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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hello family and friends,
As we have been busy with our deputation travels and the appointing of us becoming official ABWE (www.abwe.org) missionaries, we wanted to take a short moment for everyone to hear a little about the change and to explain a little better for you to understand.
ABWE has almost 90 year of experience in missions with over 900 missionaries all over the world. Their mission is focused in discipleship which is very well aligned with our vision for the ministry in the amazon.
We have seen God opening doors and working in great ways in our lives. We pray that he will keep growing our faith, filling us more with the Holy Spirit and have a clear focus to share with others the ministry.
Prayer Requests:
- Both of our computers died this past month. Please pray this need will be fulfilled because we used them everyday.
-Natasha's pregnancy.
-Our last weeks of deputation, traveling, protection, provision and people interested in partnering with us in the ministry.
As we continue our travels we are so thankful for what God is doing and how he is working in our lives. We have been gone now for two months and we are starting to get tired, but God is good and renews our strength everyday.
We want to thank every church, our families, and awesome friends who have hosted us and given amazing hospitality to us during this time. You all are so great and we thank God for you.
A quick update on what we have done:
At the beginning of this month we went to a church in Culpeper, VA and had a great time sharing at three services in one morning. Our friends treated us so well and we were thankful for open doors.
After this we continued to PA to spend time with Natasha's grandparents and a Wednesday night service we spoke at their church. We had a nice time sharing with the people and pastor of how God is working in the Amazon and our lives.
While we were arriving to Natasha's grandparents, as we were driving up the driveway our tire popped; we had driven over a nail that was on the road. Thank God we had the help of Pappy and we knew the location well so we could find a good place to get it fixed. It was amazing, Jonatan had bought warranty on the tires from Walmart so we got a good discount.
The next two weeks we were in Harrisburg and also a few days at Lancaster, PA getting to know a mission organization called ABWE. We met some of the coolest missionaries and people who are interested in going to the field. This time was such an encouragement for us and we love the new friends we made that will be lasting friendships.
As we made our way to the next church in Wisconsin we made some stops at a few different places spending time with old friends. Natasha was especially thankful to get to see a best friend from college and Isabella got to play with their daughter who was around the same age.
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.
