Diana Reategui “Roberts”

This is from Jack Roberts:

When I first met Diana Reategui in May of 2006, little did I realize what an impact she would have on my family and I. I told Josephine about her when I returned from our first trip to Tarapoto, Peru. We kept in touch by e-mail throughout the summer. Josephine went with me on our return trip last September to do follow-up work when she first met Diana, our translator. Josephine fell in love with Diana like a mother loves her very own daughter. We returned home from that wonderful week and I noticed there was something bothering my wife. I asked her what it was and through tears she told me that she missed Diana. “How can we have her come and visit with us for a while?” she asked. We decided to sponsor her as a student at the University of Montevallo where she’ll major in education. Diana was part of the Peruvian team who came to Cuenca this past week to plant new churches.

We had an exciting time as we saw dozens of Ecuadorian people come to know Christ. Diana has a dynamic spirit along with a heart for the people. Her evangelism skills coupled with the sweetest smile causes many hearts to turn to Jesus. She’ll become part of our family in about two months as the process to get her a student visa is almost complete. Please join me in welcoming her to our church family as well.

Welcome to our family, Diana!

This is Isaiah's Story...

This is a story from Jack:


When we heard that the site for the medical clinic on Thursday had been canceled due to the pastor's mother-in-law had passed away, we asked God to provide another site. My pastor, Jorge Torres, told me that God wanted the clinic in Zhucay. This is the community where Amber, Isaiah, Julissa (from Peru), Diana (my Peruvian translator) and I were planting a church with the nationals from Pastor Jorge's church. On Sunday afternoon, we met with Raul, the president of the community. He said his village was all Catholic and they would not be open to an evangelical group coming into their area. Raul told us he would speak to the town council on Wednesday and let us know if we could do the clinic on Thursday. God told me to share why we come as I told Raul that all we are doing is giving a "cup of cold water" in Jesus' name. I mentioned that the medical services are free and would provide a temporary help to the people's physical needs. Then I told Raul that we ask the people if they would like to know why we come. If they desire, we share God's love through the Gospel. I mentioned that when people hear the Gospel, they are "healed" for all eternity. "Would you love to have a community knowing where they would spend eternity?" I asked. We prayed with him and his wife and he looked at us and said, "You can have your clinic in the community house!" God showed up as on Tuesday we were told the principal of the elementary school wanted us to have the clinic in the school. God opened doors that allowed hundreds to come and receive medical care, but better than that, dozens received eternal life! Julissa, my first convert from Tarapoto, Peru,last May, was an evangelistic machine. She is eleven years old and was nothing short of totally shy when she came to Cuenca. Isaiah and her became eternal friends, as they saw many people of Zhucay come to know the Lord!

We made it back to Guayaquil in one piece. We had a little "delay" while coming here...

Yes... That is a landslide and a deep one too. It was about 6 feet deep. We thought we were going to have to sleep on the road tonight, but with much prayer the calvary arrived...

At the rate that he was going, we were looking at night time before we would be able to move on. Then, like an angel from heaven, the "big guns" appeared out of thin air...

About an hour later we were moving again and were off to Guayaquil again...

It's amazing what God can do in a time of prayer. Paul Colburn tried to crank that first bulldozer, but it was dead. We went back to the bus and started to pray. When we went back out someone was able to start that bulldozer and started to scrape off all the mud and rock. As we stood there watching that man make a path to freedom, the second bulldozer came out of nowhere. He literally came barreling down to the landslide and without stopping, dropped his bucket and started to shove the mess away. It was so amazing that me and some other people started to sing worship songs for everyone to hear. They might have given us a awkward look, but you could tell that made the biggest impact on them to see some "gringos" singing to God in a time of disaster.

Well it's 11:00pm and we got to be down in the lobby at 7:30am tomorrow to leave to goto the airport.

I will try to update the blog when we get to Miami, FL. Until then... ¡Hasta Luego!

Last night was awesome! We challenged the nationals to step out and become missionaries and about 20 came to the front. We took up an offering to help get them started. God was there last night! The pastors in Ecuador got together and gave all the translators a gift. They also gave all of us one too! Then they prayed over all of us. It was very moving. The end of the rally was funny b/c the minister there told us to leave 3 times, but then he would keep on singing another song. Finally on the third time he told everyone to leave or we would be there all night.


Leslie Roberts has been nagging me to put a better picture of her on the blog b/c the first one, she thought, was too ¨crazy¨... So here is a ¨better¨picture of her. :-P




A ¨rat¨(aka field mouse) decided it needed some medicine while we were having our clinic in Dou Dou... Watch out Leslie! It´s gonna get you!

We are going to go shopping today and get a bunch of neat stuff... Then we will be heading off to Guayaquil.

Blog you later...

This testimony is from Jennifer Adams:
We were able to see 30 people make a profession of faith in the eye clinic. We whitnessed to the people as they came to get fitted for eye glasses. What an experience to see these people recieve Christ.

We are about to leave to goto on of the rallys tonight. It should be really awesome!

Tomarrow is our free day. (aka Shopping!) I have already got some things today, but there is still ALOT more to get...

