How do we spend our funds? A letter from Margie

Each year the National/International Mission team sends Margie back to Costa Rica with some extra mission funds to use as she sees fti.   Sometimes it has been to assist a person get back to their home somewhere in South America.   Sometimes it has been for medication.   One time it was to support a women's project with indigenous women.   Here's how she spent her $300 this year.  

I have found a beautiful place to share the $300.00 which the NIM so generously donated THROUGH me to a worthy SOMEONE here in Costa Rica.  That is VERY generous of you, and, rest assured, as I give to someone here it is ALWAYS with MY explanation that it comes from MY CHURCH FAMILY in Valparaiso, and not from me personally.  So, in keeping with our past practices, I here want to explain to you the circumstances and the persons to whom your gift has just gone.

   Here within our wider UBL community for the past 4-5 years we have come to love and include Hernan and Mirna and their teen-age daughter Raquel.  They are a refugee family here,  forced to leave, at gunpoint, their beloved home country of Honduras.  Hernan is a Lutheran pastor.  They have become beloved members of our wider UBL family.  Now Hernan is gravely ill with serious bacterial infection in his digestive system  He had to be hospitalized 16 days, is now bedfast at home, and is on a regimen of 6 months of very strong (and costly) antibiotics.  Mirna stays at home every day by his bedside to be sure that he has care and adequate nourishment of a very special kind that he is able to digest.  Raquel is in high school here.  They live on a VERY SMALL stipend from the Lutheran Church of Costa Rica.  So....now I think with this description, you can see their URGENT financial needs---and when I visit them (regularly) I take them some homemade chicken soup!!!!!  On one of my visits (usually no longer than 10-15 minutes including my praying for the, too)  I asked Hernan and Mirna is there was something that they would just LOVE to have to eat but have not been able to afford for some time.  Hernan said, "Fish"!  AND, he can eat a little of that, he THINKS!!!  So, I strongly encouraged them to use SOME of the gift from our church to BUY some fish for them all to enjoy together in their home.!!!!  (Where did I ever get the idea that "the way to a man's (and woman's) heart is through their stomach?")

  That is my report to our NIM team on the gift of $300.00 which you have shared with Hernan, Mirna, and Raquel,  such BEAUTIFUL people, such devoted disciples of our Lord Jesus, and such amazingly positive people in the face of such challenges.  

I love THEM and I love YOU...all of you.  God is good, all the time.  Margie