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News for Friends, Family, and Partners March 9, 2006 Dear praying friends, We realize that it has been awhile since we last wrote, so we need to let you know what is going on with the McMahan family. First we need to let you know that our plans are to return to the field on the 20th of June. Why the 20th of June? Well, there are several reasons. First is that we still need to raise about $2000.00 more in monthly support. Second is that William, our 20 year old son, plans to marry Manda Witvoet on the 17th of June at Covenant College. We are thrilled for them and excited to be able to participate in their preparations. Robin goes up to Chattanooga regularly to help with plans for the wedding, and build more of a relationship with Manda. They will continue to live in the Chattanooga area as William finishes his final year at Covenant before moving on to two years at Georgia Tech. Mike spent last week in Ecuador having three full days of meetings with the team. We are very excited about new opportunities in Ecuador. One of those opportunities is with a Quichua church in Guaranda. Guaranda is about 3 hours south of Quito and is a major city in that region. For several years one of our Quichua partners, Segundo, has been traveling to Guaranda to meet and worship with a group of Quichuas. Two weeks ago Segundo and Ramiro Araujo, one of our Ecuadorian team members, traveled to Guaranda to meet with their leaders. Ramiro and Segundo outlined some training opportunities and the church leaders responded with this question; "How soon can you start?" Last weekend Ramiro and Segundo returned to begin training 40 members in a class on the Body of Christ; our team has committed to returning regularly to continue training. The team has been looking at what makes a healthy church, and how we can aid churches in Ecuador to grow into healthy churches. We, Mike and Robin, are excited because the team sees our ability to offer training in micro-finance and biblical perspectives of poverty as part of what will aid in making a church healthy.
In addition to training for the churches, the team, in conjunction with Quichua brothers and partnering with some US churches, is also producing a magazine for Quichuas written in both Quichua and Spanish. We hope to launch the magazine in the next month or two. If you would like to see a copy of the magazine, it is available on the internet in English at the following address: http://www.Quichua.net/Q/English.html. Please pray for the details of printing and distribution. We have lots of travel planned for the spring with trips to Pennsylvania, Alabama and Florida. We are praying that several churches who we have visited over the last several months will have favor on us and pick us up for support. We have also picked up some individual support as a result of an Ecuadorian Dinner we had here in Carrollton. We served a traditional dinner and shared with those attending customs about Ecuador and our vision for reaching Ecuadorians with the Good News through ministry in both Word and Deed. Please pray that God will be pleased to complete what is lacking in our monthly support. We continue to be involved with the Chalmer's Center for Economic Development and we will be traveling to Nairobi Kenya in August to participate in a Christian Economic Development Institute, and to be trained as trainers for future Insititutes. This will give us the ability to offer similar Institutes to other missionaries, Ecuadorians, and others in Latin America using the Chalmer's materials. Much of the material is already translated into Spanish, but some still needs to be translated. Pray that we can find Ecuadorians willing to help us in doing these translations. Prayer Requests:
Thank you so much for being a faithful part of our prayer and financial support team. May God continue to bless you in your individual spiritual and ministry lives. Please let us know how we can also pray for you. Blessings in the Savior, Mike and Robin McMahan
Contact us at: March 13, 2006
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A view of Chimborazo mountain (white peak on right, the highest in Ecuador) from the town of Guaranda.