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Day 7 Rest and RecoverThe final count last night of our evanglistic efforts was 21 baptisms and 1 restoration. Incredible results all for the glory of God.Well, our sick list grew to 31 today. That is the bad news. The good news is most had recovered enough to go siteseeing and souvenir shopping today. When we had our dinner tonight all but five had recovered enough join us for the dinner. I think we are about to best this thing. More could get sick if prior trips are any indication. With that being said, it has be a great trip for the Lord. We are looking forward to our plane rides (and bus rides) home tomorrow. It is always good to be home. Thanks for all the prayers and support! Buddy Day 6 - Unusual FinishOf the 15 campaigns I have been on this day was most unusual. We treated more North Americans than Latin Americans. Yesterday, when we closed the clinic we had 19 people that we asked to come back today. Little did we know at the time that those would be the only ones to be treated today.On Tuesday one of our young folks from Costa Rica came down with something-fever, diarrhea, vomiting, chills. By yesterday morning we had 10 of our team down. As of today it is 26. Most are on the rebound, but some are not making much progress. I think they will make progress now that they have been started on antibiotics. We decided last night that we would go to the site, treat those we promised and clean things up. That is what we did today, hence 19 treated. This afternoon the minister of health for El Salvador called. She wanted to send her team out to investigate a potential epidemic. Yow! I have never been in one of those. About 6 health department folks came out to interview those that are sick, including our cooks and the hotel cooks. Interestingly enough none of our cooks nor our maintenance team has been sick. Those who got sick worked the clinic or went out on the evangelistic campaign. This evening they called back and said it was a bacterial infection, hence the antibiotics mentioned above. Please pray for the entire team, but especially those who have gotten sick-Kim and Paige Atkinson, Zach Bear, Paul Brown, David Burka, Matt Collins, Michael Conatser, Dava Dickson, Josh Duncan, Zach Ezell, Susan Green, Clint Haynes, Marie Keopf, Larry Ligon, Sydney Minton, Daniel Naylor, Lydia Naylor, Brennan Page, Kaitlin Page, Carrie Pardue (she also had a bout with kidney stones), Matt Pardue, Sissy Pickler, Lacie Shannon, Erica Sircy, Shelly Springer, and yours truly, Buddy. However, one thing that I continually repeat to our team is to remember what we are here for--Save Souls! A total of 20 were baptized in the name of our Lord. What an awesome week! Day 5- The Kingdom is increasingTonight's guest blogger is Barry.Wednesday Blog: Greetings from your Brethren in El Salvador. God is good. God is so good! God continues to bless us on this trip. Many people (over 1200) have been aided by the medical team thus far. While back in the States you were using your GPS(TomTom's Garmin's, etc.), we were using God's. That is God's Plan of Salvation(GPS for short) was being shared with the city of Tonacatepeque. To date you now have 16 new brothers/sisters in Christ and 1 restoration. The seed is being sown, watered and God is giving the increase. Many thanks for your support and prayers. Continue to pray for us as we close this week for a great harvest and our safe travel back home. P.S. A big hello to our brothers and sisters at Owl Hollow. For Amy Fowler - what you and your sister did to people while you were young-you and Marie should be ashamed. (J. Vaughn is fine!) Day 4 Harvest Continues for the LordTonight we have a guest blogger, David says:Hello from El Salvador. Where does a person start when trying to reflect on a missions trip? Not sure, but let me start by telling you about where I have been the last 2 hours. Paige, our translator Gilbert, and I were involved in a bible study. After knocking on the door we were invited into a meager home, by American standards, and sat down with Lydia, Deloris and Astrid . . . Grandmother (70 years old), Daughter (45 years old) and Granddaughter (17 years old), the three most delightful people I have ever met. They were warm, genuine and had the most incredible beautiful eyes. You could really tell they were family. Even though I could not understand exactly what was being said during the bible study, it was so evident from facial expressions that there was incredible love between these three family members. The Grandmother fielded most of the questions from Gilbert and the other 2 nodded in agreement, showing great respect for her wisdom . . . wow, could we use this attitude in America? The study lasted for 2 hours and we will see them tonight at the Gospel meeting. We have a follow-up study set up for tomorrow, so please pray that God will bless out time with this family as we continue to share the good news. Someone please look up a word for me? EVANGELIO sounds like '81helio'. Not sure what that means, but brethren, it is being preached mightily in El Salvador. 