It's a beautiful day in Quito Ecuador, looking out my window I can see a beautiful snow capped mountain on this clear day. Despite living here I'm still always blown away at how beautiful this country is and feel so blessed to be able to take it in.

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of going to the pastoral retreat where I was asked to speak to the children (youth) of pastors. I was asked to talk on the subject of life as the child of a pastor and what that means for us and our relationship with the Lord. My focus was the need to develop our own identity in Christ. Sometimes growing up in a home that is constantly in "ministry" can be difficult. Often times for children of pastors our identity is wrapped up in our parent's work and our own spiritual growth can be hindered by rebellion or complacency or even our need to be "perfect". I think in many cases that is even stronger here in Ecuador where often times a pastor's children are expected to be a part of the ministry or do things out of expectation rather than a calling. In many cases they are expected to be a part of the worship band, teach sunday school, preach, be the youth pastor... It is often simply by default rather than a true calling or passion and that personal relationship with Christ can be lost in the mix. This is also a culture in which your are told what to believe rather than encouraged to study, discern and develop your own understanding of Christ and what it means to be a christian. I encouraged the kids to not get lost in all of the expectations of perfection but to truly seek out a personal relationship with the Lord, to make it real for them rather than to simply follow along because of who their father is. I believe it was an encouraging time for them as they were able to voice some of their concerns or frustrations with being constantly under the church's microscope.

The following week I traveled out to a Bible school where I translated for my friend Aune Carlson as she spoke to the students about community. The Bible school is an 3 month, annual gathering of students from Ecuador and Sweden where they study the book of Acts and learn about missions, ministry and what it means to be the church. Our time with the students was wonderful and we were able to challenge them on going deeper in community. Because of the severe cultural differences there are some very clear divisions that are perpetuated by each culture's observation of differences in how things are viewed or how they respond to various scenarios. In many cases, these differences are viewed in a negative light. We asked the students to list out some of the differences that they had noticed in their time there and it was interesting to hear how the differences are often times described in Us vs Them language with the end result being a clear expression of our way is better. Our challenge to the students was to re-frame their way of looking at differences to try to understand the why behind the differences in order to potentially understand that different isn't wrong or worse but that there are some cultural reasons for those differences and that we can learn from them and potentially find a valid purpose in them.

At first when we challenged them simply on their language and on what we had observed as divisive perspectives, the students became defensive wanting to claim that in fact they were doing great in the area of community and didn't need to change. Even the director of the school responded and admitted to not liking the challenge when it was first issued but then reflecting on it and realizing that perhaps an outside perspective allowed them to see things that they couldn't see from the inside. In the end I believe we were able to encourage them to find areas of commonality as the springboard for deepening their community as a way to approach their identity within the community that is "the church".

Please pray for the students at the school as this is their last week and they will all be heading back to their countries or home towns. May this three months not have been simply a gathering but that they will be able to return to their homes with a renewed passion for the Kingdom and the sharing of the love of Christ as they share the gospel with their friends and families and the communities that they engage in on a daily basis.

FINALLY...as related to the title of this letter.

I am rejoicing as this week I read that a friend of mine is being baptized this Sunday. My friend is a musician who I met years ago at one of his shows in Chicago. He is a brilliant singer/songwriter who in the 80's was touring the USA and getting a lot of radio play with his band. When we met he was shocked at the fact that I was a seminary student and as we became closer we got to discuss God and theology. At one point he had told me that if he ever got married again he wanted me to perform the ceremony. At the time he was very much living the rock and roll lifestyle so this week it was encouraging to see that the seeds that have been planted in him have born fruit. His name is Chris Shaffer. Here is the song that put them on the map back in the day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajbHkLk6LgY

Please join me in praising the Lord for his life and his new found relationship and identity in the Lord.

This week I'll be traveling to Colombia for the first time in 22 years since we were evacuated in 1989. I'll be spending time with our missionaries there visiting some of the microenterprise projects that they are working with as I get close to completing the curriculum I've been writing and preparing to launch the program in churches here in Ecuador.

Please continue to pray for that process as I wrap up the writing and begin the training. We will be running our pilot program at the church "Rios de Agua Viva" (Rivers of living Water).

Despite what has been a difficult year, the Lord continues to work in and around me in some amazing ways. During the last couple of years I've been developing some important relationship with the guys that Joey and I used to play soccer with. During this time my desire has always been to be able to study the bible with these friends in a deep and meaningful way and the time has finally come. Especially over the last year I've been suggesting to them individually that I would love to study the word with them and as time has passed they have become more and more receptive.

You know their names because I've asked you to pray for them from time to time and this last Wednesday I invited Pedro, David, and Daniel, along with their wives and or girl friends over for dinner. Joined by my good friend and fellow missionary David Gardeen and his wife we've been praying for these friends and seeking the Lord's guidance so that beyond the gospel that we've been sharing with them on a day to day basis we would be able to enter into something deeper. After dinner this Wednesday I asked the group if they would be willing to go through a Bible study with me and as is the Lord's faithful standard, their hearts were open and they are all willing.

