A loooong trip to Germany

The first week of February I was in Mosbach, Germany for a meeting of Reach Beyond's IT managers and then to attend ICCM. The events were at the OM Germany facility which you can see in two of the photos.

Every two years we try to get together the IT team from our various offices for a time of encouragement and planning. This was the first time in four years that we have met face-to-face. There were two long days of our meetings followed by three days of the ICCM conference.

The International Conference on Computing and Mission (ICCM) is a unique conference focused on techies serving mission and ministries organized by these same people. The Reach Beyond IT group attended the ICCM Europe conference as it provided a more central location for our people coming from England, Spain, Malaysia, the U.S. and Ecuador.

What a great time to encourage each other as we serve Jesus as techies!

The train from Frankfurt was fairly high-speed and we hit 200 Kmh.

I purposely didn't include photos of people in this as many work in difficult areas.

New life!

Marlene had the opportunity to share with Adriana about the problems we had with lactose in the diet of our son.

Her son, Martin, was having behavioral problems and she wanted to hear anything which might be of help to her.

During the time Marlene spent with her, she heard about how different foods can affect people and more importantly, how much God loves her. During their time together, Adriana prayed to receive Jesus as her Lord and Savior.

That is what I call getting a lot of good news!

Alejandro y Sara

While in Canada last summer we shared about Alejandro and Sara. She had received a vaccination that made her very ill (about 3 years ago) and Alejandro had fallen 4 meters through a skylight and hit his head (8 months ago). She has recovered well but he is having problems. Due to the brain damage he received it appears that he is losing his vision and the doctors here indicated that he needed surgery.

We put him in contact with Dr. Roy who just happened to be here for Jornadas Medicas (a medical conference hosted by the Hospital Vozandes) which invites healthcare givers from all over to participate. Dr. Roy had given a session at the conference and by God's arrangement Marlene was able to talk with him and it turns out in his family he has experienced similar problems to what Alejandro is experiencing. He agreed to talk with this couple.

Dr. Roy was able to provide some encouragement to Alenjandro and Sara but it wasn't the news that they may have been expecting.

Please continue to pray for this couple as they seek to overcome some depression and continue to work on the physical and mental therapy that Alejandro needs to stop the degeneration of his vision. In the midst of this we pray that God would heal their hearts as they see that God is real and loves us even facing difficult situations. In fact many times he allows these same situations so we will look to him.