5 years ago Scott was accepted into Pharmacy School. Bill Staggs was very helpful in that process and I told Scott, remember; some day Bill will ask you to assist on a campaign. So here we are 5 years later and as I pen this blog, I am amazed as I look over at Pharmacy window and there is my son working for the Lord . . . don't let him see this . . . but I am so proud of him. We are all tired after working 2 17 hour shifts, but our hearts are uplifted as 9 new brothers and sisters have been added to the Lord's Kingdom. Don't tell Buddy, but Paige and I accepted and ate 2 ice cream treats from a local family. The next 6 hours will let us know if will be sick or not . . . hope not! We send love to all you guys . . . please pray that the work will continue to flourish. Private note to PD and Kevin Bass . . .no more sleeping with the asps . . . we are in hotels. Addendum to the notes above: We did have one member of our team injure his foot-small fracture. (it is always small or minor when it is someone else). He is doing just fine now. We found something for him to do sitting down and he is contributing to the team. By the way, he has talked to his parents so don't worry about this being your son if you haven't heard from him. Also don't worry about him if you have heard. Only 2 more days working with the people of Tonaka. Day 3 Awesome StartThe first day of the clinic is always hard and frequently the hardest. Today was hard, but we opened the clinic by ten and by lunch time when we needed to close it was running just fine. Sigh.After lunch it was cruising like a well oiled machine, but then the local doctors, nurses and health professionals decided that they needed to leave at 3 or so. Double sigh. Anyway we survived and saw 270 or so patients. Not bad but no record for first day. The better news was on the evangelistic front. David Shannon, Phil Waggoner, and Steven Kirby got their teams on the street fairly early. We had two baptisms during the day and three more after evening services. To God be the glory!!! Our evening services consisted of English singing for 15 minutes, then a short period of Spanish singing and prayer. We then broke up into classes for the little children, a teenage girls class and a teenage boys class, a newcomers class for the two baptized during the day, and a preaching service for those who didn't go somewhere else. The three baptisms tonight were from the teenage girls class. What an awesome start to the week! We needed that considering that we were unable to open the clinic on Sunday like we normally do. Well, it is coming up on midnight and 5:15 comes early. Thanks for the prayers and encouraging words that have been left on our blog. Those give us the encouragement to continue on. Buddy Day 2This has been and interesting day and quite relaxing in some respects. Due to the national presidential election, we were advised to come back to the hotel for the day after we had services with Tonacatepeque and Alta Vista congregations.You can't compare the number of people that were on the streets last year to the number that were there this year. Vehicles could hardly move down the street. I am talking vehicles of any kind let alone our school bus size, painted bus. We made several detours as the driver searched for passable ways to get to the location where we conducted our services and will conduct the clinic this week. We had a very good bilingual service with songs in English and Spanish, prayers, scripture readings and sermon in either English or Spanish and translated in the other language. David Shannon delivered a good sermon as he always does. A short period of fellowship and short period of basic set up and we were off to the hotel for lunch. After lunch of peanut butter sandwiches and grille cheese sandwiches, we sorted and labeled our medicines. We also took time to repack all of our materials into logical lumps for the clinic. Dave Huffman led us in a devo this afternoon. Dinner was prepared by Chef Ronnie and we were done for the day about 715 or so tonight. All in all a fairly easy day, but productive. Also it was good to visit with our Latin brothers and sisters a bit before opening the clinic. Seems kind of wimpish, compared to previous trips. We have a team of 53 from 12 unique congregations. This year we have 16 people who have not been on a LAM trip before. We have 13 teenagers and 6 couples. Really a good mix of people. Well, we start early in the morning (breakfast at 545) and we will not be back to the hotel until late (10 or so), therefore I am hitting