Winter break officially ended a little over two weeks ago, and we are now off on another action packed ride through our final semester in Argentina. George preached at La Union last Sunday evening, is teaching Systematic Theology II at the Bible Institute in La Plata, will be preaching at a youth event in Buenos Aires next week, and is preparing to teach a week-long intensive three-hour-per-day course on Church History the first week of October.

We also are still hosting the reading group in our house on Tuesday nights and continue to be encouraged by steady attendance levels as well as the edifying conversations that are stimulated by what we read. This semester we will be finishing Soul Survivor by Philip Yancey (which we highly recommend) as well as Tim Keller's The Reason for God (which we also highly recommend).

We want to thank you for your prayers for us the first week of August while George was away from home. In many ways it was a very encouraging week, but was not without its challenges. We are especially grateful to those whom God used to minister to Emily in tangible ways during several difficult days.

We also want to publicly recognize and thank Denton Community Church for providing the funds we need to be able to purchase our plane tickets to the States. God is indeed gracious and faithful!

Thankfully we were able to get the car home that night and the next day get it to a shop where we found out that it was the battery and starter that were causing the problem (at least it wasn't the alternator). After fixing the urgent issue, the mechanic looked over the engine, made a few small adjustments and replacements (filters and belts), and then gave us the thumbs up. So we now have a car that works! Praise the Lord!

This is good timing, since there is now a bigger possibility that Emily could go into labor any day. On Sunday she will reach 36 weeks, and according to a sonogram she had last week, the baby has already dropped. We are hoping that Madeleine will wait until at least 37 weeks, but we will be glad to have her whenever the Lord decides that it's time.

This last week has been pretty busy. All of our team members (except for Lore, Kurt's wife, and their son) are in Denton for the missions conference, so we have been holding down the fort, so to speak. Last Sunday George preached in City Bell and will preach again this Sunday and then will be giving an evangelistic talk on apologetics at the College of Humanities at the University of La Plata on Friday. The university engagement has been organized by Campus Crusade, and George would be very grateful for your prayers, since he has never spoken in this context before.

Answered prayer: The BTCP revision is finally done! Praise the Lord! Now the books are off at the printer, and we hope to have them all printed within the next two or three weeks.

This has possibly been the busiest month we've had since we've been in Argentina. It's hard to know where to begin, so we'll just give a brief update for each of the major ministry areas we're involved in:

GDV: Our Grupo de Vida (Life Group, aka, small group Bible study) is going well. We've now been meeting for two months. When it first started we were a bit discouraged because only two people showed up. But now we regularly have about eight people, plus ourselves. It has turned into a great outlet for musicians, artists, literature fanatics, etc., to share common struggles and to theologize about the art we both intake and create.

La Union: We've enjoyed getting more "plugged in" to La Union, the church that we've been regularly attending for the last year. At a recent outreach event, Emily sang and George played the guitar, which has enabled us to get to know a lot more people at the church. Since then, George was invited to preach a short, two-part sermon series on the theology of worship at the Sunday morning service. Also, he has started meeting regularly with the two worship leaders to pray and discuss various issues and has begun leading a devotional for the worship band once a month.

Stinters: Our responsibility to shepherd the four one-year-stint missionaries from DBC is rapidly coming to a close. It has been a blessing to get to know Jeromy, Jonathan, Danielle, and Brisa, to watch God use them, and to see them grow. The guys return to Denton on May 8, and the girls on May 23. We will miss them.

BTCP: Unfortunately, we were not able to finish the BTCP revision by the end of April, like we had hoped. But we are now soooo close that it should definitely be done by the end of May. If it's not, George will shave off his eyebrows. In the last three weeks or so, we've gotten calls from three different churches in three different cities that are interested in starting BTCPs. It looks like this ministry will be growing pretty quickly. We are excited to see how God uses it to equip national pastors and lay leaders.

Training: We are proud to announce that this Thursday Emily will be completing the two year BTCL program that she has been participating in via the internet. It has been a wonderful experience for her, and she looks forward to taking what she has learned and sharing it with others. George is now more than halfway through his first seminary class. His goal is to finish before the baby is born.

Car: Though this isn't a ministry we are involved in, we feel that it is something that will positively affect our ministry, allowing us to be more effective and efficient, as well as keeping us safer (we've had some wild taxi rides recently, and the thought of putting a newborn through one of those is a bit uncomfortable). We are currently praying to see if God will open the door for us to be able to purchase a car here.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support!