busy year it has been! This year has been one of the most exciting and also adventurous ones yet. God has been so faithful and we look forward to what else He will do in our lives.

This past month Natasha’s mom got to come and meet Gabriella and help with the household duties, it was a blessing for her to be here. Also, Jonatan’s parents came in the middle of December and will be here for two months to help, it is a blessing they could come.

December 21 we celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary and got to go on a one night get-away to a beautiful place called Cedar Key here in Florida. We really enjoyed getting some time to ourselves. We stayed at a quaint bed and breakfast, it is owned by a Christian couple and we enjoyed the atmosphere there.

Gabriella had her baby dedication on Christmas Eve at our church and we are so thankful to our church family for how they have shown so much love to her and our family.

This month has been so busy keeping up with life that we haven’t progressed much with our ministry goals but God knows and has a plan. Next week we plan on traveling to South Florida to be part of a missions conference and also we have a few churches lined up to go and speak at.

The next video in our video series is about Proyecto Global and how we are involved. We will leave you with that short video.



We hope you had a Merry Christmas and will have a Happy New Year.

Our newest addition has arrived!: Video Series- Amazon Life Project

Our little Gabriella has arrived!

Natasha had a wonderful experience this time around with her second birth. She delivered naturally again at a birth center and on arrival, within 30 minutes, Gabriella was born. She is a good baby girl, doing the normal eating, sleeping and dirty diaper routine but we are thankful and praise God for this beautiful blessing to our family.





As you watched the video, we talked about what Amazon Life Project stands for, basically, it’s just the name of our blog. Also, we raised another 10% of the budget! We are excited to see God working in our lives and the lives of other people through this ministry.

We hope you are enjoying the beginning of this Christmas season, may God bless you and your family in the next few weeks up to the celebration of the birth of our Saviour.

Stay tuned for our next video update about what is Proyecto Global...

Busy weekend in South Florida.

This past weekend we had the opportunity to go back to Hobe Sound, the city where we originally met as we were in college. We enjoyed attending the Spanish church on campus that celebrated their 25th anniversary. Jonatan and I both did Christian service there; Natasha was a Sunday school teacher and Jonatan helped with the youth camps, music, and children's ministry. It was a blessing to reconnect with some of the same people that have not seen us for some time.

Hobe Sound Bible Church- Spanish Anniversary

We spent a large amount of time with friends and students from the college that we haven't seen in a while and it was nice to reconnect with them. We shared with some people more specifically of how they could partner with us in the Amazon ministry and we hope to see more people getting involved.

Meeting with our friend Maritza from PR

Jonatan was happy to meet with a friend who is a Puerto Rican, was a missionary to Colombia, and now is a missionary to Panama. She came to the US for the weekend to get away from the hurricane crisis in Puerto Rico and to visit her brother who has cancer. We met up with her and had a nice time reconnecting.

Our last day, Sunday, we visited the church Jonatan ministered to every weekend for the 4 years he was in college. He did ministry through music, taught Sunday bible school, and had many friends there. Jonatan presented shortly at the church and they expressed interested for us to come back to share more. The pastor mentioned they want to prayerfully consider supporting us, we thank God for that.

First United Methodist Church

We are currently working on a series of videos that will explain more in detail about our background and ministries we are connected and involved with, past and present. Stay tuned!

We love you guys and are thankful for each and every one of you being part of our lives.

Glad to be home.

We thank God for getting us safely home and back into the normal routine of things. As we reflect on the goodness of his love and provision from this summer we are humbled to know that he takes care of his children and we do not need to worry about anything.


We stayed at Natasha's brothers house in Kentucky for a week to wait out the hurricane and also for some clean-up to happen. After that, we started our final trek, with a stop in South Carolina for the night and home afterwards. As we entered into Florida it was amazing to see the destruction of a natural disaster. People were still frantic, we stopped to get food at Walmart 2 hours away from the house, being advised to do so, and also we waited about 30 minutes in line to get gas at a gas station. As we were pulling up I noticed and mentioned to Jonatan, "this person in front of us only filled up $8."

Jonatan started talking and it hit me hard. This country has never really, REALLY, gone through a chaotic situation or horrible natural disaster. When there is a hard time people go crazy, only caring about themselves, getting every penny, every gallon of water, food supply and not leaving anything for anyone else. It is sad. When a true chaotic situation occurs, like the second coming, people will be a mess! We need to remember who to keep our eyes on, this verse comes to mind.

Philippians 4:6-7 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

On a more personal note, the baby is due in 6 weeks! We cannot wait and are so thankful for God's provision for so many things, very unexpected surprises. Some people have asked about a gift registry, Natasha has made one with Target, if you feel lead to do so. 
https://www.target.com/gift-registry/giftgiver?registryId=5a6093e60d3c45d0a8e3af4f9c837878&lnk=registry_custom_url

We want to be the most transparent as possible about our missionary endeavours, always. Please continue praying for us and specifically making connections. The faster we get to 100% we get to leave for the field, we are currently around 20% supported.

Prayer Request:
Please keep us in your prayers, we will be traveling to another city in Florida this coming weekend and are visiting with people and churches. We ask that God gives us clarity for sharing the vision and that people would be interested in supporting us.

Summer Deputation comes to an end.

This summer has been a wonderful time getting to know more people, churches, and connections. We have traveled at least 10,000 miles on our van that has over 250,000 miles on it! What a blessing to know it is still running and functioning fine! The only problem we had was when we ran over a nail.

This past week we spoke at our final church in Ohio. After that we went to Kentucky to visit with Natasha's brother and family for a day or two and are currently in limbo to move or not till the hurricane moves through Florida. We highly desire to be home but know we want to stay safe in a secure location.

We trust God to get us safely back to Florida with a loaded van and a mama that is on her 30th week of pregnancy. We also want to praise God that the need of a computer has been fulfilled.