Oh and we just got done eatting pizza... again... :-)

Talk to you in the morning... Until then... ¡Hasta Luego!

Yesturday was a pretty cool day. The eye clinic had 101 people come thru to get looked at. Medical saw about 140 people and everyone else had a good hand full... It´s hard to know exact numbers b/c everyone is in bed by the time I am able to ask them.

We are having our Victory Celebrations today after the Clinic. It should be a neat experience.

I have a couple of videos I want to post on the blog, but I can´t b/c the internet here at the hotel is VERY slow and takes me atleast 5 to 8 mins just to upload a picture. I will try to upload some of the videos when we get to Guayaquil on Friday.

Well we were finally was able to get some ¨outside of the USA¨ pizza last night. It was very good. We had about 20 people there and had some icecream afterwards. My new favorite flavor is Neuz. It´s like our ¨butter pecan¨, but WAY better...

Ok I´m running out of things to say... I´m still trying to get people to write down there stories so I can post them. Hopefully I will get some to put on here tonight... I hope... Neal´s was easy b/c he came down to the lobby(where the computer is) and asked me what I was doing, so I got him to tell me his story while I typed it...

Well everyone is up in the resturant on the 1st floor eatting breakfast and I guess I better join them. Until next time... ¡Hasta Luego!

¡Hola!

Well, yesturday was different... The medical team got split up and went with the church planters to help deciple. Robert Plumber and I got put on Debbie Blackwelders team with her translator Hector and a Peruvian named Deigo. I think we went to one of the highest places around Cuenca. It was pretty cool. We split up into two groups and went to different people´s houses. Debbie, Robert and Hector went in one group and Me, Deigo and some of the church ¨Youth Group¨ went in another group. I was ¨the bait¨. None of the people in my group could speak any English... I thought it was kind of funny, but it is neat how God will still work even if you can´t understand each other. We only went to about 4 or 5 houses b/c all the houses were on the side of a VERY steep mountain and we were all starting to get tired... You don´t think you would get soo tired just hiking or better yet repelling off the side of a mountain, but at 8500+ feet above sea level, the air just doesn´t seem to want to go into your lungs... After lunch Debbie and Hector stayed to deciple the new christians from the day before while me, Deigo, Pastor and a church memeber went drive around the mountain giving out flyers for the Medical Clinic today. It was funny b/c the Pastor didn´t want to slow down to give people flyers so he just started throwing them out the window while we passed by the people at 50+mph... All in all the day yesturday was pretty neat.

This is a testimony from Neal:
We went out visiting in Puate. The pastor´s wife took us out to the a christian doctor. We told her how to use the cube and the track so she could witness in the hospital she works at. As soon as we got done sharing the cube with her a ¨salesman¨walked in (aka drug dealer) and she started talking to him about Jesus and we got to share our testimonies and the Cube with him. And he recieved Jesus as his Savior and Lord. We took a bible and wrote his spiritual birthday in there and signed it with our names. How God works! She got to share the cube right after we showed her how to use it. I thought that was kind of neat how God did that.

I´m wil try to put some more testimony stories on her later tonight...Until then... ¡Hasta Luego!

Our first day was good. With me being on the medical team I don´t know of too much that has gone on the past couple of days. So I will tell you about our experiences.


Well to start off, Kathy Pratt led her first person to Christ! That is awesome! We have had many salvations just inside the medical clinic, but there are alot more from the church planters. Sunday was a little hectic starting off b/c no one didn´t really know what our tasks were, but as the day went by, we started to get the hang of it.


I am on the eye team. We saw 79 people Sunday and 84 people Monday! A translator and I are in charged of the eye chart exams. Debbie Reeves dialates peoples eyes and help with glasses, Jennifer Adams Gives out glasses and tells people about God´s word, and Jamie looks at all the eyes to see what´s wrong with them and gives them a precription. Well Sunday Debbie was assigned the job of Dialating eyes and she started to put drops in everyone´s eyes that were waiting to see Jamie. After about 30 mins. Jamie gets to one of the ¨dialated¨ pateints. And turns out that Debbie forgot to put the second part of the dialating drops in the peoples´ eyes. So Jamie tells her to go back and try again... Everybody was rolling on the floor b/c Debbie had to get a translator to tell them she had to put drops in their eyes again.

I am having a fun time with the eye exams. When you tell someone to cover one eye with the spatula thing they do, but then cover the other eye with their hand... Lol. Then you tell them to not cover the other eye they switch eyes and cover the other eye with the spatula thing and their hand with the other... Me and the translator couldn´t stop laughing. That was the situtation with about every other person. It kept the day moving along:-P

Monday was great! We went to the town of Dou Dou. (that´s pronounced doug doug, like the cartoon show) We had a building to work in. We felt like we were in the Hilton compared to the first site where we had a dirt parking lot. Everything seemed to just flow better on Monday, Mainly b/c we were more organized and had the space to work.

Ok... I have a confession. I forgot to put sunscreen on Sunday and... Well... a picture is wortha thousand words...


I was wearing a bandana...

Well I´s gots to gets goin´. People are woundering where I´m at... Until next time... ¡Hasta Luego!

P.S. Krista gives a shout out to Hunter...