Well I have to admit that my new years res­o­lu­tion to keep this up to date has not panned out so well.  So Sorry!!  I will con­tinue to work on staying more cur­rent, it just seems to slip away with all we do.

We will start with the fact that FEI has had few teams here these past months.  Sandpoint, Idaho is the first FEI team since October.  Please pray for more teams this year.  They came to serve com­mu­ni­ties here with over 3000 pairs of glasses, but the glasses got stuck in cus­toms!  Well, that was a sur­prise for all of us, no prob­lems in all our past eye­glass teams, but this time was spe­cial.  We began the process of the paper work required for them to bring them in and serve on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua.  This took until Thursday of the next week to get them out.  Well, what did they do, they prayed and GOD answered?  GOD pro­vided about 1200 pairs that were in Puerto for use, and the mir­acle was, that the pro­gram used for orga­nizing these glasses was the same that the Sandpoint team was using to orga­nize the glasses that had got stuck in cus­toms.  So, by the end of the week, even though one day of glass min­istry was set up to do a little preper­a­tion with the other glasses, they served over 250 people, men, women, chil­dren, ages 8–87.  GOD is so good all the time.

The other projects that they worked on was to pro­vide a kitchen and bed­room for Daniel and his family.  This is the man that was par­a­lyzed last year, and GOD has been healing him a little at a time.  He now is singing with the wor­ship team and has a part time job as a watchee [some one who watches the gate], at the Verbo school.  GOD is amazing.

This team also worked on helping with the Verbo Ministry base­ball field, trying to get it ready for teams to play on it.  That was a lot of phys­i­cally hard work, but they pressed on and even got many of the neighbor hood kids involved.  They also brought new uni­forms for the adult Verbo team, these being pro­vided through many donors, but the work was started by our late friend Gary Williams.  Karen, his wife, and Brooke, his daughter were here to present these to the team.  That was another huge blessing for this min­istry here in Nicaragua.  The team also had time to visit and pray in the hos­pital, put a party on for the kids in the orphanage, Pastor Tony shared the Word twice through trans­la­tion, they pro­vided glasses for the girls and staff at the FEI Villa Esperanza in Managua, and blessed many fam­i­lies with their encour­ageing words and actions in all they did.

Kris and I want to thank Sandpoint for all they did while here.  May GOD bless you all as you adjust to life at home.

Kris and I are well, and are get­ting ready to say good by to some of our mis­sionary friends, Keveta and Austin.  Keveta, who has been here over 6, going on 7 years, will head back to California in May to live full time.  Austin has been here over a year already, will be moving back some­time this summer.  We are going to miss them both very much.  We con­tinue to work on the Safe Water min­istry of FEI, which includes the pur­chase of a new rotary rig and also pro­vi­dides water fil­ters with hygiene trainging to fam­i­lies in com­mu­ni­ties.  See link Water For Life   Spanish is still a struggle for us both, but we con­tinue to make progress, and Kris is working also on Miskito.  She is doing much better than I in that.

I have written enough for now, I will try to com­mu­ni­cate better, shorter and more often.  Thanks for your part­ner­ship here in Puerto Cabezas, and we look for­ward to seeing some of you soon.

Jeff