Letter from Peruvian missionary in North Africa

God gave us the privilege of sending some short term missionaries to North Africa to work along side another missionary there. This letter comes from a young lady that is coming back to Peru after 18 months over there. It is amazing to see how God has used these ladies. Keep them in your prayers.

Pastor Chris
First of all I want to thank God for bringing me to this beautiful country, you for supporting me in this missions career and my sending church Omega for its financial support.
God has been so good to me in these 18 months. I wouldn’t be able to tell you the stories on how God cared me and guided me.
I made many friends here, I told them about Jesus and some of them have just gone after hearing the message, other ones have just heard and other ones have come to church and my prayers were that no one of them missed the chance to hear God’s message and I tried to invite them to our meetings to hear the message through a national pastor who preaches in Arab.
I had two friends who didn’t want to come to church and I was very sad and thought they wouldn’t have the chance to hear the Gospel message but they surprised me the last but one Sunday, one of them called me and told me she wanted to attend that Sunday service because I was a foreigner different from the ones she had already gotten to know and then I was very happy seeing them in church, one of them liked the Arab hymn songs and she said the lyrics were very sweet so I invited her to come visit me at home and there I gave her a CD of Moroccan Christian music and a New Testament, she was thankful. I introduced her to a missionary for her to start a friendship relationship. Pray with me for every national contact that has heard the Word of God.
I have learned so many things that have to do with the cross-cultural ministry in an Islam country, the culture, and the living with others but above all I learned to love Muslim people because most of them never had the opportunity to hear the Gospel of Salvation, therefore they just followed a religion inherited though their forefathers.
It’s my prayer that God will raise more male and female servants willing to take the Gospel of the Good News to these people and that more people will be ready to support missions because “It is not in vain and His Word shall not return void, and some have planted and others have reaped but God gives the increase.”
Well, I am leaving on Monday 21, and hope you can come back to Peru soon as well, I am looking forward to seeing you.
Lrab Ybark kum, God bless you Pastor Chris and Family

Update on Joshua

I wanted to thank everyone for praying for Joshua and for following all that is going on with us. My wife has been feeding Joshua through syringes straight into his mouth. This takes a long time but doesn't cause him problems and he is able to get the food that he needs this way. 3 days ago Joshua started back to eating normal. We are so excited about being able to watch him get better and get back to normal some what. The doctors said that he will be in pain till the end of August. It is amazing because it almost seems that he has figured out that this is just life and that pain is part of it. He is adapting well and we are praying that God will help him through this time so that he can get back on Speech Therapy and this way we will be able to find out if the surgery was successful enough or not afer 6 months of therapy. Please keep praying for him, thanks so much for following us.

Chris Gardner
www.uttermost.net P.S. I am so sorry for not being that good at staying up to date with all of the Facebook, Twitter, Google +, emails and phone calls. We have received over 1,000 communications since this last operation. Thanks so much for how you care for us.

Update on Joshua

I wanted to thank everyone for praying for Joshua and for following all that is going on with us. My wife has been feeding Joshua through syringes straight into his mouth. This takes a long time but doesn't cause him problems and he is able to get the food that he needs this way. 3 days ago Joshua started back to eating normal. We are so excited about being able to watch him get better and get back to normal some what.

The doctors said that he will be in pain till the end of August. It is amazing because it almost seems that he has figured out that this is just life and that pain is part of it. He is adapting well and we are praying that God will help him through this time so that he can get back on Speech Therapy and this way we will be able to find out if the surgery was successful enough or not afer 6 months of therapy. Please keep praying for him, thanks so much for following us.

Chris Gardner
www.uttermost.net

P.S. I am so sorry for not being that good at staying up to date with all of the Facebook, Twitter, Google +, emails and phone calls. We have received over 1,000 communications since this last operation. Thanks so much for how you care for us.

Finally some great news!

I am sitting in the car right now waiting on my wife they are giving her the discharge instructions for Joshua. I just would like to thank everyone for praying so faithfully for our family we will be headed home in just a few minutes. His recovery is still not completely over, we would ask you to pray that God will help him through the next few days. Eating is still very difficult for him, but this will be the struggle we will be able to deal with at home. He is also still very weak and is not his normal self yet we pray that he will be back to normal soon. Thanks so much for praying for us, you are great friends. Looking forward to all that God is going to do in the next few days.

Chris Gardner
www.uttermost.net

Good News about Joshua

Just wanted to let everyone that Joshua ate a whole thing of yogurt this morning. This was given to him through a syringe and the first few bites it was hard to convince him that he wasn't going to die trying to eat it. But after a little bit he did just fine. We are waiting to see how he does today with his food and drink. If he does well we think that he might be being released today. Pray with us to that end please.

Chris Gardner
www.uttermost.net

Its not good when he turns blue.

This morning I was trying to get him to eat. I took a minuscule piece of banana about half the size of a chocolate M&M and gave it to him. He said mmmmmm again then swallowed it. I was very excited to see him take it and eat it and swallow it. I gave him another piece that was the same size and he tried to swallow it and started choking. Now not the kind of let me cough this up but the kind that wouldn't let him breathe. I rushed to the nurses station and had them come in to try an help. By the time they got in there he was turning blue. After a few maneuvers they were able to get him to swallow. Scary few seconds that felt like minutes. They are calling the doctor now so he can see if there is some sort of complication. He shouldn't still be dealing with tons of swelling. The nurse said we can only feed him stuff like pudding, apple sauce and ice cream. He isn't interested in any of those right now. Keep him in your prayers.

Chris Gardner
www.uttermost.net

Looks like another day.

The head nurse just came in and worked with Joshua for a while. She says that she is pretty sure that he won't go home today either. He still has no desire to eat or drink. I will update you if anything changes. Thanks for praying for him.

Chris Gardner
www.uttermost.net

Joshua is out if the ICU

Well, Joshua is now out of the ICU. He is in a regular room now which means that I will be able to take the kids to visit him tonight. They have been asking us to be able to visit him but since he was in the ICU they weren't allowed. He is now totally off of the oxygen and they are waiting for him to be able to eat and drink so that they could release him to go home. This morning Andria fed him some food and he took it and said mmmm. That is what he does when he enjoys something. We were really excited and then he tried to swallow and screamed because of the pain and spit it back out. The doctor said to start feeding him 30 minutes after giving him the pain medicine so that he might be able stand the pain enough to eat. We are trying and he is eating a couple of bites of a crescent roll. We are excited that things seem to be going like they should. Pray that he will be able to eat so he can come home soon.

Chris Gardner
www.uttermost.net

Joshua is now off of oxygen

Well, Joshua is still in the PICU but late last night they took him off of the oxygen. This is a big step forward and now we are waiting to be transferred to the general floor. The big thing that we are waiting on right now is for him to get his appetite back. They want to see him eating before he leaves and that isn't happening yet. Thanks for following. It seems we are headed in the right direction and it will just be a matter of time till he is ready to come back home. Thanks for praying for him. Chris

Even another night

Last night Joshua stayed in the PICU. He is still on oxygen but the doctor said that today they should be able to release him to the main floor and then tomorrow let him go home. Please keep him in your prayers so that he will be released and he can get back home and start getting back to normal. I am so thankful to God that we are where we are at with the doctors that we have for this. He knows what he is doing and has moved us for this time. Sometimes it is hard for me to remember this but times like now we can see it so clearly. Thanks so much for following us.

Chris Gardner
www.uttermost.net