Three weeks ago our family set foot in beautiful California. After four years in Uruguay, we have just begun our year long home ministry assignment (HMA). Praise God that we made it! We are living with Michele’s parents in Orange County, California for the first few months.

It is very exciting for us to be here to help our oldest daughter make the final preparations for her upcoming wedding. She will be married on December 29. It is coming fast, but we are super happy to be receiving a new son (in law) into the family. We will plan to post photos of the wedding on Facebook.

This year in the U.S. is also time to catch up on medical, dental and eye appointments. We are taking care of some concerns with our littlest first, and then treating things in order of urgency. Busy? Why, yes, we have been very busy these few weeks!

As December rolls into January we will be turning our attention to the ministry that we will be doing while we are in the U.S. Our missions agency, Mission to the World, calls this year of furlough Home Ministry Assignment. They call it that because this year is not a sabbatical, nor it is a vacation. We are excited to turn our ministry attention this year from the church planting work in Uruguay toward ministry to our supporting churches back home. Because we can do nothing apart from Christ and because it is the Lord’s work, we strongly believe that prayer is the necessary foundation to building the Church in Uruguay. We have a passion to encourage our churches that their ministry of prayer is vital to the front line ministry.

We hope that we can spend time in prayer with our supporting churches for the nation of Uruguay. The soil in Uruguay is hard, and we long to see the Holy Spirit bring awakening and revival to this beautiful country. We are excited to share with you what God has been doing in Uruguay these past four years. Prayers have been answered and God has been at work, and those of you who support us in prayer and finances are part of this effort. We also hope to be an encouragement to many in the churches about the important work of missions, not only in Uruguay, but all over the world. Christ gave His Church important work to do, and this work is worthy of sacrifice.

Whether you are called to go, send, or pray, your participation is not an optional extra; it is foundational to how God is working in the world. We hope we can see many of you doing this year of furlough. We will be trying to visit as many of our 38 supporting churches as we are able. We will also be arranging some “prayer and share” meetings to get extra time to spend with friends, ministry partners, and in order to share about the Lord’s work in Uruguay.