Starting next Wednesday we will be meeting every other week to go through a Bible study that takes us through the biblical narrative from Creation to Christ. Please pray for David and Carolina, Pedro and Elena, Daniel and Gabriela, David and Linsey and me as we delve into the scriptures together. May God be revealed in a powerful life changing way and may his name be honored and glorified in this process.

Additional Prayer Requests: This has continued to be a difficult year for me as the physical struggles have at times turned into other struggles. Please pray that I will find the strength to continue on.

In addition to the micro enterprise development curriculum that I'm still in the process of writing, I am hoping to be able to start a 20's and 30's young professionals group in the city of Quito. I Please pray for wisdom as we seek direction in this area.

Blessings to you and thank you for your continued prayer and support.

Joshua

Well, despite a difficult beginning of the year, the summer proved to be amazing. My trip to work with the Waorani as well as my time in the coastal jungle town of Zancudo made the summer overshadow the difficulties of the beginning of the year.

I joined Chet Williams and his family again this summer helping to lead a couple of short term teams into the jungles of Ecuador this summer. We partnered with a group that works with the Waorani and we put on a couple of camps for youth.

The town of Zancudo (mosquito) is on the western side of Ecuador near the border with Colombia. After riding a bus all night from Quito you arrive at a little town where you have to then get on a motorized canoe to then procede another three hours up river to the first of three communities. Zancudo, Santo Domingo and Colon are three small villages populated by the decedents of escaped African slaves. When slave ships were circling the continent, they would pull into fresh water inlets for a few days to kill the barnacles that had accumulated on the boat so that they could then be scraped off of the hull. Sometimes in this fresh water inlets the slaves would revolt and escape into the jungle.

Our team was based out of Zancudo where we held the youth camp but a group of us was asked to travel to the other two communities up river to do VBS type activities with the kids. We spent two days in each of the villages playing with the kids, singing songs, sharing some skits and sharing the gospel.

The village of Colon which is the farthest away has a very large population of children and our first day there was crazy. Santo Domingo has many children as well but all of the teachers at the school are Christian and the children are quite obviously better behaved than those in Colon. Because our first day of activities was so hectic we devised a plan to assign 10-15 kids to each one of the team that was traveling with me in order to keep them occupied and try to maintain a little more control over the activities. Once we arrived and the children had all congregated in the school yard I had them all line up by size and I divided them up. Once all of the other leaders had been assigned a group there were still about 20 teen age boys who had not been assigned. As most of the planned activities were more geared to the younger children, I grabbed a soccer ball and had the boys come with me to another area of the town where I hung out with them and played games.

When it was time for my team to break for lunch I handed the young men the soccer ball, got them split up into teams, started the soccer game and told them I would return. Upon my return from lunch I noticed that the game had ended and most of the boys were upset at either the ref or their own team. I asked them to sit down in the shade and we began to talk about why it was important to have a standard set of rules to play by as well as direction on a team. About 15 guys were remaining and I began to share my story and the gospel with them using their frustration in the soccer game as a launching point to talk about Jesus and his role in my life. Once I had done a quick overview I asked them if I could continue sharing deeper. I told them that they didn't have to stay and listen and offered them the chance to take the soccer ball and go play something else if they wanted but explained that I would like to share something very important with them. All 15 guys said that they wanted to stay. I explained that I wasn't taking down names and that I didn't get any special points for them listening and also explained that I didn't have anything to give them if they stayed to listen. I gave them every possible reason to walk away but they all said they wanted to hear what I had to say and they stayed. I walked them through an overview of the story of the Bible from the Creation to Christ.

I spent some time explaining the separation from God caused by sin, the need to atonement in the old testament and God's gift of his son Jesus. I then spoke of Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. I had some candy in my pocket so I used it to explain the fact that it's a free gift but that we have to choose to accept that gift much like they choose to accept the candy or not accept it. I also shared John 10:10 with them explaining what life in abundance is. Finally I asked them if they would like to know Jesus and pursue the life that a relationship with him entails. All 15 of them said that they would and I lead them in a prayer of committing their lives to Jesus and the acceptance of the gift of his salvation. It was amazing and so very simple, a true reminder that God is at work. When we were done I explained that this commitment meant accountability and learning and we all walked back to the school yard so that I could introduce them to Sixto who lives and works there. Sixto explained to them that he would be discipling them and would be keeping them accountable. I told them I would try to send them bibles the next chance I got.

That hour with those young men made this whole year worth while as I was again reminded of God's love for his people. I give God the glory that those young men are now in process of knowing him and hopefully carrying his message to their families.