the sack and get a good night's sleep. Pray for our work: medical and evangelical. We came to save souls and we will be scouring the town for those who will listen. Buddy Day 1Day 1 started bright and early for all of us. Well, not so bright and not ALL of us were as early as the rest. Gotta get the whip out on a couple or teach them how to tell time.Delta made things interesting checking in. They relocated us a couple of times so we had luggage and people scattered all over the place. After a fashion everyone got checked in and through security. Kirby and the Franklin, KY, crew were waiting for us when we got to the gate. Shortly afterwards, Paul Brown and Zach Bear joined the team. We are kind of like a snow ball rolling down hill picking up folks all along the way. We started out with 31 in MJ and grew to 43 by the time the flight took off. The weather was very overcast and Delta got us off over an hour late. Here we are at the airport in Atlanta. Our pilot was a little young but she got us here. We arrived in San Salvador only 30 minutes late, but ordeal at airport was a little more troublesome than we hoped. In the past they waved us on through. This year they wanted to check our medicine. We had to find it all and separated our pharmacists and a couple of lackeys to hustle the meds. We passed their inspection and went on about our business. Not have a Spanish speaker among us hurt. Hey, kids, learn the language and get proficient. We need you. Day 0 Part bEvery trip we take to Latin America has it own "opportunities". This year we have an additional challenge of their presidential election. Their local elections were in January and our friend, the mayor of Tonaca, was defeated. We are anxious to see if we get the same reception that we had last year. He is still in office but is a lame duck so we will see.NPR has had stories about the upcoming national election in El Salvador and the political party that is communist is expected to win. One of the more conservation parties is in power now. Their election is on Sunday, March 15, the original first day of our clinic operation. We have been advised not to open it on Sunday. Their election is a big deal, as it should be. They are expecting significant traffic congestion and maybe large gatherings of voters at the polling places. All US citizens are advised to minimize their travel on Sunday. Salvadoran law prohibits non citizens from participating in any political activities. We have been asked not to wear red (communist party color). The other political parties use red, blue, white, and green, far to many colors to limit our wardrobe. I guess we should have asked everyone to wear black and gold . . . Good MJ colors. The concern of operating the clinic was that it might appear or spun that we were supporting a particular party or campaigning against the Communist party. We didn't come down here to be sit home without spreading the Word. Anyway we understand that Chef Ronnie will prepare our meals on Sunday at the hotel. So "life is good." We left a little late. Everyone seemed to be enjoying standing around in the cold weather talking, but we still got away before 4:30. We picked up Matt and Carrie Pardue in Murfreesboro and Barry and Susan Green in Manchester. Dr. Mike Thomason was under the weather too much to join us. He plans to come on Sunday. We stopped for dinner at Kimball and everyone scattered to their fast food place of choice. Some even hit two. Rose Kennedy was waiting for us at the hotel when we arrived about 11:30 Eastern. El Salvador 2009 Day 0Well, the great migration south has already started. 5 members of our team flew to El Salvador on Monday--Dave Huffman and Sarah Dutton of Forrest Park, Bill Staggs, Ronnie Travis and Dennis Buchanan (BUCK). Thye arrived and the preparations for our work are well under way.36 of us will be heading to Atlanta via buses and vans this afternoon. 5 men from Franklin will join up with us in Atlanta as well 2 men from Lynchburg, VA. Couples from OK, Mexico (our Elizabeth Pelfrey-Jimenez and her husband Jose Luis), and Honduras are coming as well. We will have 2 young ladies from Freed Hardeman, 2 Atkinson's and Josh Duncan from Brushy. We have Rose coming from Memphis and 31 members from MJ make up the team of 55 or so North Americans and 40 or so brethern from Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, and El Salvador complete the team. More a little later after we get to Atlanta. Please pray for the work and our safety. Buddy |
Mt. Juliet Church of Christ
Physical Addrees: 1940 N. Mt. Juliet Road Mt. Juliet, TN 37122 Mailing Address: P.O.Box 248 Mt.Juliet, TN 37121-0248 (615)758-2274 Fax:615-754-2351 Worship Services: Sunday Early Worship: 8AM Sunday Bible Study: 9:15AM Sunday Late Worship: 10:15AM Night Worship: 6PM Wednesday Bible Study: 7PM Past Archives: |