An appeal

As we have reflected on this blog post and our appeal we believe this was a poor choice. Part of being a missionary is assuming a level of poverty to be in solidarity with the poor. That can mean forgoing some of the things we want to do, but are not needs. It is hard to admit when you make a mistake. We are not removing the blog post because we don't want to pretend we did not make a mistake, when we did.

     This is Lora making an appeal on behalf of our children.  Every summer the youth division of Family Mission Company reaches out to middle school children with the gospel through a week long camp called “Faith Camp” http://www.bestweekofyourlife.com/Best_Week_Of_Your_Life/Home.html .  There are a lot of fun packed days that draws children every year but more importantly the focus is giving these kids Jesus.  Everyday has a message about faith, evenings of praise and worship, small group discussions, all culminating throughout the week.  We had the opportunity to send three of our girls last year and we can attest that it is a life changing week for them.  Read about Abigail’s experience here http://veritasspelndor.blogspot.com/search/label/Faith%20Camp .  We would love to send our oldest four this year.  We were blessed with a sizable tax return this year that we were originally going to put towards the airfare to send them.  However, due to a couple of reasons we will not be able to use that money for them.  One of them is that we have not kept in contact with our benefactors through thank you’s and newsletters.  So our monthly support has gone down.  We know that it is vitally important for missionaries to let their benefactors know what the Lord is doing and we failed at that.  The second reason is we feel like the funds we do receive from our benefactors are not for us but for doing God’s work.  Therefore, when we see a need, we give.   When Mark sees something in a person’s house that he can fix or we can buy that improves their living we do.  We also give a lot of food away through parcels as well as feeding.  The Lord has always supplied for our needs for the last 17 years of our married life and we know that He will continue to do so. 

  If this camp was just a fun kid camp, we would not even be considering this.  However, I feel like it is important for other reasons.  1^st Abigail and Gabriella would be on the staff side.  This means they are giving their week to serve and make every effort possible to lead others closer to Christ.  I think that this camp will enhance all four of their lives as missionaries and give them training for their futures.  Also, for all four of them, I think it will be  refreshing, encouraging and an opportunity for them to draw closer to Jesus.  The cost of the airfare for the 4 of them is almost $4000.    

If all this was not selfish enough, I also would like to send Abigail and Gabriella to Jamaica to the Missionaries of the Poor for a Retreat.  They would get the chance to work alongside the brothers giving their lives to the abandoned and forgotten.  They have a center with separate quarters for handicapped men, women, children and babies.  Then the girls would also be a part of a retreat given by the MOPs to help in their discernment for what God is calling them too.  Here is their website with more information. http://www.missionariesofthepoor.org/ The airfare would be around $2000

If you would like to sponsor either of these trips you can send a donation  to Family Missions Company earmark it as Eckstine’s Faith Camp or Eckstine’s – MOPs and the funds will be used for those purposes.  On behalf of the children and from me, Thank you and the Lord bless you.

Lora

We pray this will not deter our benefactors from giving to the truly good causes we share in the future.

Mission Formation: St. Lucia style

North and West from here in St. Lucia, at Big Woods every Wednesday night, people in the community, as well as state-side missionaries in Louisiana, join together for Mission Formation.  This is a wonderful evening of food, fellowship and worshiping together.  At least once a month they have mass and the other weeks they have...well the formation of missionaries.  We give testimonies,sharing what the Lord is doing in our own lives, in the lives of those the missionaries are reaching and then there is a topic pertaining to the missionary life (which by right of baptism we are all called to be) that encourages, teaches, and inspires.  In another word, catechesis. 
Since our experiences from living at the Big Woods last year during Intake (our missionary training time) we have desired to have a night like that in our mission post.  A lot of times our desires are brought to fulfillment but not always the way we had originally thought.  Now that we have been here for a couple of months, we are starting to see the fruition of having a Mission Formation night come to pass.  Instead of Wednesday night our family tradition of Sunday night desert is morphing into Mission Formation.  Praise the Lord!

The Food

Tonight Mia made pineapple upside down cake.  Yum Yum Mia!

The Worship

                                                     

The Testimonies

Jessica sharing a testimony

Our mission formation night is small, well considering our own family still outnumbers those who come, but it is still a blessed time of talking about Jesus and encouraging one another.  We pray to see this grow.  Pope John Paul II on Catechesis in Our Time writes:

"If catechesis is done well, Christians will be eager to bear witness to their faith, to hand it on to their children, to make it known to others, and to serve the human community in every way.”

And, as missionaries, this is always our job; to work ourselves out of a job

In the Kitchen in St. Lucia

Lora has been learning to cook the local  foods, these are breadfruit mixed with other spices and things like onions, garlic, and parsley.

Lora is not the only one learning

            
                                    
                                    The process and the end results.

Leaving on the 19th

   Back at the Big Woods in Louisiana and well, we are in the countdown, yep on the 19th we fly to Miami then St. Lucia. Packing to do and projects to finish up. Yesterday we got a background check at the Lafayette Police department. We may need this for our Visa to stay in St. Lucia for a year. I hope to update the blog often as we prepare to leave the U.S. for a year.

   Family Mission Company has two short term mission trips going on right now. One to General Cepeda, where we went during our training. We also have a trip that is in Ecuador. The team in Ecuador had a bunch of stuff stolen yesterday, computer, cell phones, cameras.....

    FMC is expanding to do more stateside ministry, specifically a youth program and continuing the weekly mission formation, but both are taking place at the old Dominican Convent that we spent so much time working at during our formation. FMC and all the teams need to be held up in prayer. I think it is easy to think that the items on our prayer lists that we don't get to see the results of our prayers for are not doing any good. This is just not the case, all the prayers we make for other people in the Body of Christ are of the utmost importance and we will not see all the results until heaven. So please continue to pray for FMC and all their works in your prayers(this obviously includes us and our mission post)

   Some of the things we are praying for as we pray our mission into being are:

• The Bishop, priests, clergy, and religious we will be working with
• That the people the Lord sends us to minister to will good soil for the Gospel to grow in
• that we would have generous hearts and love for all those we come in contact with
• for benefactors with generous heats of prayer for our post
• protection and safety
• local help for the team 
• Adequate housing
• the Lord would show us poor to serve
• a schedule that works well for the whole team

   I thank all those that take the time to read this blog, with all the information and stuff that is out there for us to do in our American culture, it can be hard to take time to read something like this.

God Bless!