Good Morning!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!  We just wanted to send out a quick update to let everyone know that Jack and I (Mary) arrived safely here in Huatulco Thursday.  Thank you all for your many prayers and messages!  It has been a stressful moving experience for sure, but God was/is definitely in control and it has been amazing seeing His hand in all of our crazy situations!  We are planning on sending out an update soon with all of the details to the trip, but for now I just wanted everyone to know that our family is reunited again and we are so excited about heading up to Pluma today and getting started on the work God has for us!

I would like to add a few thoughts though about our new home that I was very surprised about!  First off, the wildlife and environment is much different than I was expecting!!  They have wild anteaters here (they just run across the road like squirrels do in the states) and not only banana trees and palm trees, but almond trees everywhere!  It is so tropical and very beautiful!  Secondly, and more importantly, I am in shock of the complete absence of an evangelical presence anywhere!  The city of Huatulco (which is the beach city that my bus brought Jack and I too and Nathan and the boys met us here) has a little more than 50,000 people that live here…and over the last 2 days that we have spent driving all over (we have been in search for a mattress for our house as the house we lived in for the past year came furnished with beds, so that is one thing that we didn’t have to move, but also don’t have here!) we have not seen 1 non-catholic church!  However, I am also in shock at the ENORMOUS amount of Jehovah’s Witnesses all over!  When Jack and I were at the bus station waiting for Nathan to get there, the first people that came up and talked to me were 2 women wanting to give me a copy of the Watchtower, but they quickly left when I started asking them some deeper questions about their beleifs and how they weren’t in the Bible.  Little did I know that was just the first time of 3 that we would encounter Jehovah’s Witness couples on our short 2 day stay here in Huatulco.  We also talked to a restaurant owner, JT, who told us that he had been in foster care his whole life and was eventually sent to a group of Jehovahs witnesses who impacted his life the most.  He said that the group started here as only 6 people a little over 5 years ago and now they have at least 350 attending their services every week!  How sad it is to me that the true Gospel is here 5 years later than the misleading ways of Jehovahs Witnesses.  However I am so thankful that God is soveriegn and He has a plan…I am just so anxious in getting that plan going:)

Well, my short update ended up being a little long – sorry!  There is just so much that I can’t wait to share with you all.  Thank you a million times for all of your love, prayers and support!

In Christ,

Nathan, Mary, Nef, Sam and Jack