Just because...

...Samuel is getting so big and cute, I thought I'd share him with you! :) How I praise and thank the Lord for this sweet boy. Born 2 months early and so sick this summer that we thought maybe the Lord was going to take him home. Daniel was sharing with me the other day as he remembered the night he sat in the hospital watching our little boy struggle to breathe. Through tears he prayed asking the Lord that if He was going to take him, that he would do it quickly so he wouldn't have to suffer long.
But the Lord kept Samuel here. And how my heart overflows with love, thankfulness, and joy each day! Oh that his life and the lives of each of our children might be used to bring glory to the Saviour.

Timothy and I have our desks next to each other with Samuel's bouncy seat in between. We tend to get easily distracted from our work :)
He's just so smiley...all you have to do is look at him and he just grins.
So many handsome men in my life.... :)

Not much new around here...just a normal, calm week. The again, maybe that is new...we haven't seemed to have many of those this year. :)

While the older ones study...

...the younger ones are getting married...yes, it's a normal day.

Uncle Joel, Aunt Deborah and Cousins Ian, Caleb, Ellie, Brianna, Davy, Peter and another in tote in tummy are due to arrive Saturday. We appreciate your prayers for safety as they travel.

Getting better

This morning, Tel-Mex came and fixed our phone/internet line! While I was thankful we were able to go into town to download/send email and update the blog, it is much easier to do from home. I have always thought back on a biography I read of Adoniram and Ann Judson, one of the first missionaries to Burma in the early 1800's.
How much they suffered as they strove to give the gospel to a very hard, closed people! When they first arrived, they were alone, not knowing anything of the Burmese language, battling sickness and living in a very impoverished area. It was a year and a half before they got their very first letter from home. And here I can send or get a message in seconds. Yet do I sacrifice my life fully to Christ as those early missionaries did? How thankful I am for their example!

I went back to the doctor on Thursday as they had the results from some of my tests. Everything pointed to me having a very bad bladder or possibly kidney infection. The doctors were a bit baffled though as I have had no pain or bother at all in that area. My only real complaint has been the fever, body aches, and fatigue.
They prescribed me another antibiotic and after being on it for 2 days now, I'm feeling so much better. I think this is the first day in 2 weeks I haven't had a fever, and last night was the first time since being sick that I felt hungry, so I think I'm on the mend :) Thank you for your prayers!

Today is Susannah's 4th Birthday. Tacos tonight! :) This next weekend, Daniel's brother and sister in law with their 6 children are due to arrive for a visit. How good the Lord is to bless us so much!

Update on Doctor's visit

I saw the doctor late this morning. He is concerned and ordered a blood, urine, and (how do I say this nicely) 3-day phelgm test. I tend to feel better in the morning/early afternoon (temp 99-100) and then feel worse in the late afternoon/evening (101-102). Other than the fever and a cough (not a really bad one...less than when I've had bronchitis), my only other complaint is fatigue and lack of appetite. Thank you for your prayers; how thankful I am for the Lord's abundant strength and grace just when we need it most...His strength truly is make perfect in our weakness. And I feel weak and think I'll sleep :) Good night!

Quick update

We are still without phone or internet at home and the town was out of service over the weekend due to a pole falling. We just drove into the next city over to run some errands and stopped at the internet shop so we could download email and give you all a quick update here.
I only have a minute as Daniel and the children are waiting in the van, but we praise the Lord another lady got saved this Sunday and wants to get baptized as soon as possible. We had the most children we've ever had for Sunday school last week which was such a joy; how wonderful it is to see them learning and growing so much! We had standing room only in the building which now has a new roof!! Our home church took up a love offering to help with the repairs from the hurricane and we were able to get a new roof put on this weekend.
On the home front, the children are all healthy and happy to be mostly back into our schedule. Daniel will be taking me back to the doctor in a few minutes. I've been running a fever for 10 days now; I've already taken a course of antibiotics, but not seen any improvement, so time to get checked out again :) I appreciate your prayers! God is so good!