Please join me in prayer for these young men, for Sixto and Libio who are there as missionaries to their own people and for the three towns. May God's name be honored and glorified!

The photos is of me with the young men who that day gave their life to Jesus.

In 1956 five missionaries working in Ecuador were desperately trying to make contact with an indigenous group in the jungle in order to save their lives. There was external pressure for the Ecuadorian government to go into the jungle and wipe out the Waorani people. According to some anthropologists, the Waorani at that time were the most murderous people group in history. Through revenge killings from one village to another was devastating their population. Their intolerance for visitors was just as violent and there was rumors of government intervention to wipe them out completely.

Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian and Nate Saint had decided to go into the jungle in an attempt to share the gospel with the Waorani. Nate, a pilot with Missionary Aviation Fellowship had spotted a Waorani village while flying over the jungle and had been using a basket to lower gifts to them. Contact had been made from the air but when the missionaries tried to make personal contact by landing on a small beach they were speared to death.

Through a Waorani woman who had walked out of the jungle and made contact with outsiders, the missionaries widows and their children later moved into the jungle and spent time with the Waorani sharing the gospel with them and forgiving them for the killing of their husbands and fathers. That marked the end of the murderous era for the Waorani who continue to live in the jungle but have chosen a non murderous/vengeful existence.

Last week I had the privilege of going into the Waorani village of Nuneno to join some missionaries who work with the Waorani. We were joined by Cypress Church from California who has been visiting the village and developing relationship with them for the last three years.

Without going into detail about all of the activities from playing with the kids to eating monkey or singing, I'd like to simply share my highlights. As the "translator" for the team, I was asked to translate for one of the older men in the village who wanted to share his testimony. The testimony I had the privilege of translating was that of one of the men who took part in the killing of the five missionaries. I was in tears as I heard him (Grandpa Mincaye) share not only the details of what and how the killing happened but continued on to tell of how the Lord has changed his life.

Later that week as we gathered in the river to baptize those who had decided to publicly demonstrate their obedience to the Lord I was again moved to tears as Grandpa Mincaye spoke to someone he was baptizing. His message to them was so passionate and so heartfelt I couldn't contain my tears of Joy. Nearly sixty years after he had speared the men that were trying to share the gospel with him he was in the river baptizing in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit.

I too was asked to be a part of the baptism as we sang and rejoiced together with the Waorani who were coming to the waters to show their obedience in baptism. Praise the Lord!

Please join me in prayer for the Waorani. While there are many believers, there is little support. They live very isolated and are constantly being bombarded by tourists and visitors who bring in temptations from the outside. There are very few missionaries and many villages that they can only get to a few times a year. Please pray also for the various missionaries who have been called to share the Love of our Lord with this amazing group of people.

Finally, please pray for me as I continue in a busy summer. I returned from the jungle just last night and the day after tomorrow I'll be going to another village, this time in the coastal jungle to a community of descendants of escaped slaves. They live in nearly complete isolation from the rest of Ecuador and can only be reached by a three hour motorized canoe ride upriver. We will be going in to put on a similar program to the one we did for the Waorani and will be doing so in support of the handful of local christians who have returned to their birthplace because they feel the call to minister among their people. Pray for the safety of the team that joins us from California and the rest of the missionaries who are leading the trip. God is already at work in this place, pray that we will be sensitive to his leading to how we can be a part of the work.

(Pictured above: Grandson Mincaye - Missionary to the Waorani, Miriam - a young girl who is a Shuar indian but works with the missionaries to the Waorani, ME. Miriam was one of the 20 people baptized in the Shiripuno that day)

I know, according to the church calendar I'm a few weeks late on using this title but it's a truth that always rings true no matter what the date. It's also what someone said at the denominational offices here in Quito when they saw me this week. I apologize for the long silence in my communication but it's been a very rough 2011. He is risen was an appropriate comment towards me because it had been nearly two months since I had been seen anywhere outside of my own home. As you well know I started my year with an end of January knee surgery. After nearly two months of physical therapy I was feeling in tip top shape when I started to feel ill. Normally when I start to feel sick I refuse to allow it to take over and in fact 90% of the time I feel better the next day. Even when others around me are getting sick I refuse to allow it to attack me and sure enough I don't get sick. I thought it would be the same this time but as luck would have it, a week after I had started to feel ill I was feeling worse every day. Finally after about a week and a half I woke up one day and every single joint in my body ached so bad that I could barely move.

