God's mercies are new every morning...It is a time of new beginnings!  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all our brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the world!  On December 21^st, we celebrated 25 years of marriage…where has the time gone?  Our children are young adults now and are beginning to become independent.  These are bittersweet times for sure.  Estie lives in Centralia, Washington and working and serving her church there.  She has been able to save to buy her first car!  What a blessing to watch the Lord provide as He always has for us.  She also works at a ballet school teaching small children and beginners dance!  God does give us the desires of our heart if we earnestly seek Him!  Micah graduated from CCBC in Murietta, CA and was accepted for their intern program on campus.  He is really in his element at the Bible College!  For any of you that know my son, you know how personable he is!  Nobody is a stranger to Micah and God still blesses his servant heart.   Both Estie and Micah thrived at CCBC and it was a great place for them to integrate back into American culture and truly grow in their walk with the Lord.  We are so grateful for that wonderful school.   Abby…what can I say?  Of all three of our kids she has had the uncanny way of getting us to step out and be adventurous!  This year she has accompanied me on many of our missionary ventures…from planning tea parties for the adolescent girls from church to hiking up the river with our young boys as we took the time to teach the lessons on having a pure heart for the Lord.  The older two left home and she naturally stepped up to the plate and has helped Bill and I with every aspect of the logistics of the church such as sound, kid’s ministry, maintenance, and youth ministry! 

As our children embark on their own adventures and individual callings, we remember the promises of God and we thank Him for His faithfulness to complete the work He has begun in each one of them.  It is hard to imagine that we have been on the mission field for 18 ½ years already.  Looking back at what the Lord has done is so wonderful and gives us strength to believe that He will continue to do His work through us as He wills.  For it is by grace through faith that we are saved, not of ourselves that any of us can boast! 

The church continues to have people come and go…we are a very transient community, full of snow birds and people moving to Vallarta for work, foreigners and nationals.  In that movement, we see many come and experience Worship and Expository teaching of the Word and their lives have been changed.  Many have come to faith and continue to grow in the Lord and are learning to serve Him!  We continue to work out in Laguna del Valle at our Mission School and are seeing sweet results of laying up Scripture on the hearts of the children and youth.  We have a great team of teachers who give of their time to these children.  Tuesdays and Thursdays, we teach English, math, reading and writing.  On Fridays, we have worship and Bible Study.  God continues to send awesome volunteers to help serve the children their meals and in our tutoring program.  The ministry at CCMS is three-fold.  1.  Ministry to the children through Bible Study, worship, and our tutoring program.  2.  Ministry to the servants in the kitchen as it is cross-culture.  The folks in the body get a chance to serve together and experience a comfortable place to learn a new language and what it means to submit one to another which helps us grow in our body-life.  3.  Finally, ministry opportunities we have to expose the unsaved to a Christ-centered helps program to the less fortunate.  Meaning that volunteers come and get to see the Gospel shared and we have the opportunity to minister to them as well.  

This really is the Hallmark of the ministry at Calvary Chapel PV.  We want to help without hurting.  We want to teach others to serve in the name of Christ making the Bible central to all we do because works without faith are dead.  Meeting the needs of others is one way to teach Christ's love.  During these incredible 18 ½ years on the mission field, we have seen the Lord provide the resources to complete the vision the Lord has given us as a family.  It hasn’t all come without opposition but without that opposition, we wouldn’t be able to say that it was God who has done the work. He has done great and marvelous things and has given us the privilege of seeing His hand in everything!  He has worked all things together for good because we love Him and are called according to HIS purpose!

We want to take the time to thank the Body of Christ at Calvary PV and across our borders.  We thank the Lord for your tireless service, your compassion, your faithfulness, your prayers and for your investment in His kingdom through your support!

We will be in Mexico until the Lord says otherwise…we are blessed and feel His presence here with us day by day as He continues to work through us and in us His will and great pleasure!  Emmanuel, God with us means more to us this season than ever before…life with Jesus only gets better!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

Pastor Bill, Renee’, Estie, Micah, Abby and the Church at Calvary PV