Cleo Yoder and Luis Flores examining fruit tree sappling on land site. This is approximately where one of the buildings will sit.
A warm greeting from Cd. Valles. As the northern storms begin to let you know that winter in on its way, we continue to melt in the sweltering fall days. The nights are getting mercifully cooler, and the mornings are beautiful. There have been several days recently in which I have commented that it is a true pity that the weather was not that temperature all the time in Valles.
Well, the big count-down is happening. In 16 days I will be heading up to Houston to pick up Theresa after yet another too long separation. This has been a marathon summer of separation for us, but the mission has been accomplished. James is arriving in Winnipeg this evening, and everyone is overjoyed to have him home – his family certainly, and me, because this means that Theresa is now free to join me again. I will anxiously await the publication of James’ Masters Thesis on his research and work in Bali, Indonesia. Of course, it will have special significance to me since I spent several months in Bali as well.
We are blessed to have Nathan and Diana, our daughter and son-in-law, drive Theresa to Henderson, Nebraska where she will visit with her mother for a week. After that time Diana and Nathan have paid for a flight for Theresa to Houston. It is humbling, but brings a sense of being loved when ones children do things like this to bless their parents. I know that Theresa especially is blessed since the alternative was a very long trip by Greyhound.
Cleo Yoder is with me again this week, having finished teaching the Project L.A.M.B.S. course on Romans last week. This week he is teaching on Biblical Theology.
The exciting thing for all of us is that he is once again team-teaching with assistant teachers in preparation of turning the running and teaching of the Project L.A.M.B.S. Bible School over to Nationals.
I, for my part, have been learning what heavy manual field work is all about. We spent a couple of weeks now in the
Until the tractor arrives all of these weeds must be pulled and removed by hand.
sugarcane field. Last week we hand sprayed for spittlebugs. This meant that we strapped on backpack spray tanks and walked the field spraying each individual plant.
We spent today hand pulling weeds and dragging them to the edge of the field. But the good news is that we are only paperwork away from getting a well seasoned Ford 8A tractor. This will revolutionize our labor, and make things much easier on the farm. What is now done almost 100% by machete and a strong back can become more mechanized. We are praying that the tractor can be brought down very, very soon.
We are desperately praying for rain. Today we watered the fruit tree saplings that were planted several months ago. The water literally rain into the cracked and parched soil as if one was pouring it down a drain. Please pray that God will be gracious to all of the farmers in the Huasteca region and give us rain. We need a week-long gently soaking rain which will penetrate deeply into the soil.
We have an area of need that I ask you to pray with us about, and to see if God lays anything onto your heart – we really need a couple, or a person who knows agriculture, loves the land, loves the Lord, feels God’s tug onto their hearts into missions, and who loves to teach others. I strongly believe that God has placed a “shepherd’s staff” into each of our hands, just as he did for Moses. We often look at the practical staff and fail to see its significance. For Moses, it was just the staff that he used to move his sheep around as a shepherd. But if you read the passage in Exodus you see that it took on great significance, and after Moses’ “burning bush” experience it was thereafter referred to as the “staff of God” in Moses’ hand. Wow!
I believe that God has given someone, somewhere, an agricultural staff of God. I believe that God has given that person a love for the land, and a love for teaching agricultural techniques to other. We desperately need that person to come and teach us how to farm using alternative methods – using the soil and climate of the Huasteca wisely. If we are to be a training center where disciples can grow in God as they study The Word and labor in the communities and on the land, then we need to have someone with the practical agricultural staff of God in his hand who will walk with us and train us.
First growth sugarcane at the landsite.
If that person is you, and if you feel God tugging at your heart, and if you feel the excitement of possibility growing inside you then please contact me. You can email me at steven@vitwministries.com.
I know that Theresa would be overjoyed to have a couple come down to help us. She would love to have another English-speaking woman that she could relate with.
Until later, may God bless you richly.
Please remember us in your prayers,
Steven and Theresa
