Since this was the first Father and Son retreat here, there were more missionaries with their kids than locals. However, there was plenty to do! Popsicle stick boats were built and raced, the bouncy castles were used, personal pizzas were made and devoured, lots of games were played outside and the pool was put to good use! I think Miguel’s favorite was the “fire camp” as he called it. When I came to take him away (it was after 10pm!) he asked if he could stay there with Daddy forever.

    All the missionaries from our mission, GMSA, came to our camp for the annual missions conference. It is meant to be a time to regroup, talk about some mission business, and be spiritually refreshed. It was also quite the learning experience to host the conference! Every morning Bruno would need to set up the projector or sound equipment and I would go to town to get a van load of food for feeding 90 hungry missionaries! It was wonderful to meet all the missionaries and hear from Dr. Burggraff and Pastor Hixson.

This week is Youth Camp which incorporates young people ages 13 to around age 25. There are just under 70 campers and two speakers. One speaker has come from Montevideo, Uruguay, and the other has come all the way from Virginia. You can be praying for open hearts since this is a very impressionable age and there several coming that are unsaved.

Update:

Thank you for praying for the youth camp, it was a big success! When I was driving a van load of them to the bus station to head home, I asked what their favorite part of camp was. They answered “the preaching!” The second best part was the kayaks! it was the first time for most of them to try out a kayak!

    A group of 17 people camp from a few churches in Pennsylvania for 2 weeks. They worked on quite a few projects to improve the camp, like…

1. The maintenance building has doors!!! This was a major blessing since we were unable to store anything inside.
2. A cement floor was laid in a storage room and a double wall was built. It used to be used to store tools and some supplies, but now it can be used to store the belongings of missionaries while they are on furlough.
3. Screens were redone for all the windows in the lodge.
4. Painting of the main hall, cabins, doors.
5. Lots of cleaning and organizing.

And lets not forget some piranha fishing!

    Last year the women’s retreat had almost 50 attendees so this year the prayer was for 65. We were almost overwhelmed with 90 women! The speaker was one of the missionaries here, Andrea Duarte, and she taught a wonderful series on what our spiritual fragrance is before the Lord. The whole retreat was a wonderful time of fellowship and it was a great opportunity for us to get to know many of the people that attend the GMSA churches in Uruguay and Argentina as well as several non GMSA churches!

For the first time ever we did a singles young adult retreat. The retreat began on Friday afternoon and ended on Sunday right after lunch. We had 48 attendees that came out for a time of biblical teaching, fellowship and lots of fun… Colby Homes, pastor in Argentina, brought some great biblical challenges to the young adults. Having great weather allowed us a lot of time outside even got to try out the canoe and kayaks. We are looking forward to doing it again next year!

In our container we had the opportunity to bring down a wheel chair for this lady Ofelia. Last week we were finally able to deliver it to her after a lot of running around. The chair arrived here with a charger problem which was easily fixed but then because it had sat for a while the battery went bad and we had to order new ones. We ran around Uruguay looking for a place that would either fix them or have new ones for sale. With no luck in Uruguay, we ordered them in Argentina… She was super happy when we brought it over. She had one but she was on the street one day and a truck hit her and totaled the chair. Thus she was somewhat house bound but with this new one she is now able to go out again…

    It’s amazing, no matter how many toys that kids may have they would rather find other things to play with. Miguel decided to make his own amusement park here at camp.

    Thank you for your many prayers! We saw God working throughout the whole process. When we met with the gentlemen that was doing all the paperwork on the Wednesday after we got here he wasn’t sure that he would be able to get everything through by Friday to the proper people for it to be released early the following week. If the Friday deadline didn’t work then it wouldn’t be until the following Friday which would mean the container would sit at the port for almost 2 weeks incurring storage fees… but the Lord was in it and we got it all done. The paperwork was flowing through the different departments and desks like an well oiled machine, and if you know anything about government agencies is that they tend to work like an old rusty machine. The container was then scheduled to be released on Tuesday, but yet another “hurdle.”

    At 9 o’clock on Tuesday morning there was a scheduled strike at the port, until 1 o’clock… If the container didn’t get out of the port before the strike, to begin the slow almost 6 hour trip to camp then we would be looking at a very late night arrival and unloading party.

    The truck driver arrived at the port at 7:30 hoping to get out quickly. We got a call at 8 that there was a problem. Well, actually 2 problems! The weight the shipping company in the States wrote down on the paperwork was off by almost 2,000 kg, red flag #1. They put the container on the truck and before it can leave the port it gets x-rayed, red flag 2, there is a “mancha sospechosa” a suspicious spot. They could make out what it was. We got the phone call and were preparing to have to go down to the port and begin unloading the container there. Yet again God flexed His muscles and 5 minutes later we got a call that the container was released and it was on it’s way to camp. Now we had to scramble because we didn’t expect it to be out just after 8… The Proto family’ container, which arrived a month before us here in Uruguay, had no red flags and yet didn’t get out of the port until after 9 in the morning.

    It was a very wet trip out to camp, but the container made it at 3:30 where we had a crew of guys and a forklift ready to unload the 2,600 cu. ft. It stopped raining but the ground was very soft because it had been raining all day so the forklift kept getting stuck in the mud and several times had to towed out by a Toyota pickup. The forklift was a blessing to have though, because there were some quite heavy things in the container, as some of you know.

We were very thankful to have these guys come out to help unload, “the beast!”