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Hello Everyone, I wanted to take a moment to update you on everything that has been going on here in Ecuador, some exciting news, and thank you all for your constant support. Currently we are winding down in our short term team season, this summer we have had 12 teams so far with one still to come and has been the busiest year on record for our organization. It was an exhausting season but God moved in amazing ways and we were able to do so much with the teams. In the past 6 months on the construction side which I’m heavily involved in, we have completed the first and second stages of a ground up church build, done a full remodel on another church, and built two houses for families in need. We have also had two medical campaigns, hundreds of home visits, evangelistic events, and painted 3 large scale murals. It has been amazing to be able to be apart of all of this and be able to use my gifts to be a part of what has been going on. We also had a big event with church members from all 6 of our congregations to reinforce our vision as an organization and have a night of fellowship. I was in charge of producing the event which was a great experience and everyone left the event excited for what is to come and with a great sense of community. Now I am with a team from Chile and getting back into the normal flow of my office work and projects for the end of the year. As you may have known, my commitment to be here in Ecuador was for two years. Well those two years ended in July and I’m still here! So the news I have to share with all of you is that I have recommitted to stay another two years. I will be here until 2020 at least, with my role changing slightly. I will be stepping away from some of my current responsibilities and working on a new project we are planning for next year. I will still be involved with the missions teams, all of the design work, and some administrative work, however much of my time will shift toward this new project. We are adding new members to our team in the next few months which will allow for me to branch out into this new area. I am excited for what God has done in me and through me in the past two years and expectant for what he has in the future. With this extended commitment comes the need to raise more financial and prayer support. First I ask that you continue to pray for me and the ministries here in Ecuador for these next few years to come. Secondly I ask that you prayerfully consider supporting me financially in this new two year commitment. I have consistently been short of my monthly goal in the past so moving forward I am trying to reach my full budget to have consistent ministry funds available. Additionally the need has arose to replace my car. I have spent a significant amount over the past years with constant repairs so I have decided to sell the car in order to try and upgrade to something safer and more reliable. I ask that you also consider being a part of this ministry tool. Once again thank you for all of the support you all have shown me. I am very gratefully to have people like you backing me up and being active participants in this ministry. If you have any questions please let me know. In Christ, Jeremy Cohn Hey Everyone!
Hope you all are doing well as the holidays approach us. Here in Ecuador we are in full swing preparing for Christmas and the year to come. I wanted to send you all an update of what I have been doing recently as the year comes to a close. After all of the teams have come and gone for the year, I have been able to focus on a lot of different design and administration work. We have a lot of new things coming for the new year as our local churches and we as an organization are focusing in on growth in the local churches and moving toward clear goals. It has been great to be a part of that process and to see all of the amazing things happening. All of my “office” work for this season started with setting up our new office! We have been waiting to be able to get an office space for our organization for a long time so it is exciting to finally have an official office for ICI Ecuador. I was able to design the space, hunt down the furniture, and decorate and the office is now in full functioning order. It has been a real blessing for our team to have a dedicated space for work rather then working out of our homes and it has really allowed us a space to be able to work more efficiently and have a home base for everyone to meet at. Now working in this space, I was able to begin many different projects for christmas and the coming year. As an organization, all of our local churches are following the same christmas sermon series, so I was able to design advertising materials, invitations, bulletins, and videos to be used in each congregations. We are also working on stage decorations for the 23rd which will be our big christmas celebration in most of the churches. Having all of the churches doing this is a big step toward the growing unity between our churches and is the first time we have had christmas services in all of our churches! Culturally, christmas is not always celebrated in evangelical congregations because of the popularity of catholic christmas celebrations, so we are excited to see all of our churches celebrating the birth of Jesus as a body. I have also been working on a website for ICI Ecuador which should be launching soon. This has been a great process and we are excited to have this as it raises the level of professionalism of our organization here in Ecuador. Soon I will also be starting a web page for our branch of the biblical institute as well as other materials as we look forward to a new group of students starting in March of next year. We are expecting 8 graduates from the current class, so we look forward to having even more in the coming years. On a more organization wide side, I have been privileged to help with some design aspects for a conference we will be having in Chile early next year for all of our churches in South American. I have been able to work alongside some of the leaders of this event to create these designs and I will be going early to help set up the conference. This will be my first time back to Chile after finishing my internship in 2013 so I am very excited for the oportunity. On the personal side of things, my parents came to visit! They were able to come again this year to check out what I have been doing with the building projects in San Vicente and we also got to spend some tourist time up in the mountains. We drove up to a small town called Guamote in the Chimborazo region. The town and surrounding areas are 95% indigenous with many of the older generation not even speaking Spanish, so it was like going to a whole different country for me. We did some high altitude hiking with two indigenous guides in the lake region and spent the day exploring one of the largest indigenous markets in Ecuador with 20,000 of our closest friends. It was an amazing experience and I was very happy to be able to relax and spend some time with my parents. So the past few months you could either find me in the mountains or on my computer, but it has been a great few months with a lot of work as usual. I am excited to see all of the projects we have been working on come to fruition and hopefully they will lead to growth in the local churches, unity as an organization, and of course new believers. With most of the work I do being more behind the scenes, it really is amazing to be able to see how we can help empower the local pastors and leaders to spark change in their communities as we grow together. I also want to take the opportunity to thank those of you that have been supporting me through this whole process through prayer and financial support as well as those of you who are new. I am so grateful to be able to partner with all of you in this ministry and I hope that you know you are an important part of what is happening here in Ecuador. I am still short on my monthly fundraising so I ask that you prayerfully consider joining me in this ministry through financial support or by sharing about this ministry to others who may be interested in joining. I would also like to present two specific one time needs that I have;
If you have any questions about these two needs please let me know and I will be happy to answer them. Once again I want to thank you all for your continual prayers and support, I am very grateful to have all of you around me. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! It has been awhile since I have had the chance to update all of you on what I have been doing recently here in Ecuador. Now that the dust has settled after a crazy few months, I wanted to take the chance to do so.
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