LAM Has a New Website!

It's been a long time in coming and desperately needed in order to better communicate with and to all of our partners, missionaries and those who simply want to grow in there missions understanding of Latin America or the world in general.

Personally, I am most excited about the "Partnership" section (which includes my area of responsibility in North American Alliances) and particularly the various resources we're beginning to gather to help our alliance members. Please take a few minutes to see what I've been working on lately and the direction we're going for the future. Here's a few links:

• http://lam.org/partner/for-churches
• http://www.lam.org/partner/for-colleges-and-universities
• http://www.lam.org/partner/us-partnership
• http://www.lam.org/partner/for-latin-ministries
• http://www.lam.org/partner/resources-for-responsible-partnership

You can find my North American Alliance Director Bio on the "team" page: http://www.lam.org/about-us/our-team

And don't forget the Abegg family Bio as well as our new donation/support link (use well and use often) J at: http://lam.org/missionaries/kevin-and-claudia-abegg

MISsionUNDERSTANDING : Partnership

I've placed a new post on our other blog: http://missionunderstandings.blogspot.com

MISsionUNDERSTANDING : Partnership

…something I believe needs to be re-defined in the North American Church's understanding of international missions, especially when it comes to our perception of the Latin American church's current and future contribution toward "making disciples of all nations…".

Too often there is the perception that North American Missions to Latin America consists of: "us going to help them because they need our help", or the other extreme: "Latin America is now evangelized so we should focus elsewhere". If we approach missions to Latin America from either of these perspectives we fail to recognize what God has accomplished through generations of missionaries and that the Gospel has not returned void but produced much fruit and new partners in the Great Commission…

See the whole article at: http://missionunderstandings.blogspot.com

Lessons We've Learned from our Kids #17

If you use a dry-erase board for Home Schooling your 7 year old, and there happens to be one permanent marker hidden somewhere safe in the same house, the 7 year old will find it and use it for schoolwork on the dry-erase board, leaving a record for future generations to enjoy.

This same 7 year old, using this same permanent marker, just may happen to “accidently” draw eyebrows and a mustache on his younger brother.

If you are going to carve something into mommy and daddy's office desk and then attempt to deny it, do not carve your own name.

Anything and everything can be a musical instrument…a VERY, VERY LOUD musical instrument.

On that note, for the life of me I can’t remember why we keep bongos in the house.

Back Pattio Update

Prayer Item: I received a call from the insurance adjuster who I’ve been working through in dealing with our patio and back door issue (see previous entry) . She called to give me the good news that we are not sitting on top of a sink hole. That is great news! (Sink holes have been known to swallow entire blocks of homes without so much as a single burp). The bad news is that the dropping of our patio was due to “organic deterioration erosion” or something to that effect which means that there is no assistance available from insurance (aka: “not covered”). They will be sending me the written report in a few weeks at which point I’ll have a chance to wade through their reasoning and give a response.

Praise Item: As we currently could not afford to replace the boy’s bedroom window on our own, we’ve had the hurricane shutters up to keep rain, bugs and anything else out until we heard back from the insurance company. Some dear friends however felt that we shouldn’t wait on this and blessed us a love offering of $400. so we could replace the window and air out the boys room. (A room housing two active boys who live in a tropical climate desperately needs ventilation!). At the time our friends did not know the replacement cost of the window, but including a few complications, the labor, materials and everything came exactly to $402! We want to thank these friends, those of you who have been praying for us now and all of you who continue to provide amazing prayer and financial support to the Abegg family.