DeWitt Family

We have all heard the Christian cliche:  “If this is God’s will He will open the door; if not, He will close it.”  We have had an interesting month of open and closed doors.  I think in the last blog we mentioned our excitement about beginning a ministry in a little church about 30 miles outside of Asuncion.  This little Baptist church was without a pastor and it seemed like a perfect fit for our family (open door).  Well, the Friday before our instillation the head deacon calls us to inform us that the former pastor had decided to return to the church.  All has been forgiven between him and the church and we were given a thanks for being willing–but now we don’t need you (closed door).

About 2 months ago, the owner of our house emailed us saying that they are returning in July and we need to be out by June.  We knew that this was a possibility so we had already begun looking for another house.  We found two houses that appeared to be very good possibilities so we relaxed (open door).  Well, as of last week, the owner of one of the houses raised the rent out of our reach, and the other house was rented to some other missionaries with a greater need than ours (closed door).  However, we are not discouraged…we believe in a God who delights in supplying the needs of His children.  So we wait.

Since then, Scott had his first kind of “kick off” meeting with some of the pastors in the area to discuss the future of a possible “fellowship”.  The pastors are very excited and encouraged to work together and want to continue meeting once a month (open door).  Scott is very encouraged and is busy planning the next step.  We leave tomorrow for a town about 5 hours away called Encarnacion to help a church with their evangelistic event this Friday and Saturday.  Please pray for many people in this little neighborhood to hear and accept the good news!

Dani and the kids are on Spring Break this week and are enjoying sleeping in and being lazy.  They have one more marking period to go.  They are all doing well and Dani is beginning to enjoy the ministry side of her job.. loving and praying for her students and her co-workers.

We love you miss you all so much and are always grateful for your prayers.  We do read your comments.  They are a great encouragement to us!  Have a wonderful holiday weekend a and glorious Resurrection Day!

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The school year has started anew. Danielle and the kids resolutely (and happily, I might add) leave from the house every morning at 6:15am. I spend some time during the week working on my own class work. Contrast that with so many here who do not have access to adequate education. And what they do receive is so inferior that many graduate with just the basic R’s. Consider how different your life would be minus your education. Far beyond salary differences, education opens horizons, teaches to think and analyze, and gives confidence to the student.

So I try to tell me kids to appreciate doing homework. You can guess their response. I fear my children are growing up with the same entitlement mentality that plagues so many of us. We deserve a good education. We deserve nice things. We deserve a happy life. We wanted to shed the trappings of materialism by leaving the states, but instead its influence continues to cast a long shadow into my own house. “It’s not fair,” is one of Zac’s favorite phrases regarding what he thinks he deserves.

To combat this mentality and to understand true religion in James 1:27, we are going to start working one Saturday a month at an nearby orphanage. The idea is for Scott and Zac to do physical work and for Danielle and the girls to play and spend time with the children. We will stop at mid-morning and share a devotional and some treats. If anything can re-arrange an entitlement mentality it will be the deplorable conditions of orphanages in Paraguay. We are not sure what God wants to do with this ministry, but we look forward to its commencement. We covet your prayers.

This next Sunday Scott will preach at a church in an outlying community and is considered making it a permanent ministry location. They are without a pastor and Scott already knows several of the members. Please pray for wisdom for us in making this decision and that God would richly bless the preaching of his Word in Itaguá (February 15).

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Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, every creature was sweating profusely…Certainly an unlikely beginning to a Christmas poem and not likely to become a classic and adopted in mainstream American culture—though it would make a great Hallmark card. We are certainly not dashing through the snow here, but are roasting like chestnuts over an open fire! After 5 days of 100 degrees, an off-course snowflake would be a welcomed sight.

It is always interesting to note the differences in holiday celebrations across the cultures. One of the starkest differences is in the focus of the celebration. For many of us, we celebrate the coming of Jesus as a foreshadow of the culmination of God’s redemptive plan. Here, they celebrate baby Jesus as a baby. There are signs all over that say things like, “May the baby Jesus bless you this season.” A disconnect exists between the manger and the cross for many Paraguayans and has given me opportunities to share with many.

Like many of you, our ministries take a Christmas break. Christmas day we leave for a few days in Argentina and look forward to the rest. After a hectic fall (your fall, our spring) schedule with school and ministry, these days of repose are welcomed. January will arrive with a blast as the first three Sundays I will preach in 3 different churches and then leave immediately for class in Philadelphia. Danielle and I are working through some decision regarding ministries in 2009 that will take shape in January. We covet your prayers.

We want send you warmest 100 degree Christmas blessings as you celebrate Jesus’ coming. We as a family always sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus on Christmas as a reminder of the purpose of the day. I recommend you give it a whirl this year in your own homes.

May the God of peace, who sent his Son to Bethlehem, richly bless you and your family!

Items of prayer:

3 guys I disciple—Andres, Carlitos, Cesar

Wisdom for ministry assignments 2009

Our fledgling fellowship of Churches to be kicked-off in February

Pastor Pedro Gonzalez, a pastor with whom we work, was just diagnosed with liver cancer. Pray for him, his family, and his church.

For safety for our family and a special year of glorifying Christ in all we do

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It is just a typical day here in Paraguay. The fam got up early to go to school. Our vehicle needs some work so I decided to take everyone to school. On the way there Danielle begins to scream bloody -murder, “I just got stung by a scorpion!” Sure enough, I looked down at her bag and contentedly poised on the side of the bag was a brown scorpion, seemingly pleased with himself at conquering his last victim. We immediately stopped the car and I threw the bag out the door. Fortunately, that kind of scorpion is relatively harmless—more like a bad bee sting. It got her on the thumb so she is stuck sucking her thumb all day. Not much of an example for those 10 year olds in her class.

