Kinch Update 11/25/08

Things are going well here.  Gonzalo, Carmeyla and their little 8 month old Nicolas, finally leave us for Mitu and their village of San Luis, this coming Sunday.  It has been a real blessing to have had them here since February.  We are tired and will be ready for a break.  Pam is doing a final edit of nasalization and fine grammar points with Gonzalo on Acts.  They just finished rechecking through Acts 26 tonight.  They have 2 more chapters to go, before Gonzalo leaves us. Seems we have been dealing with grammar issues on this book for a very long time, but we can now see how the Lord chose to use this book in Gonzalo's life this year, while he and Carmeyla have been living with us for all these months.  They have really grown stonger in the Lord, and they have been learning to lean on the Lord this year.  It has been wonderful to see the growth and maturing process at work in Gonzalo and Carmeyla's lives.  They are a neat couple, and we are so blessed to have both of them helping with the translation process -- Gonzalo now doing some heavy lilfting on the translation end, and Carmeyla, a whiz on the computer, doing data entry, rough edit changes, and lots and lots of keyboarding!  Years ago we NEVER could have guessed that Yuruti would be helping us with pretty fine-tuned computer skills!

Gonzalo wanted to print up a new draft of the Yuruti chorus book so that they could have something more substancial to use in worship in the villages.  We just got 45 copies printed up and through bindry today.  Gonzalo and Carmeyla are happy!  We are sending packages of 10 to each of the 4 villages of San Marcos, Consuelo, Puerto Loma and San Luis.  Folks from the villages who chose to come for worship with the believers, will have to share the copies, but it will give all of us chance to test it and see how it works.  The Yuruti wanted to have Yuruti and Spanish choruses mixed in the chorus book.  That way, we ended up with about 100 choruses they can now sing together.  We trust that the Lord will use this new chorus book to encourage worship in each of these villages.

We plan to head to the US around Dec 9th, and be in the US for about 2-3 months.  Will see how our plans shape up, but we do need to make some church contacts while we are in the States.  Do you know what plans might be in the works for Missions Conference in 2009 at the Bible Church?  Just wondering as would like to see if in some of our travels we would be able to drop in and see you all, if you are still in Little Rock.  We continue to pray for you both, as you keep looking for His next steps for you.  We want to keep in touch, wherever the Lord leads you.  

We just witnessed another Yuruti couple being baptized about 3 wks ago.  What a blessing!  They are coming to know the Lord, one at a time.  Please be praying for Wilmer and Fanny, as this was their last year of Bible School, and Wilmer realizes that his "famous" temper needs to be really softened by the Lord.  As a couple they have really grown a lot this year.  They are from the village of San Marcos, on the south side of the Mitu mountains ... a very difficult and traditional village.  Gonzalo and Carmeyla will be planning to find times to travel to that village and encourage them.  These next 3 months will be important ones for all of the believers, as they attempt to reach out to each other, to encourage each other, and to do planning for outreach and ministry to their respective villages, and to the rest of the tribe.  There is a lot of opposition to the entrance of the Gospel, but the believers have been doing a lot of talking and praying about how to reach their ethnic group with the Gospel.  The men will also begin working on helping us get a rough edit of Titus, Philemon and 1-2 Timothy, while continuing to do rough edit work on Matthew during these months we are apart.  They will also be doing their yearly planting of crops, so that they can have food for the rest of the year.  It is going to be a busy time for them ... and for us.  These will be our next books to tackle after the first of the year.  the first draft is pretty rough, and needs a lot of work ... and the men need the message of these books.