Farnsworth Forum

Our friends Donata and Andreas received a blessing from God on Friday, October 3, 2014: their new daughter Matea was born.  We thank God for Matea and pray for Donata and Andreas as they watch over her and raise her and her big sister Noemi.

In September the new 7 German Impact Team volunteers arrived.  They will be working alongside the national workers and the missionaries until next August.  They traveled to the different churches to introduce themselves, complete with plastic bags to represent their suitcases.  It was genius. Four of them will also be helping us with homeschool, two at the beginning of the year and two later on. Welcome to Simone, Katarina, Katrin, Finja, Christian, Luka, and Anna.  We hope you like Ecuador as much as we like having you here!

So thrilled that I could find someone to replace me two Saturdays ago at the seminary so that I could participate in a father son outing with Joel.  We went biking and running to the park (Joel rode his bike, I ran) and then we had a devotional followed by an hour of playing soccer.  I am always a bit wary of playing soccer in a country dominated by soccer players, but Joel and I did not fare so poorly, in comparison with some of the others.  Thanks, God, for this time with Joel and help me to make this a priority in my life as a father.

 On Monday the world lost a significant stage presence: Marian Seldes, whose career spanned some 60 years.  I met Ms. Seldes in July of 2007 following a performance of "Deuce" with Angela Lansbury (see photo below).  Ms. Seldes was gracious, warm, and genuinely charming.  We chatted about her role in the first ill-fated sequel to "Annie," "Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge," which I had seen in Washington, DC, before it closed prior to its planned Broadway transfer; she portrayed Mrs. Christmas.  She reminisced about her friend Dorothy Loudon, who played Miss Hannigan, as she had in the original "Annie" and how hard they worked to save the show, but "it was not to be."  In 2002 Seldes took over for Loudon in the show "Dinner at Eight" when Loudon fell ill.  Loudon died the following year and Seldes told me how much she missed her. Here she and Lansbury, in character, waved to their fans.  In "Deuce" they ...

Last evening we held a couples' dinner at the Cotacachi church.  We began with a word unscrambler for couples with the message "We need more love, more patience and more of God in our marriage," of course, in Spanish.  The two couples on the right were the fastest to unscramble. Then three men had to explain to their wives how to form a figure out of Duplos.  The men could see the figure but the wives could not. It made for an interesting time.  The couple in the middle, Surley and Alfonso, won the competition. Then all the wives had to introduce their husbands, including Anita and Hector and Alicia and Alejandro. We ate and then had a wonderful talk. The speaker was fellow Liebenzell missionary Daniel. The evening ended with a romantic musical selection by the worship team of Amigos en Cristo church.

Some cute pictures of Jacob and Elías taken yesterday in our backyard!

This weekend Morgan and Amelia baked a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting.  Morgan is really fits in well with our family.  She is a blessing to us, and the kids LOVE her.