Youth Night

Teaching young people to do the work of the ministry is wonderful especially when they have the opportunity to put their lessons into action.  We are thankful for the way that the Perezes have organized the church and annex here in Colonia, allowing for the young people to serve in nearly every capacity.  It puts the church at a distinct advantage!

This weekend SIGMA ended and we completed our official responsibilities here with the youth.  It has been a tremendous pleasure and blessing serving the Lord in this ministry!  We trust God has allowed us to impact the lives of these young people.  Our prayer is that they will continue taking sermon notes, memorizing Scripture, doing their devotions, serving the Lord and following after Him as they seek His will for their lives.  Below are pictures of the last SIGMA meeting and last night's youth service. 

 

Kaitlin playing and David leading for song service for the last SIGMA meeting.

Getting ready to watch Nu Delta's announcements video - absolutely hilarious!

These guys pretended to be news anchors, David Eastiene (Dav ideas tiene) and Brandon Oticias (Brando noticias).  This was their 2nd video.  

Pastor Andres, Mexican missionary to Uruguayan Jewish people, preached on the need for workers in God's Harvest fields.  He reminded us about God's provision - where He calls He will provide!

Brandon and Jona heading off to pass out invitations to the Cola Wars rally we're holding next weekend.

Everyone heading up to Centro to pass out invitations to Cola Wars.

Eliana, Elizabeth and Kaitlin passing out invitations to the Cola Wars.

 

Reading their invitations.  You can see the girls in the center background.

Our 2nd annual ice-cream treat.  Jony is pretending to eat this cone he found in the trash.  I didn't realize it was actually from the trash can...GROSS!

Some of the girls enjoying their soft-serve.

The rest of the girls.

Our honorary youth...aka missionary/youth leaders kids.

Some of our youth leaders.  Seba was avoiding me, for some reason I've earned the title of paparazzi.  David had to take his sick brother home.  And I'm taking the pictures.  :-)

Thanks to all of you who were praying for the SIGMA year!  No doubt the Lord worked greatly as a result of your prayers.  Please continue to pray for these young people as they continue to walk with the Lord.  Please pray for David and Mark Perez as they will be leading the youth group. 

SIGMA Awards

The awards banquet was one of our favorite parts of the SIGMA program we ministered in while in North Carolina. A few weeks before the banquet Pastor Jim and Lisa Ogle along with the adult leaders would get together to brainstorm and plan. The decorating took a lot of work, and over the course of 3 days the auditorium was transformed completely and ready to surprise a bunch of really excited and hopeful teens and adults alike. The years we were at Emmanuel the themes varied greatly from a trip to Mexico to one under the water, and from a castle courtyard to a patriotic rally. Certainly we learned a lot about throwing a BIG shindig with a little bit of money. Most importantly we learned that it is important to "render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor." (Romans 13:7)

Tonight we rendered honor and tribute to our faithful teens and also announced the winner of the 2nd SIGMA block. Though there was no change to the inside of the auditorium the change in many of the young people is evident. We are so proud of all of the young people and their hard work and faithfulness!

It's time to let you know who won......drum roll please.....and the winners are....... the Lopez Lions (los Leones). Pastor Daniel and his wife, Amparo, led the Lions: Eliana, Elizabeth, Kaitlin, Valeria, Nicolas, Yeni, and Ana (pictured above) plus Nahuel and Rudy. As a team:

• They said 245 verses, plus an additional 44 of those were said in chapter form. Chapter verses have to be said twice in a row in order to get the bonus for those verses.
• They completed 238 days of devotions.
• They took 94 notes of sermons.
• They served in the church 70 times.
• They sang a special with their entire team.
• They had 6 visitors in their team meetings.
• They completed 3 community service projects. Though they only received points for 2 of them because they did not have their entire team present for one project. 2 of those projects were several hours of cutting and hauling grass and weeds and cleaning up yards. The other project was a stocked toy box for the church nursery.
• One of the members completed a book report on Missionary Nate Saint.