So send I you

I only have a few minutes here. Daniel is getting ready to head out to the villages to preach, and I drove into town here for a few minutes to check our email. We still have no phone/internet in our home; it may be quite a while before it's repaired. So I just wanted to let everyone know we are alive and well and back to normal.
I was telling one of my friends in an email that Daniel always laughs when I say "normal". It seems that the last several years...ever since we entered into the ministry...that the times of "normal" and times of trial/difficulties have seem to run about even. :)
I was pondering this upon my bed this weekend. The house is swarming with flies and when I say swarming I mean there are hundreds...they cover most everything. You can't kill them as fast as they enter. After the rains, they often get plagues here. We've had plagues of crickets, flies, and other little critters. I was lying on my bed because I was so sick. I had a high fever, terrible headache, cough and just ached everywhere; I felt absolutely miserable for 3 days.
How quickly the devil wants to discourage me with thoughts of defeat! I began dwelling on how I'd work so hard to get everything cleaned up from the hurricane and get everything prepared for school this week and now the house was a mess, some of the children were under the weather too and so whiny, and oh those pesky flies that just made my throbbing head spin!
It is times like these that I force myself to journal. I will write down just how I am feeling and then open my Bible and find Scripture to combat those thoughts/feelings. I don't have my journal with me, but I wrote verses about how His strength is made perfect in our weakness. I wrote that our labor is not in vain in the Lord. I wrote that we are to take up our cross and follow Him. To rejoice when we fall into divers temptations knowing that the trying of our faith worketh patience.
As I look at my journal entries over the years, no matter how badly I felt or how hopeless things seemed, I see how the Lord was always there, always faithful, and always at work. I can look back and see what I couldn't see at the time I was in the midst of the trial. And how it has increased my love for my Lord and built my faith. Oh, it is still so small I feel, but how I thank my God who never stops working in me!
Through sicknesses, lonliness, slanders, times without, hard hearts, hard endless work...How good is our Lord! He says "So send I you". What a privilege so endure such small sufferings for His sake as He endured so much greater for mine.

An update from Jaynee~ Pictures and Video

Cleaning up at the church

Visiting the homes of our brothers and sisters in Christ
Walking in to check on and help those from our church
Daniel surveying the damage at the church

Flooded streets

The boys Sunday School roomUpstairs of the church

Some pictures from around town

Here Baby Samuel and I are visiting with some people near our church. The creek is running covering the road.

Samuel gathering his belongings from the church

A truck got swept away in the current trying to cross the creek

Part of our roof flew off the stroage room, hit our trailer and a piece of it stuck inside (see video at bottom of post)

