Christmas 2025

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

John 1:14

I must honestly say how I greatly enjoy the Spanish translation of John 1. In Spanish there are two words that can be used to express “Word”. One of those is a “palarbra”, a general word used, but in John 1 they use the word “Verbo”. This carries the significance that Christ’s coming had action, it had reason, and purpose. The reason was what Paul Tripp describes as the dark side of the Christmas story. Our sin is what brought the Son of God to the earth. We were the reason, but God had a purpose. Our Salvation! The baby laid in the manger was on a rescue mission. We pray that in the middle of all the running around this Christmas season, that you would take a moment to reflect on our great need of that baby boy. Emmanuel!

Most of the months just mix together at this point. November turned quickly to December and just like that the month is almost over. However, I am thankful for the moment this morning to pause and give thanks to God for what he has done in the last month. As the temperature rises here in Paraguay we begin to close out ministries for the year and prepare for summer break. Here is a quick recap of what the last month has looked like.

Closing out ministries is never fun. We have had a great year making memories with many wonderful people. Kids club wrapped up really well for the year. The heat snuck in those last couple weekends, so numbers were down, but we were able to give the kids a nice meal and some cake on the last day. It really is a joy to serve these communities and to finally be breaking ground into their lives. The other day while Kathleen and I were out on a walk a couple of the boys from the kids club yelled out to say hi, and that was pretty special.

Last night we had the closing of our Bible Study group in Hernandarias. I have really grown to love this group and Kathleen has just started her connection with the ladies. We are excited for what 2026 will bring as we hope to start an evening Bible Study that we can open to the community. Will you please pray for this? Also, please pray for a young couple that has come a few times to the study. I am fairly confident that they are not believers, but they are asking a lot of questions!

We also had the blessing of having Pastor Mancuello and his wife stop by for a quick meal. It was great to finally have some one-on-one time with them to discuss how we can help better serve them down in Encarnacion. We are excited for how the Lord is opening doors into this ministry. We will be sure to share more about this in the near future.

The kids are setting in nicely to a few weeks off from school. Kathleen is able to connect with more of the teachers because they are free in the mornings. The girls have helped with making many Christmas treats and Temperance has been hard a work making Christmas gifts. As many of you are trying to keep warm, we are working hard to cool off these days, so often the kids will throw on their swimsuits and go play in the water out back. It is nice to have all the laughter around the house and to hear the kids making great memories. We even spent one afternoon making gingerbread houses and it was a blast!

While things are slowing down and Ciudad del Este is becoming a ghost town we will be staying home and keeping busy. The kids will resume school after the new year and we will try and take a few days to get out and enjoy. However, I will be preaching twice in January and as we bring in 2026 there is lots to be working on and get organized. Lord willing I will be able to share more details about the 2026 year in our January update. As for now, please continue for the growth of the ministry here in Paraguay.