Jamie's Email #3 (Sent 6/28/06)
 

Hey everyone!

     My life is so crazy here! This week the missionaries are in Quito at a missions training conference, so all of us summer missionaries are on our own. The past couple weeks have been crazy and amazing, and God has done some really awesome things with the groups of International World Changers. There are no groups this week because the missionaries are at their conference, so we have been going to the markets and sharing salvation bracelets and to an orphanage on our own. It's so different to be doing this and making our own plans and providing our own materials instead of leading groups...but it's so neat!

     This past weekend, we went to Quito and spent three days having some fun. We shopped at the market, which is always fun, but I think the most awesome part was when we all hiked Pichincha, one of the volcanoes here in Ecuador. It was a five mile hike and at the end we were at an elevation of about 14,000 feet! It was really cool, because we've seen God work in so many lives these past few weeks, and at the top of the volcano we saw a completely different, but still sooooo amazing way that God shows Himself to us.

     Please pray for the nationals here that I have made friends with, particularly my friends Luis, Silvia, Alfredo, Patrona, and Eduardo. Those people have started some key church plants on their own and it is very important to their community that these churches grow. When David and Debbie and Ruby and Fletcher are reassigned and leave Ambato, these young nationals (the oldest of the prior list is 24 and the youngest is 18) will be on their own in evangelizing their communities...this is the main purpose of all of us being here--to train the nationals to plant and grow churches of Christian believers. Not only are these people I see and work with every day just the nationals that live here, but they have become my close friends. It means a great deal to them that people not only in Ecuador but also in the U.S. are praying for them and praying that God will work in their lives.

     Please keep them in your prayers as well as the churches that they have planted. Also, please pray for my friend Klever who has been ill lately and has been unable to work with over the past week and a half.

     Thank you so much for your prayers and your support, it means as much to my Ecuadorian friends as it does to me! More updates to come!

-Jamie