Happy first day of Autumn!

Thank you for your continued prayers, emails and gifts of encouragement and support.  This has been a busy month and prayers were definitely needed, especially with an unexpected throat infection causing Esther to completely rest for several days.  We are all blessed with good health once again, but do covet your continued prayers for health and travels.

Our Homeschool season started off with a Homeschool Family Picnic.  It was great to see some old friends after the summer and meet some new ones.  The home school movement seems to continue to slowly grow here and we are glad to have the privilege to be able to help and encourage families who choose this journey.

(Photos below is of Ron showing off his boa to some of the folks at the picnic, a group of boys playing mini-golf on our property and Benji C. checking out the shed snake skin.)

We are very enthused about our youth groups!  Our Friday group, Homeschool Teen Fellowship, started off with a large attendance this month and tonight it looks like we will have another large group.  (Photos below from HTF meeting Sept. 8)

Our Sunday morning youth class has also grown and we had a great turnout for our first activity of the school year:  picnic at the park and ice skating at the mall!  We even have a new intern this semester, Maranada, who is here in a studying abroad program through a university.  We love working with this age group and feel blessed with these opportunities to serve.

Ron, Sarah, Nataly, Diana and Sebastian, a friend from church here in Quito, had an excellent trip to the three Cofan villages last week.  The children’s programs in each village seemed to swell with more kids than ever and Ron had some good conversations with church leaders and at house visitations.

• Continue prayer for a new church building in Dureno.  We have some “new” ideas of how this is going to shape up, so pray for wisdom and direction.
• Also continue prayer for a Bible printing project in the works.  It is for a bilingual Cofan/Spanish New Testament.
• Remember to pray for Ron, our daughter Sarah, our nephew Greg and his wife Sarah as they head down to the jungle for a quick trip this coming week.
• Pray for Esther’s upcoming trip (Sept. 28-Oct. 10) to visit her family in Oregon and be with her mom on her 80th birthday.  Pray for Esther’s mom who has been having some health challenges.
• Pray for our daughter Julia who is settling in to a new job in Cheney, WA.
• Pray for our son Aaron in his senior year of high-school as he looks to what God would have for him next year.  So many decisions!
• Pray with us as we look at taking a 4-5 month furlough in 2018 (Aug. – Jan.?)  We are thinking of starting the time with some travels, so if you are interested in having us come and share in your church, Bible study, youth group or Sunday school, let us know and we will work it into our calendar.
• So thankful for our daughter Sarah’s help and encouragement in the ministries here.  She’s so creative and helps us come up with some fun ideas for the youth and jungle trips.  She is also an amazing teacher of God’s Word!  We are counting each day blessed that she is here working with us.