Jones Journal e-Mailer for 2011-06

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Dear Friends,

Greetings in Jesus!

If you'd like to read past issues, see Newsletters. This monthly e-Mailer includes updates on ministry, family, praise, and prayer.

We held the normal Children’s Ministries Leaders Seminar on the first Saturday of June, and then a special local church seminar in the area east of Panama City called 24 of December on the second Saturday. Carolina Canto taught an introduction to Children’s Ministries and I shared on developing a vision and mission statement, whether children’s ministries or something else. On setting goals, we used the acronym “eS. M. A. R. T.” which translates to the following five elements:

Specific (everybody knows what is meant)
Measurable (everybody can know when it is achieved)
Attainable (not so big that it’s humanly impossible for the people involved)
Challenging (yet big enough that without God’s help it would be impossible)
Time-specific (includes a due date)

I love the big faith of our Panamanian brothers and sisters. Fernando, director of the evangelism committee, took the “challenging” part seriously. One goal they set was to visit every single house in the five communities surrounding the church in one year. That’s about 50,000 people! Pray for him, the church and Pastor Luzinio, former student of ours at Bible School, that God will use their big faith to reach their neighbors for Jesus.

Panama was blessed by the first ever visit to Central America by Darlene Zschech and Hillsong in a three hour long wonderful worship experience. They sang some songs in Spanish, but mostly in English, and the approximately 7500 in the audience, for the most part, sang right along!

Last month’s KidsQuest Crusade was in Bugaba, Chiriqui, coordinated by our zone rep. Edilma de Villarreal. Pastora Francisca had done a great job promoting the crusade and their cozy little church was packed full of kids. I applaud choice servants like her. Her leaders all exhibited the same joyful servants heart as we worked together during the weekend of ministry.

Upcoming next month is the Southern California District Hispanic Youth team, led by Larry & Melodee Gruetzmacher. They will be evangelizing with children and youth in the interior and here in Boca La Caja with Pastor Teodoro Cave, pictured with team members Dallis and Carolina.

This past semester Yvonne helped out with the eigth grade choir at the kids’ school. At the end of the school year they joined with twenty two piano students for a special night of music, the second annual Crossroads Community Recital.

Last month Chloe turned 21, got her first car, and started working at the Cox College hospital as a Patient Care Assistant (PCA). It will be great experience before her final year of nursing school.

Anthony graduated high school! You can see how happy he is. He’ll join Chloe at Evangel University in the fall studying business.

When Anthony was in sixth grade, Mark & Kelli Warder came to Crossroads. Kelli was his classroom teacher and together they served as youth pastors. During the five, fruitful years they were here in Panama, they had a profound impact on our kids, plus hundreds more. That made it all the more special when they came back so that Kelli could be the graduation keynote speaker.

Celina is drawing again! As my good friend Keith from South Africa says, that “warms the cockles” of her father’s heart. The two recent entries into her online art gallery are pencil drawings—a colorful interpretation of a pink flamingo and a detailed monochromatic sketch of Tony paddling in Fas2Rass.

Last week one of our kids asked us if we had Internet when we were young. They were shocked to hear it didn’t exist. Gracie is an example of a true “screen-ager.” She’s always got her netbook in front of her. For instance, when she wants to learn a new song she hears on iTunes, she finds the musical score online, props up her little netbook computer on top of the upright, and plays away.

In studying the transformative potential of children age four to fourteen I spent a lot of time with Naaman’s servant girl. You can read the entire account in 2 Kings 5:1-19. She was a captured slave girl from Israel who had great faith in God. Seeing her master’s skin disease (called “leprosy” in other translations) she exclaims, "Oh, if only my master could meet the prophet of Samaria, he would be healed of his skin disease" (v. 3). Her testimony was believed and reported to the king, who sent an official delegation to act upon it. She was the catalyst to Naaman’s healing of body and transformation of heart: "I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no God anywhere on earth other than the God of Israel” (v. 15).

Pray with us that God might raise up from the humblest circumstances here in Panama, children with great faith like her to transform their world.

Yours for Them,

Kirk for all