The children's trampoline

One week ago yesterday, we stood all morning at our windows watching the most severe wind this town has ever known. How grateful we were for our solid cement house which kept us safe from the storm! How we prayed out loud together and continually in our hearts for our town especially for our dear brothers and sisters in Christ who do not have homes as solid as ours.
Praise the Lord! While there was much destruction all around, not one life was lost.
It is hard for me to believe that only a week has passed…it seems like so much longer.
I awoke Wednesday morning, September 1, at 2:30 am as Eliseo was fussing. After getting him back to sleep, I walked outside; a light, steady rain was falling and wondered how bad the storm would really be. I lay back down in bed but couldn’t sleep. An hour later, Daniel woke up and I followed him outside. The wind was picking up and he asked me to check the national hurricane center website to see how things were looking. The storm which had held steady at a category 4 was down to a 2 with winds at 115 mph. It looked like the eye of the storm was due to pass over about 11 am so we expected to see whatever wind and rain there would be soon.
Daniel couldn’t sleep either, so we sat in the living room together visiting and listening to the wind and rain. Daniel drove over to the church around 4 am to check on Uncle Samuel and Carlos (an 18 year old young man from one of our supporting churches who has come to help us also). They said they were fine so Daniel came back home and we just waited. About an hour or so later, the wind had really picked up. Daniel was really worried about the boys being at the church as the roof rattles in the wind of a normal storm, so he got dressed and headed out to get them.
While we felt much better having them under our roof, we would have never imagined the building suffering the damage that it did. We spent the morning at our windows watching…the posts of the fence where the children stood in front of just a couple of weeks ago for their school pictures snapped; my clothes line pole broke; the trampoline blew completely out of our yard and landed in a tangled mess next to a semi truck parked in a field; the large iron door on our back wall blew completely off; and while I was taking some video of the storm from my kitchen window, a piece of the roof of storage room flew off and struck our trailer. We watched roofs, power lines, trees, fences, garbage barrels all fall or fly down the street.
We thought through each of the people in our church one by one thinking if they had a safe place in their home. We knew some of them had planned on going to the home of their neighbors or other family members and we prayed that they had been able to get there safely.
After several hours, the wind subsided for a while only to blow again severely in the opposite direction. When it was all over, we walked outside to look around. People came out of their houses very thankful to be alive and surprised at the severity of the storm. We have always been told that the hurricanes bring lots of water (danger being flooding) to our town but we never get the wind. That day, we got the wind!
Daniel, Samuel and Carlos left to see the church. They took my camera and came back showing us photos of the damage.
The roof had completely blown off; everything in the upstairs was soaked or broken and covered with debris; everything in the main room was soaked, the boys Sunday school classroom had fallen to the ground; the roof that made shade around the building was gone, the side room was gone, the back room window had broken and part of the wall was falling apart.
They then left to check on the people from our church. Their streets were flooded and they had to hike in knee deep water and mud to get to their homes, but we were so thankful to know while several suffered damages to their houses, they were all safe.
Later that day, we all climbed in the van, crossed the normally dry but now flowing creek, and went to look around town. Everything was such a mess! When we turned around to go home, we found the creek had risen so much it was no longer crossable. A truck had already tried and been swept out in the current. Thankfully, those inside had been rescued. A tractor came to pull the truck out of the current and then he asked if we wanted him to pull us across. We were so grateful to be able to make it back home!
There was no power, phone, or even running water. The next few days were spent cleaning up as best we could and covering the basics…keeping everyone as clean as we could, fed, getting water to drink, and something to wear. Daniel, Uncle Samuel, and Carlos spent every day cleaning here in our yard, over at the church, and helping church members with clean-up or food as well.
It has been interesting to see how the people here have responded to everything. Almost immediately, everyone began to just clean up. I didn’t hear much complaining, but only gratefulness for safety and for what things they did not lose.
I was so thankful we had fresh water in our water tank we could haul into the house for cooking, bathing, and cleaning as well as propane in our tank so we could cook on the stove. What long, tiring days! The stores were low on supplies and there was little to no meat, milk or cheese due to no refrigeration, so I had to be creative with figuring out what to feed us all each day.
I told Daniel that while it was difficult, I really didn’t mind not having electricity especially once the town got running water again. The one thing I truly missed was our washing machine! :) Each morning, I would dump bucketfuls of water from our tank into a rubber tote and stomp some clothes clean so we wouldn’t run out of things to wear.
Amidst everything, Susannah developed an infection in a wound on her head. She had slipped and fallen in the bathroom a few days before and got a small cut on the back of her head. A couple of days later, we noticed it was very sore and infected. We were able to open it, clean it out, pack it with medicine, but it was getting worse and she began to run a fever. Now that the storm had come, we couldn’t get her to a doctor and I was very concerned about her. How often that week I had to just go to the Lord for my help! That night, Susannah fell off a stool and hit her head right on the wound. She began to scream and cry and I couldn’t believe she had hit it again! But it turned out to be a real blessing; the force of that hit opened it up again and it drained out lots of infection. The next day, Daniel was able to get to a pharmacy and buy her an antibiotic and within a few days, she was much better.
A couple days ago, power was restored to our house, but only for a few hours. I was thankful to be able to get a few loads of laundry done! :) Yesterday, we were without power again all day and night, but early this morning, power went back on and my machine has been running ever since! It will probably be off and on like this for some time while they continue to fix the lines/poles.
We still do not have phone/internet and have no idea how long it will be before that will be restored, but we found out a internet shop in town has connection we can use to check our email and update here. There are some pay phones working in town where Daniel has been able to call his brother and sister in law who have kept you all updated these past few days (thank you Joel and Deb).
Thank you so much for your prayers for our family, our church, and our town. Please continue to pray for us as we “get back on our feet” and continue the cleaning and then rebuilding process.
Pray the Lord will provide for our every need and the needs of our brothers and sisters in Christ here.
Pray the Lord will provide for the repair to our church building, our home, and the homes of the people in our church. Pray that this trial will be used to bring people to our Lord! We have already had many opportunities to share the gospel again through all this and have had several show interest in hearing God’s Word and coming to church. The village of Jesus Maria was spared from most of the storm and Daniel was able to preach out there again Tuesday for several hours. Pray that someone there will believe!
Thank you! The Lord is so good and faithful!
Daniel and Jaynee
Timothy, Elijah, Rebekah, Benjamin, Abigail, Isaiah, Josiah, Noah, Susannah, Nehemiah, Eliseo, and Little Samuel

Psalms 91:1 and 2

“He who dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God; in him will I trust.”

Quick Update

Daniel called Monday morning to let us know power and water were restored. Samuel and Carlos were busy at the church cleaning up. Jaynee is catching up on laundry :). Thank you for your prayers!

