Raul & Jessenia Espinoza
Dear Wallenstein family,
Many of you just had spring March break and here we are beginning “summer vacations”.
The school year came to a close at the end of February. We had a lovely graduation ceremony for our 9th grade students. We had a farewell speech in English, a solo ballet presentation and another student sang a song. It was fun to celebrate their talents as we gave them a bitter-sweet goodbye. It is always a little sad when we have to say goodbye to our students but we are also filled with hope that they will take the values they learned at our school and put it to good use out in the world. We were also comforted this year in that many of the graduating students have been plugged into youth group, so hopefully we will still be seeing them.
We celebrated Valentine's Day with the youth. Here in Ecuador, Valentine's Day is also called “Love and Friendship Day.” Along with encouraging a deepened relationship with Jesus, one of our focuses this year has been to foster strong friendships in the youth group, so our Valentine's party was mostly focused on that. We set up a conversation game where we thought to stretch them by encouraging personal conversations between those who don’t usually talk together and were pleased that they had a lot of fun with the activity.
Many of the youth were asked to help out with the March Vacation Bible School and they served happily throughout the week. Soon they will all head off to camp and we ask that you pray with us that those who have already made a decision for Christ would have their walk deepened, and that others would decide to begin theirs.
We are also looking forward to Guayaquil youth camp week as we accompany our youth to provide support for the counseling team. Please pray we can be used as an encouragement to those around us and that we can find a way to protect our boys from the myriad of mosquitos that are at camp right now.
Thank you for your prayers and support!
The Espinozas
(Raul, Jessenia, Tiago and Danilo)
Further prayer requests:
New elections for the school board happened and Raul will serve another term as president. Please pray for strength and wisdom for him and the new team.
Continued safety as the situation in Bastion continues to be a bit unstable.
Wisdom for what school to put Tiago in for his kindergarten year.
That Christ would touch many hearts during the camp season.
That our hearts would be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading in our interactions with people.