Dear friends, we wanted to let you all know that we are in the USA for a visit for the months of September and October. We had scheduled a trip for April and May and everyone knows what happened that prevented that trip from happening. Once travel began to open up in Honduras on a limited basis, a first “wave” of Loma de Luz missionaries left for the US for their normal US rotations of visiting families, rest, and deputation. In order to assist in maintaining enough staff for the hospital to be able to function well during the COVID crisis, we elected to wait until that first round of staff had returned before attempting to travel. Around the middle of August, most of that first round of missionaries had returned and simultaneously Honduras began to signal that there would be a reopening towards more normalized travel. We elected to take advantage of this and flew here to the USA on 21 August. We’ve spent the last two weeks in a modified quarantine and are now en route to Colorado to visit family. We are currently in Tulsa as the guests of John and Penny Alden, who many of you know from their time of service at Loma de Luz. It has been such a blessing to spend time with them. After some time in quarantine and before heading to Colorado, we were able to see my family in Arkansas as well as take some wonderful time of rest as the grateful guests of some pastor friends up in Northern AR. We’ve only been here two weeks and we are already in awe of all of the ways God has cared for us.
We ask for your prayers as we go to visit with Archie, Marinajo’s brother, in Colorado who has been very ill. Please pray that the Lord would provide faith, boldness, courage, and strength as we reach out in ministry to him. We aren’t sure how long we will be there as it depends on Archie’s response to our ministry. We do hope to travel from Colorado on to Nashville and be with Mariah and Nate and our brothers and sisters in Christ there. We are so so thankful that Ben has been able to meet up with us and spend time with us and is now able to travel with us as we drive up to Colorado. We’ve really needed this time with him as he has now been away for over a year from Honduras and is making a new life for himself here in “los Estados Unidos”. Mariah is busy now in her fourth (and final!) year of nursing and isn’t able to travel at all. Lord willing, we’ll be down to see her and Nate in a few weeks in Nashville.
We wrote this blog to try and capture how we have been working at Loma de Luz during this time of Covid. Please read that in order to get caught up on what we’ve been “up to.” As many of you know, Marinajo and I have also been taking master’s classes together in Pastoral Counseling. We continue to feel God directing us to a more active role in counseling. We hope and pray that this will include the ability to counsel with those who are on the mission field. Helping to extend missionary longevity in the field is one of the ways that we hope God will use us in the future. We should be finishing up class work the first semester of 2021 (finishing coursework in May) and then we would have an internship to complete summer of 2021. One of our goals for THIS trip is to find a location for this internship next summer. This, like almost everything, has become much more complicated in the world of Covid as some places that we had hoped to be able to intern at are not taking interns due to the crisis. Thus, we wanted to ask for your prayers while we are here in the US that God would lead us to the perfect opportunity for a counseling internship.
As is always the case, there are additional expenses associated with traveling. If you would like to help us with these expenses or help us with our master’s program expenses, you can do so by giving in one of the ways outlined below. We are so grateful to each of you for your love, prayers, and support!
Here are some ways to partner with us through Christian Health Service Corps:
- Text “fields” to 71777
- Donations can be sent by mail to: Christian Health Service Corps PO Box 132 Fruitvale, TX 75127
- Online gifts here: https://www.healthservicecorps.org/author/fields/ (click on “donate now” in the lower right hand corner of this page)
