Friday, August 7, 2009

High School Readers

As many of you may recall, our local church in Panama had been meeting in a house. In mid-May, we were able to move to a more centrally located high school called, Instituto América (IA). We have more room and have made connections with the school administration to use LST with the students from the school. It has been a wonderful exchange and given the church many new opportunities to serve the community. The church meeting at the school is now called the Metropolitan Church of Christ.

In June, a new LST team came to Panama to begin LST work at IA. While Cyndi and I were finishing the semester at the university, they had a three week project which introduced LST to the high school students. At the end of their project, we invited the readers and their families to our worship services on Sunday. I gave a short lesson about why I came to Panama and the importance of LST. Afterward, the readers were awarded certificates of achievement. Cyndi and I were able to meet some of the readers invite them to join us in reading sessions also.

For the last three weeks in July, Cyndi and I have been working at IA. We are really glad to help the church make a connection with the students who are searching for what they believe. All of our readers have been wonderful. They are so eager to learn more about Jesus and our lives. The school has been very accommodating to the LST program. We pray that God will help the relationship between the school and the church to grow.

If you are interested in some photos of our new meeting place and the work at the school — click here to look at them. We took some more photos with our students, but unfortunately our camera was stolen before we could upload them.

Last week, we left Panama to fulfill our visa requirements. Every three months we must leave Panama for 3 days, then we are able to re-enter Panama and are allowed 90 more days. We went to Costa Rica again and enjoyed some much needed down time.