My work as a discipler, speaker, and organizer continues. I was speaking at church plant a couple of weeks ago where they asked me to preach and share the Lord’s table. I did my thing, distributed the bread, and then I took the top off the canister with the little communion cups inside. Immediately, an intense smell of cheap alcohol overwhelmed me. Well I was stuck. What to do. You see last year I baptized Zac, my 11 year old so he now participates in communion. With no other apparent alternative, we continued normally. The guy in charge simply commented that they were going to use wine instead of grape juice because in the New Testament, wine and water are the same word. That was news to me. But I was worried about Zac. He was sitting towards the back, off to one side. When he received the cup, he began with faces. You know, those faces kids make at the most inopportune times? He was waving his hand in front of his nose. He was shaking his head. Oh man, I thought. We continued. He took the cup (presumably remembering the symbolic nature of communion and not the alcohol-laden smell) and drank it. You can imagine the faces and coughing that followed. I about died. I am sure my face was beet red. I was sweating before, but I began to spray sweat. I lost my place in my notes. I didn’t know what to say. All those new Christians were just looking at me perplexed. Zac was about in convulsions. Well, all is well that ends well. Zac announced after the service that he will never drink alcohol as long as he lives. That may be until next month’s communion.

Pray for us and especially for 3 churches and 4 guys:

Hope Baptist, Palma Loma Baptist, and Getsemani—3 churches forming the beginning of a new organization called a Fellowship of Churches.

Andres (young man with desire for ministry), Juan (unsaved), Carlos (new Christian), and Cesar (new pastor)—I meet with these guys weekly or bi-weekly.

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It’s been a crazy month. First things first. We finally found a house and moved in at the end of July. The Mennonite Mission had been renting the house and we just happened to stumble upon the search process. The owners only wanted missionaries to live in it and wanted to bless them with a reduce rent amount. As you all know, I am very happy to receive blessings from others! It is safe, modern, and close to the school where Danielle is teaching.

Speaking of Danielle, she began August 4 teaching fifth grade at Asuncion Christian Academy. Her class is a challenge, as is the 5:15 am alarm every morning. As with most Christian schools, materials and resources are a bit scarce, but she is rising to the challenge and her kids already love her to death. Please pray for her!

The field team here has approved the development of a resource center and fellowship of churches to which I will be dedicating my time. A different potential opportunity for me is a newly formed group of baby Christians that are in need of some teaching help. It is a great story. A simple mechanic working out of his house continually shared Christ with his clients. Over time, he led roughly 10 people to the Lord with another 10 that come weekly to his “Discover the Bible” meeting in his home. This Thursday, I will teach them from Romans 8:1 which of course is a great place to begin with any new Christian. I would love to develop the ministry and see the beginning of new church. But we shall see how God works. Please pray for the fellowship of churches, the resource center, and this new ministry opportunity.

So obviously we are not bored. Did I mention we bought a dog? Well, really a puppy. The fresh enthusiasm for a new dog has quickly turned to groans at the site of regular gifts left around the house for us to find. His name is Gabe. The problem is that you can’t end a word with a “B” in Spanish so Paraguayans call him gay. Sooo, that’s not going to work. We need a new name.

Pray for us these days as we seek to be useful in the Kingdom of God.

Scott

Tags: Prayer Letters // 8 Comments »

Many of you have heard me say that everything is harder in a 3rd world country.  It feels doubly hard now to us as we continue our search for a home.  We had a place lined up and even sent money for the deposit and first months of rent only to have that possibility close.  We continue our search.  So what does the search look like?  In America, a real estate agent holds the keys to houses that are for sale or for rent and the MLS book gives an at-a-glance look at what is available.  What if you had to find a house without a MLS?  That is our situation.  The real estate agents here do not have centralized communication so there are three ways to find a house: by luck through driving around, by word of mouth through friends, or by published ads in the paper.  We have spent hours driving neighborhoods looking, searching, and not finding.  Now throw three kids in the mix after driving neighborhoods for hours.  Yeah, you know what I mean.  So the search continues.  Please pray for us!

Ministry wise, Danielle is 3 weeks from starting school and Scott is beginning the initial stages of starting up a new ministry and trying to keep up with studies on the side.  We covet your prayers.

Side note: How you know your kids are missionary kids.  Zac said yesterday that he liked Dairy
Queen better than McDonalds because DQ has winter storms.  Danielle and I said “what?”  Winter storms.  Danielle began laughing hysterically.  I still didn’t get it.  Zac didn’t want a “winter storm”, he wanted a “Blizzard.”

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Com’on in! During our last 4 year missionary term, we sent monthly email newsletters to over a hundred people who keep involved in our lives through updates and prayers. The nature of this kind of communication is unidirectional, meaning we send, you read and, at times, respond individually to the happenings in our lives. In an effort to create dialogues and trialogues, this blog will serve as our communication home to keep you, our friends and family, abreast of our lives and give us all, together, the chance to respond and listen in on the ongoing conversations between us. So the table is set and the mat says “welcome.” The door is cracked so com’on in.

Those who are on our supporters list will receive an email from us when updates are posted on the blog. You all are invited to read and participate by adding comments and asking questions. Our hope is that multi-directional communication will bring our worlds a little closer together and perhaps make us all feel a little closer to each other in God’s kingdom work.

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