These young people are the top two verse sayers from each team. Eliana said 46 verses, Brandon said 41, Tatiana said 52, Maria Eugenia said 146, Melissa said 40 and Kaitlin said 80.

These young people were faithful in completing more than 70% of their devotions for the 2nd block: Paola, Brandon, Nacho, Yeni, Eliana, Melissa, Kaitlin, Maria Eugenia, Eliana G and Valeria.

Thank you, once again, for praying for our work in SIGMA. It is a labor of love! We fell in love with youth work while in Bible College, so it is a particular blessing from the Lord that we are able to help and encourage young people to grow in the Lord here on the mission field. And train Uruguay's leaders of tomorrow.

We covet your prayers for the full SIGMA "year" that we hope to begin this fall (March or April). It will entail more work on our parts, however, we trust that the end dividend will be young people whose lives honor Christ!

SIGMA Stats

We had a special visitor in SIGMA tonight, Santiago, Melissa's oldest brother. This is a tremendous answer to prayer! I thought I would share some statistics with you all from this block of SIGMA which ended tonight.

The young people collectively:

• Said 584 verses.
• Had 606 days of devotions.
• Took 284 sermon notes.
• Wrote 24 book reports on books of the Bible as well as Christian growth books.
• Completed 3 missions projects.

The winning team will have to remain a secret for a couple more weeks.

Ministry Moments

I apologize for my relatively silent blog, lately, we have been so busy that to think of things to write in the spare time I have to write them has been difficult.

We are witnessing God working out His will and His way in our lives and in those of whom we are called to minister to, and with. There is much to trust God for and much more for which to praise Him.

Because of sick kids, I missed Scott's preaching on Sunday night before last. From all accounts he did an excellent job! One lady said his preaching was impeccable. I believe this was the first time for us [our kids] to hear Scott preach expositorily. Not that it's a new concept to him. It is hard to preach through the Bible when you are the guest preacher or only preaching once a month. I'm excited to hear what the Lord has laid upon his heart as he teaches us through the book of 3rd John. Scott's desire is to begin preaching once a week. Please be in prayer for him as this requires not only study of the Bible but a re-study of everything to put his message into Spanish.

The past 4 weeks of SIGMA have been exciting and disappointing. We have witnessed, once again, that there are a handful of teens that excel in memorization. We have encouraged them to continue on but also to encourage their team members to memorize. What we are seeing is those who think it's their (the memorizers) job to do all the work. Boy, don't we already see enough of the "pew sitter" attitude? So now we take on the roles of helpers for all the teens in the areas they need encouragement, be it with devotions, verses, or service in the church. The exciting part is that even though the devotions are hard hitting we are seeing many of the young people faithful in completing them. A friend recently wrote "Today I chose_____because I want to be_____." All of us need to fill in the blanks but our young people especially need to learn that they are becoming today what they will be tomorrow. Please continue to pray for the young people here as they learn to set Godly habits in their lives.

Our ladies ministry ended for the year with a Christmas party. Amparo Lopez spoke on an unusual theme for Christmas...Proverbs 31. The year means looking forward to the next. What will we chose to do, to be, this year? Will we chose to be Proverbs 31 women because we want to honor God with our lives? I was struck with the fact that Jesus' mother, Mary, had this attitude. The Lord definitely has been at work this past year in the lives of our ladies. We have seen growth. We have seen incredible testimonies through incredibly difficult trials. We have seen women stepping up to serve. We have seen a burden for souls. We have seen results of prayer. And last night we saw further evidence of God's work in that we had 40 volunteers to work in the nursery this coming year! I believe 32 of them are new volunteers. Now we will be able to have 2 separate nurseries with 2 workers in each nursery, and each worker will only need to serve once a month.

Without a doubt God is working here. There is no question that your prayers have been answered. Thank you for your faithfulness to the cause of Christ here in Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay!!!

Negro...

After several checks through the scores to make sure numbers were tallied correctly, a winner of the first block of Sigma was announced. The black team! The competition was extremely close. Several more verses said and more devotions completed by one team would have resulted in a different winner. We are proud of all the hard work put in by the young people.

