You bet Sam and Wayne! There are a lot of good stories of what God has been doing through our outreach. Sometimes I barely notice it as I go throughout life day by day, but when I think back to where my different friends were when I met them and where they are now - it's truly amazing. Especially friends that weren't believers when I got to know them, but have since gotten baptized and married and have become faithful servants of Christ within the church is super awesome (not to mention that they have gotten jobs and have been able to pay for their own rent and attained a certain level of stability). Of course one of the first families that comes to mind is Gabriel and Yurbey and Gabriela, whom I met when they were barely making it in Cucuta, and Gabriel was surviving by playing his cuatro at the stoplights.

They were living in a small apartment that only had a mattress and a stove top, and then I started discipling Gabriel and we also started meeting for the course change meetings as well as for church

Eventually I took him and his family to live in my apartment

And then he got engaged and eventually married

He and his wife started a shoe exporting business

But then that fell through because of governemnt restrictions so they moved back to Venezuela on two different ocassions and just this last week they came to visit here in Duitama where we hosted them and gave them some money to go to a Christian camp... At this same camp a few years back, it was Gabriel that was with me when we baptized another friend that I want to talk to you about who is named Yalinxo

When I met Yalinxo he and his family had immigrated to Colombia from Venezuela about a year earlier, and they were just getting by. Course Change gave him some money to by a slushie cart and on another occasion we gave him some money to by a hot dog stand as well as support him to start a soccer school

Alejandra discipled his wife Angela and she eventually got baptized, and Angela eventually got a job at a chicken plant which brought the family a lot of stability.

They have spent time with us on various ocassions, and we've accompanied them in tons of ways, but the best news is that they needed to travel to Venezuela to get legally married and get passports, and so we gave them some money for the trip, and let them stay in the church building in Cucuta for 4 days while they were going through that process, and everything came through and they are married and now both the parrents and the kids have passports and they loved getting to know our friends and the church in Cucuta.

One such friend in Cucuta is our elder Encarnacion, and he has done a great job leading Course Change as well as the Refuge Church as he disciples guys like Alexis and Asuncion

I once brought him to Bogota and Duitama so he could meet our churches there and he hit it off super well with an elder from the church in Bogota named Cesar who works as a painter and Course Change has helped him on various ocassions

Finally, another family that are really close friends to Alejandra and I and whom we met as they were selling water on the streets of Cucuta have also gotten baptized and are actively serving in the church in Bogota... It's just amazing to me that with all these crazy distances between these three cities, all these people have definitely been discipled and helped out economically and gotten really important conections between believers and been incorporated into real churches that we started in any one of the 3 cities that Alejandra and I have been living in in Colombia

This last Sunday my good friend Tello also returned to church along with his wife, whom we had helped significantly in the past to get established in Colombia and to improve his construction business.

I thank God for all he has done, and I thank Course Change for it's indispensible help. To God be the glory