I couldn't straighten my elbows, my glands in the back of my neck were swollen, my fingers, back, toes, ankles, and knees were in unbearable pain. My stubbornness knows a limit so I willed myself out of bed, into the shower and down to a clinic. Finding nothing obviously wrong with me they ran some blood tests and told me it was a viral infection. The beauty of a viral infection is that it is untreatable. The only way to deal with it is to REST. I'm not a big fan of said treatment but was told it would probably only last another week. I went home, put on a movie or two and rested...and rested....and rested...and I wasn't feeling any better. I knew that there was one outstanding blood test result that takes longer to get so a friend went to the hospital and picked it up for me. There in the numbers and strange names was my answer. Epstein Bar. No, not a jewish law exam but what we commonly know as the kissing disease, MONO. After researching online and asking a few nurse friends the conclusion was unanimous MONO.

Naturally, I was perplexed because I had read that the incubation period for this wonderful new friend of mine is between one and two months and I had only started my kissing spree during the last couple of weeks. I later found out that a friend who I had been with during Christmas had been ill with MONO and despite it's friendly street name, MONO can be transmitted by means other than kissing. This was a relief to me because I didn't remember kissing him.

So that puts me at nearly two months since I first started feeling sick and I'm glad to say that I've ended my relationship with MONO. Sure I'm still feeling the aftereffects but I have more and more strength every day. Thank you for all your prayers even if you didn't know that I was going through this experience. While it was horrible it gave me lots of time and freedom to do a lot of reading and I actually enjoyed the time to pray and spend time in the word without any schedule to rush me.

Rewinding a few months... After what was a very difficult time working with the Youth Leadership here in Ecuador I've requested some new options that have been approved by the leadership here. I have been given six months to develop the church's website as well as a microenterprise training program. I'm mostly done with the website save a few peripheral issues and have started working on the training program.

I'll go into the details of the training program in my next communique but wanted to share a few prayer requests.

1. Please continue to pray for renewed health as I get stronger and stronger every day, right now even just a couple of hours of activity can wear me out.

2. Please continue to pray for our friend Earl. He is currently living with my parents but still desperately needs to the weight that is affecting his health. He has sent a video into the biggest looser but has not heard back from them. I've laid out strict diet plan for him but it is very much up to him if he keeps it.

3. I have a busy summer with teaching at camp, short term teams, translating, and teaching for two weeks at a mini seminary for youth. I need wisdom, energy and more energy.

Blessings.

Joshua

Thank you so much for your prayers and support. It's been an incredibly crazy beginning of the year with some amazing blessings as well as some tough challenges.

The blessings have come by way of countless opportunities to share Christ with people in all kinds of different settings. My friend Garrett (backpacker) came over a couple of weeks ago and I was able to have a great conversation with him about the Lord. He is not new to church and God but had walked away from both years ago. I was able to encourage him to seek the Lord and was able to pray with him and give him some guidance. Please continue to pray for him as the Lord works in his heart.

In addition, please continue to pray for the Andrade family (owners of the gym where I work out). Sybill, the owners wife has been coming to church with me on a regular basis and we continue to pray for her husband. Lately it seems as though he is at a breaking point and seems to be more and more open to hearing about Christ and the Lord. Today he(David) and Sybill told me they want to dedicate their daughter in the church and asked me if I would be willing to do that. Please continue to pray that the Lord will work in his heart and that doors would open for me to share the gospel with him.

Finally, as far as trials are concerned, three weeks ago I had knee surgery. I've been in the process of recovery and physical therapy and while they are amazed at how quickly I am recovering, it is a very hard time. Physical therapy really wears me out and I am sometimes discouraged because I want to be better NOW! On a positive note, being in therapy every day gives me entrance into the lives of my therapists as well as many other patients and it seems as though every day God opens another door for me to share his love with others.

Please pray for my quick recovery as well as wisdom and gentleness as I walk through those open doors. May God be magnified and honored in my sharing of his gospel.

Blessings

Just a quick update / prayer request.

1. While working out this morning I aggravated a preexisting injury and tore my meniscus. I spent most of the day at the physical therapist and then at the doctor's office. Really they should pay me because my diagnosis was right on the money. I've got a torn meniscus and need surgery. On Saturday at 8:00 am I'll be going into surgery...I get to watch again. This comes at a bad time because the big annual youth worker's meeting is on Saturday and I will not be able to be in attendance.

The good news is that this morning after I injured myself working out doing wall balls I convinced my trainer to modify the workout and I was able to complete the session (in throbbing pain but I completed it.)

2. I got a message today from a guy named Garrett. I met Garrett last year when he showed up on my doorstep with another backpacker touring Ecuador. They stayed with me for about a week and now Garrett is back for another few weeks. The message I got from Garret reads like this.

"For the last couple of years I´ve been living for me and the moment but I think I´m finally to the point where I want to make a change. I´m tired of going to bed every night feeling empty inside. What do I need to do to follow Jesus more closely and experience his love in my life?"

I think I had mentioned before how God plops ministry opportunities into my lap. Here is a clear example. Please pray for me as I seek wisdom and the right way to speak to Garrett. Pray also for Garrett and his heart as the Lord works in him.

Thank you for being a part of this amazing support team.

Josh