Pastor Daniel Lopez preached on giving God our maximum. From Luke 10:27, "And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind..." God is not satisfied with half of our love and devotion. He wants all of our hearts, all of our minds and all of our strength. Are we doing everything to the maximum for the Lord? We should not be satisfied with mediocrity.

Scott and I were pleased to see many from the other teams cheering for the winners. But there are others who could not rejoice for the winners and had some very negative things to say. Certainly that attitude is not Christ-like. Nor does it give honor and glory to the Lord. It is our desire that they will see how that attitude is definitely not giving God the maximum. Keep praying, please!

Gratefulness

This past week's devotions were on gratefulness. Tonight's message focused on the theme of this weeks devotions reminding the young people to be grateful. One of the passages used was Esther chapter six, which holds a treasure trove of lessons we could learn about gratefulness...faithfulness....meekness...pride....

Because King Ahasuerus was grateful that Mordecai saved his life, he honored Mordecai. After Mordecai was honored he went right back to sit at the king's gate (faithfulness). Because Esther was meek towards her husband the king he honored her by allowing her to make a request of him. And as a result of Haman's pride he was hung on the very gallows he had made to murder Mordecai, and all the Jews including Ester.

I'm not really sure if all that was preached on tonight because the young man who was preaching speaks so fast that often I get about a quarter of what he says. So the above is just my input on things I learned while studying this chapter for the past couple weeks.

Even though I didn't understand all the message I really enjoyed tonight's youth meeting. I was so encouraged that I got to listen to verses said by teens who are faithful in their walk with the Lord, but also (especially) by teens who have really been struggling. The teens collectively said 190 verses this past week. There were several chapters of Scripture that were quoted. Twenty-six young people completed their weekly devotions. And on one team everyone completed their devotions for the week. Praise the Lord! Keep praying!


PS. For all the interested SIGMA teens and workersthe Black team won last week, while Blue won the Devotions and the Game, and Red won the Verses. Oh yeah, brother Jim, now I understand how that happens!

This week's character quality...Deference

It is our desire that the young people, and adults, involved in the youth ministry would grow in their faith. Each young person has a devotional book which includes a section for sermon notes. The theme for this first SIGMA block is based on the character qualities of Christ. Each week's devotions have a different character quality - deference, thankfulness, honesty, meekness, and self-control. It is our prayer that each young person would understand more of what it means to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ; that they would know just who Jesus Christ is; and that most importantly they would place their faith and trust in Him for their salvation.

Tonight was another great youth meeting. Throughout the past week we were encouraged by the number of verses being said to us and the leaders and close to 200 verses were said this past week!!! One Christian growth book and one missionary biography were read. A mission project is being planned. Five visitors were brought. And over 60 ministries were counted - young people playing in the orchestra, teaching or helping in Sunday School, and a mission trip to Salto, Uruguay to help the Sanders with their new church plant were among those counted.

SIGMA Begins

For several weeks we have been preparing to begin a new youth program here in Colonia. Scott and I had two full years as SIGMA team leaders in our church in North Carolina. We also had several months after that helping in the youth department while we began deputation. I can't tell you how thankful we are for having had the opprtunity to train under Jim Ogle's leadership. The things he taught us about young people and working with them are a tremendous asset to us. We have accessed that training to begin a new youth program.

I guess I should call it SIGMA modified. For now we are only have 5 weeks. After this period we will announce a winner. Have a couple weeks break, announce new teams and do another 6 weeks. In March, Lord willing, we plan to have the full school year SIGMA year.

Here in Colonia we have our youth meetings on Saturdays. So tonight we kicked off SIGMA. Our team leaders are Gabriel and Rebekah Chauvie, Pastor Daniel and Amparo Lopez and Pastor Archie and Ruth. They all did a fantastic job cheering on the young people as their rosters were announced. Then later in playing the games. They encouraged the young people to pay attention and to take sermon notes by setting that example personally. Finally they did a great job explaining the "rules" about verses, points and projects in their team meetings .

We came home with 4 very excited young people. I took some videos on my cell phone of the games. I hope you enjoy the excitement.