Looking Back and Looking Forward

We are very excited to share lots of news with all of our prayer warriors!

Our Site

The biggest news from our site is that we have our site coordinator back! Tony returned with tales of new connections made, old friendships renewed and awesome stories of God's provision. He spoke with new churches and pastors that have expressed interest in coming to our site next year. This tour is vital for our ministry as it allows us to visit our partner churches and ask them and others to lift up this ministry in prayer; in this way, we are partnering in ministry with all of you, ultimately giving everything we do here to the Lord.

We are already seeing fruits of Tony's month-long tour in two ways:

Someone has generously offered to sponsor our Christmas chickens that we give to our teens every year. This is a tangible way for us to share the blessing of God with our teens' families during the holiday season. We are excited to give those out in late December!

We also are so excited to share that by the grace of God, we are able to fund not one, but TWO high school scholarships this year! God has been so faithful and we are thrilled to be able to provide two of our rising 10th graders with the opportunity to study at a private Christian school. Praise God for His abundant blessing!

La Fuente

We have been talking to our teens for weeks about thanksgiving, and we dedicated one full day this last week to giving thanks. We shared a special roast chicken lunch together and shared about why we give thanks to God in all circumstances, meditating on Philippians 4:6-7. It was a great time of slowing down to fellowship and give thanks to God together.

This week and last our teens finished the school year. All of our 9th graders were able to graduate and can now go on to high school! They were honored during a ceremony at their school last Thursday. The new school year will start again in January.

We are also so excited to share that our inaugural scholarship winner, Margarita, graduated high school this week. We are so proud of how far Margarita has come, and pray that the Lord would give her discernment when she's making decisions about her future.

Speaking of our scholarship, we have the privilege of announcing our two scholarship winners for this year: Carlos and Julissa!! These two very deserving individuals will be able to start their first year at a private Christian high school next year. For both of them, this is a huge deal! Fighting back tears, Julissa told us that she wasn't even going to be able to continue to a public high school because she wouldn't have been able to purchase the necessary materials. Praise God for His goodness and His relentless pursuit of these teens!

Now that Tony is back, our two boys' Bible studies will continue, as well as our girls' study. The girls have started memorizing verses from Romans together, and are learning about God's plan and His justice. This week, our girls made verse cards to help them memorize Romans 3:23.

Our final piece of news about La Fuente is that we are moving our youth group service to Friday afternoons instead of Friday evenings. We've made this change for the safety of our teens and staff, as their neighborhood at this time of year tends to be a bit more dangerous. Now that the teens are not in school, we hope that many of them can still come, without having to return home too late at night.

Mavericks

To conclude a fierce and successful season, the Mavericks will be playing in the national final for women's flag football on December 6th. Please pray for their safety as they practice this week and as they face the Guerreras on Thursday. Our girls have come a long way; little by little they are gaining confidence in themselves and in the team, and are growing into better people.

In order to give back, the team is doing a Christmas toy drive for the children of Colonia Dolores and Barrio la Vega. Pray that the Lord would bless their efforts and remind them of the true joy we can experience in serving and loving others.

Interns

As we head towards Christmas break, pray for our interns who will spend Christmas here with their "Salvadoran families", and for those who have the opportunity to visit their families back home.

Our resident, Laura, who has been with us for the past 21 months will soon be ending her two-year residency with us. God has put it on her heart to return to work with this ministry, and we ask you all to pray for clear discernment, confident conviction and a quick return.

Prayer requests

• First, we ask you to pray for protection over our teens and staff wherever they go. As mentioned before, this time of year tends to be a bit more dangerous, and we are depending on God to go before us to and from the teens' neighborhood, as well as while we are at work and in our homes.
• Second, we ask you to join us in prayer for the future of La Fuente. As we look back on the past year, we ask God for discernment on how to improve our program and saturate our teens' lives with the Gospel. We have the goal of starting the new year with 25-30 teens enrolled in our program, so please pray that God would be preparing the hearts of the teens in Colonia Dolores, and that a handful of new ones can find our program and join our Envision family.
• Continue to pray for the salvation of the teens in our program. Pray that God would soften their hearts to His word and convince them of His goodness.
• Pray for strength and energy for the staff as we finish up the year. Pray for unity and fellowship as we look back on the last year of ministry together.
• Finally, we ask you to pray for teams and interns to come to our site next year. We already have a few signed up to come, and we pray that God would send even more laborers to do His Kingdom work in this country that thirsts for His grace and love.

Thank you for all of your prayers and support. We are extremely grateful and appreciative of the ways you help us to live out our call together.

In Him,

Envision El Salvador