News - 8th November 2009

8th November 2009
Dear Friends

Dear Friends
When planning to serve Che Roga there was a real need to help the orphanage in developing youth focused ministries for the young people living there at the time. Over the past two years young people have moved out of the orphanage as they have grown up and gone to find work in the capital, Buenos Aries, and other cities. This has changed the demographic of the orphanage and the main body of work has changed focus to the large group of young children. This therefore makes our ministry as youth workers surplus to requirement.

Since coming we have been contributing to the provisions already here, helping with the daily running and the support the orphanage receives from England.

During our six months review we re-assessed our productivity, how we could best continue to serve and if there is still longevity in our placement here. With the reality of the circumstances in the children's home, there is not a need for extra youth work, as the established youth programme is sufficient to meet the needs of Che Roga. This means our short term ministry to Che Roga is not needed for the three year period as we had originally planned. This has presented us with challenging questions as to what we do next.

It would be a waste of our supporters’ finances to double up on an already existing ministry. We know we could continue here and support the daily running of the orphanage, but as we have talked and prayed, we know that God has trained us in our skills and abilities with teenagers for a purpose and it would not be right to continue in a different direction.

We have talked through the situation with our mission team leaders and at the same time as these discussions an opportunity arose in Honduras. There are two churches established in Tegucigalpa, the capital. The current senior Pastor is leaving to return to his home country, after finishing four years serving there. The opportunity to help in this transition period with the youth work for the two churches has been identified as an area where we can better serve as missionaries with our skills.

After much discussion and prayer with our leaders and Maria here in Paraguay, we all agree that this is the next step to take in our ministry. This time has been precious to us and has helped us learn more about missions than any training course could have taught us. We will be leaving Che Roga more as family than friends and will continue to support them.

The amazing thing is that nothing in God’s economy is lost and we are beginning to see God’s hand in these developments. In fact, it feels that what we have been able to do at Che Roga has been a blessing to them and to us. It has been God’s preparation time for us and we feel privileged to have had this experience in Paraguay.

We will be returning to England in December 09 and flying to Honduras at a date yet to be set, but probably in March 2010, maybe even sooner.

You will be able to continue to financially support the work of Che Roga, by sending donations to Elim Missions, ear marked for Che Roga, as their work in meeting the financial needs continues. We hope to be able to continue in bringing you any news and developments from Che Roga in the future.

We would like to give you the opportunity to join with us and continue our relationship as we move on to the next part of our journey of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ to the young people of South America.

We will be keeping you up to date on any new developments through posts on the website. We cannot wait to see you all in December and thank you once again for all your prayers and support, we really appreciate all you have done for us.

God Bless
John and Rachel McDonough

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