Weekend Wrap-up

Well, it's a bit beyond the weekend it's true, but I'm just now getting around to sharing a report on Carol Bercian's visit to Missouri.  She arrived safely last Thursday evening and we headed off to Windermere for ChurchNet's Share Hope Summit on Friday and Saturday.  Carol did an outstanding as our missions banquet speaker, describing our ongoing partnership efforts in Guatemala.  She presented a wonderful challenge and those present responded with a very generous offering as well as some additional pledges.

We had a good day Sunday, visiting with the fine folks up at Wyatt Park Baptist in St. Joseph in the morning.  Afterwards we enjoyed a delicious meal at the pastor's home with several other friends and family members.  The evening service at our church was down a bit in attendance (perhaps due to being an hour earlier than normal to accommodate the benefit concert that followed).  I was a little disappointed that more of our members didn't hear Carol's presentation which focused predominantly on the Tabitha Ministry.  She is such a passionate speaker when it comes to her ministry among the children living in and near the city dump in Guatemala City, as well as with their mothers.

On Tuesday evening, Carol spoke with our church's missions committee to outline some possible future projects for teams going to western Guatemala from our church.  Earlier in the day, she spoke to a WMU group at John Knox Village.  We managed to keep her pretty busy while she was here, though she did find some time to do some shopping and sightseeing on Monday and Tuesday.

I'm providing a link for some brief video footage that I shot during our most recent visit there in February.  Brian Kaylor who handles the communication stuff for ChurchNet did some editing of it and it's been uploaded to YouTube.  You can find it here.

Carol brought a more extensive video that includes testimonies by some of the women who actually live in the dump and have been assisted by the Tabitha Ministry.  That too has been uploaded to YouTube but is still awaiting being made public.  I'll share it as well as soon as it's available.

Carol left this afternoon to return to Guatemala.