Rebuilding

Daniel called Saturday morning and gave a quick update. Supplies are coming into the town and the people are busy cleaning up the mess and rebuilding. Some of the church families' homes were destroyed. They are still without water, electricity, and phone. Thankfully, Daniel and Jaynee had about a five day water supply from their water tank. Daniel was able to survey the damage of nearby towns and observed that there town was one of the hardest hit by this hurricane. For five miles along the highway, every power pole, except maybe one or two, were snapped off like toothpicks. Some of the high voltage transmission lines were bent over or laying flat on the ground. The good news is, the church building was not totally destroyed and they were able to hold services Sunday morning.
Please continue to pray as they labor and rebuild the church and the homes of their people. Pray that the Lord would give Daniel, Jaynee, Samuel, Carlos, and children, wisdom, strength, and perseverance for the arduous tasks before them.
We can truly praise the Lord for weakening the hurricane from a category 4 to a category 2 before it hit land. How much greater the damage and devastation could have been but for His great mercy? How sweet must have been their fellowship Sunday morning in rejoicing that all lives were spared and only material possessions lost. Truly for the Christian, when everything around them goes wrong, there is still joy and peace within.
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose." Romans 8:28

Hurricane Update

Ps 107:28-32 Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses.
He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.
Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.
Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!
Let them exalt him also in the congregation of the people, and praise him in the assembly of the elders

Daniel called today from the only working phone he could find in the town. He said every one in the town is safe, but the damage to the town is severe. The town sustained winds of 100 m.p.h. for five hours. Daniel said it was terrifying. The town was flooded, debris is everywhere, and there is currently no power, water, phone or internet. The church was nearly destroyed. The roof was blown off, and two of the rooms were completely destroyed. He said it's all just a mess, and the town is devastated.
As for Daniel and Jaynees' house there was not too much damage. Some roofing on their garage was blown off and all the cyclone fencing surrounding their backyard was flattened. They also witnessed their trampoline take flight.
Please continue to pray for them during this time of rebuilding. Pray that the Lord would meet all their needs and the needs of the church and community, both material and spiritual.
We are confident and know that "God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:19)

Joel Lockwood

Please Pray

Daniel and Jaynee ask for prayer. The hurricane has just arrived, and the wind and water is already taking a heavy toll on the town. Please pray specifically for:

Safety of Daniel, Jaynee, Big Samuel, Carlos(new helper arrived yesterday), and children.

Safety for their church family.

Wisdom for Daniel and Jaynee as they help their church family and minister to those in the community during this time, and that God would use this to soften hearts and to further the gospel.

Please labor fervently in prayer for them especially during this time!
Colossians 4:12

Water and Fire

Thank you for your prayers as Hurricane Jimena draws closer. Some of you have emailed or commented asking if we are evacuating. While some are leaving their houses and heading to shelters, everyone is staying in town. We thank the Lord we are in a solid cement house and we've raised our property level by bringing in 12 dump trucks full of dirt over the past couple years (those of you who have been reading here for a while may remember us moving dirt A LOT :) ). The town is getting prepared for the winds and flooding. We went to the market last night to stock up on food; the shelves were clearing out as everyone else was doing the same.
We ask prayers especially for those of our church. Many live in lower areas that are subject to flooding. There are several very poor areas around too where the houses are made of cardboard, blankets, wooden pallets etc... They are opening up shelters around town where the ground is higher. We pray that we may be able to be of help and a blessing to others in any way we are able.
The hurricane is due to hit land early tomorrow morning and cross over our area later Wednesday afternoon/evening.
Daniel is out in Jesus Maria today. Pray for the people there as well as the flooding can be bad in that area. Last week, Daniel was sharing the gospel with a lady who lost her house in the flood we had last year.

While we wait for the water to come, we had a little fire. This morning, the children were sitting at their desks working on school and I was on the couch having my teaching time with Benjamin while holding little Samuel. Eliseo was still napping in the back room and the younger children were playing under the patio with sidewalk chalk.
Suddenly the room filled with smoke and we heard lots of popping sounds. I looked over in the play room and saw the fan smoking. I jumped up and realized the love seat was smoking as well.
I handed Samuel to Timothy and grabbed the fire extinguisher from the kitchen. Elijah pulled the love seat back from the wall; the cord of the fan as well as the back of the love seat were on fire. I told the children to quickly get to the back yard and we thank the Lord that the fire was easily put out by the fire extinguisher.

Since the house was quite smokey and everything was covered with fine white powder, I had the Beka play with the children outside while Timothy, Elijah, Benjamin and I opened windows, cleaned up the mess and made some sandwhiches for lunch.
We thank the Lord that nobody was hurt, the fire was put out quickly and since only the back of the couch burnt, you wouldn't even know to look at it that anything happened :)