We have postponed our church camp to next weekend because many of our families are sick now. Do pray along with us that God will heal them so that all the families can join us for the church camp.

The good news is that PR and I have more time to rest and plan more details for the church camp. We also get a chance to experience the fiesta of Quito during this weekend. 6th of December is the foundation day of Quito so there are many parties on the street now. It is going to be an eye opener for us as it is our first time here in Quito during this celebration. Last year, we had our church camp in the beach during this holiday.

Tomorrow, PR and I are going to watch the bullfight in the stadium for the first time. This is part of the fiesta of Quito too. Hope that we will like it.

Dear all who are reading,

As mentioned in the previous post, we are leaving for our Annual Retreat tomorrow. We’re all very excited.

However, today, we received news that many of our members and/or their family members are sick. There’s a wave of flu, fever, cough, laryngitis or sorethroat going around in Quito it seems. Please pray with us for healing and protection and that everyone will be able to join us at the retreat without any hiccups. Thank you very much!

This is the last week before our annual church retreat which will take place from 4th to 6th December (leaving on night of 3rd Dec)!
We’re all very excited about it and this week is going to be a mad rush for all of us to prepare for the retreat.

ST is busying preparing the teachings, I’ve been busy preparing the children’s church materials and am going to hand it over to the main teachers in charge tomorrow. We’ve been going through the devotions with our team and everyone who is coming to the retreat will be involved in doing a presentation! We ’stole’ the idea from SG church’s last retreat to have our retreat theme as Heroes this year. Heehee.. and we’re doing something inaugural in Hope Quito retreat- the attendees are put into 4 groups (1 grp consisting of the children) and need to plan, practice and prepare something to present at the start of the retreat. There’ll be prizes for creativity, effort, significance and teamwork! Looking forward to watch their interesting ideas put into place esply since Latinos are very expressive! We’re also planning a ’secret’ mass dance item.. haha.. that should be very interesting too.

On top of this, we’re also planning ahead into Christmas which is happening very very soon after the retreat. If you are reading this, please pray with us for:

1) Wisdom in preparing teachings; anointed and Spirit-led and impactful teachings and praise and worship sessions
2) Hearts to be prepared to receive the Word of God and put it into practice, growing to become Christ-like heroes.
3) People to get to know each other deeper through the different activities and relationships to grow deeper and stronger. Church to be more united and loving.
4) Effectiveness and faithfulness for everyone preparing for the program, no matter what role. Games, devotions, first-aid, praise and worship, children’s church, participants.. etc.
5) Potential water-baptisees to be convicted and continue to grow in their faith and understanding of obeying and following our Lord!
6) Good weather so that our outdoor games will not be affected and people can enjoy themselves at the beach!
7) Everyone to grow and love the Lord more and commit themselves to Him more and enjoy themselves along the way.
8 ) Safe journey to and from and during the whole retreat, for the people and also our belongings.

Thanks!!

We exceeded 20,000 hits on our blog after about 1 year and 2 months.

We concluded that people are interested in church planting life overseas if we update our blog regularly and it is a good way to stay connected with our family/friends in Singapore. Our short and regular updates on blog, facebook and twitter have helped us to maintain good communication with our church in Singapore too. On hindsight, it is really worthwhile to devote 10-15 minutes to do updates every few days. Thank God for the internet world. PR and I have really benefited from the increased communication. Our friends in Singapore know what is happening in our lives and can pray for us more specifically. We also want to stay accountable in what we are doing in Ecuador. And it turns out that people are interested to read what is happening here and we have quite a number of faithful followers.

This was a previous post on our blog:

http://stprho.wordpress.com/2008/11/08/top-100-fastest-growing-wordpress-blog-in-the-world/

We watched the final of the Copa Sudamerica in church together just now. The match was between an Ecuador club, Liga and Brazil club, Fluminense. The people in Quito were very excited because Liga is a soccer club from Quito and this championship is very important to them. Luis suggested to me that we can screen the match live in church and invite people to come. We wrote a simple paper that says “Match shown in huge screen – Free!” and pasted it outside the church before the match started. Amazingly, there were quite a number of new people who came to join us. One family which visited us for the first time even said that they will come for our Sunday services after watching the soccer match. Looks like we should paste posters outside the church a few days before we screen movies or live soccer matches next time.

We enjoyed the match too as Liga won Fluminense 5-1. We got a shock when Fluminense scored after 40 seconds. But thank God Liga played very well and scored 5 goals in the next 90 minutes. Below is the video of the goals of the match:

Thank God that people have become more giving in church.

More people have started tithing and giving recently. Our church rent which is already very reasonable has dropped further because our landlady who is a soon-to-become member decided to tithe too. We are thinking to buy a big Christmas tree to decorate the church and a new visitor, Lalita, donated a big Christmas tree to us last week. This saves us quite a lot of money too. Thank God for many of our people who gave generously and joyfully though they are not rich.

With a decrease in church rent and increase in tithing/offering, it looks very possible to be self-sufficient as a church soon. Do continue to pray for us that we continue to grow in giving and serving in our church.

After one year of lessons with our Spanish teacher, Esthela, she received Christ into her heart today! She was asking me for some advice for her life and mentioned about wanting to receive forgiveness in her life so that she can forgive others. I took this opportunity to challenge her to receive Christ into her life and she said yes! I prayed in English and Peiru translated to Spanish, and Esthela repeated after her.

It all happened within an hour of Spanish lesson. I think God is teaching me that He can use us to do His work in seemingly normal circumstances.

We had a blackout tonight again. This time PR and I went out to catch a movie. There were many things to plan but I think God wanted us to take a break. We cannot do much planning in the darkness without electricity so we decided to go to to places where there are still light.

We did some reading in a Mac nearby before catching Michael Jackson’s “This is it” in cinema. The dancing and singing in the movie were great. We enjoyed the movie and the few hours of rest.

Ecuador’s electricity minister says hydropower shortages have forced the government to ration electricity. Blackouts have already hit Quito and the Pacific port of Guayaquil. We are now experiencing blackouts almost everyday in Quito.

We had a most romantic candlelight caregroup in church just now. There was a blackout at 7pm in the church area and we set up candles to continue our caregroup. Surprisingly, the atmosphere of the caregroup was very good with limited visibility. We played games to know one another better and I shared a little on the roles of God in our lives. Thank God the hearts of our brothers and sisters were very open and they shared about how God is their father, friend, saviour, master, judge, king, guide, teacher etc in their lives. We spent quite a long time in prayer as we prayed together that we will know God more and experience more aspects of God’s role in our lives. It was a delightful time of sharing and learning more about God.

I was very encouraged when a new believer, Dario told me after caregroup that he actually looked forward to every Sunday to learn more about the bible and get to know more people in church. God is indeed working in the hearts of our people. Do pray for us that the ration of the electricity will be over soon as we are concerned that it will affect our service on Sundays. PR and I had problems using the internet these 2 days as there was no electricity in our area in the morning. Thank God that there was electricity from afternoon onwards. We hope that the lack of electricity will not affect our ministry too much. Do pray with us that God will supply electricity to the whole of Ecuador soon.

Below is a link to the conversion testimony of one of my favorite actors in Singapore, Chew Chor Meng:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3419582/testimony_2of2/