Busy Ben!

Just as the title says, I have been plenty busy this past month. My days have been filled with teaching music lessons, having rehearsals for Sundays, and rehearsals for Reformation Sunday music coming up at the end of the month. I also had to travel out of the country due to my 3 month VISA that I currently have. But being busy is a good thing and I rejoice in it because it keeps me focused on my mission of teaching music and sharing the love of Jesus through music.

One of my younger students, Daniel. He has been playing for a few months now, learning on one of the several flutes donated by one of you guys! In this picture he was rehearsing with me for Reformation Sunday music.

One of my students is Pastor Esdras! He has been learning clarinet and guitar. On Tuesday nights he leads a devotion in a rural village called La Majada, and I lead the music. Just about every week Pastor Esdras accompanies me with the guitar. He has come a long ways!

So what’s new for me?
Besides the occasional new student I get every month, new for me are the wedding plans my fiancée and I have been working on for a February wedding! We also have been planning what our life will be like serving as missionaries together in Zacapa and wherever else God may lead us.

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Shining a light in darkness

From Global Lutheran Outreach missionaries David and Luz Maria Ernst (serving in La Curamuca, Venezuela ):

We as missionaries at times feel that we are surrounded by forces beyond our control and that could completely overwhelm us. And that is an accurate evaluation of the situation. But God sends His holy angels to protect us (as Psalm 91, properly understood, assures us).

Ninth shipment of medicines

On September 19, 2021, Epiphany Lutheran Mission distributed the ninth shipment of medicines from the Venezuela Relief Project begun by Global Lutheran Outreach and the Confessional Lutheran Church of Chile. The Venezuela Relief Project began in 2017. As is our custom, the bulk of the medicines were distributed after the Sunday service, along with our homegrown fruits and vegetable. Thanks to abundant rain this years, we have bumper crops of avocados, passion fruit, tomatoes, cassava, bananas and plantains, papaya and eggplant. We also have a bountiful harvest of berries from our coffee tree. Coffee is a social necessity, here, if not a biological necessity, and it keeps getting more and more expensive.

Reopening the preschool

We began the new school year on Tuesday, September 28, by meeting with families who have enrolled their children in our preschool. After an opening devotion and distribution of medications sent to us by the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League of Canada by way of the Dominican Republic (the LWML Canada sent the funds and the medications were purchased in the Dominican Republic under the supervision of Rebecca Pollex Krey, wife of the Rev. Theodore Krey, regional director for Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod World Missions in Latin America and the Caribbean).

Venezuela received 693,600 vaccines against COVID-19, September 7, as part of the first shipment made to the country by the World Health Organization’s COVAX Mechanism, of the total of 12,068,000 vaccine doses acquired. This first delivery of doses consists of vaccines against COVID-19 produced by the laboratory Sinovac Biotech and included in the emergency use list of the World Health Organization (WHO).

The Sinovac vaccine, known as CoronaVac, was the one that I received on September 13. The two-dose vaccine is recommended for individuals aged 18 years and above. It has an efficacy rate of 50.4% for preventing symptomatic infection, according to data from a Brazilian trial, and an effectiveness of 67%, according to a real-world study in Chile. Some people we know experienced adverse reactions to CoronaVac, similar to those reported elsewhere, but I have had no problems.

Luz Maria earlier received the Sputnik V vaccine. On September 27, Venezuela’s Minister of Health, affirmed that “more than 8.8 million first doses” had been given, while 5.25 million received the second Sputnik V dose. Luz Maria and I are both waiting for second doses.

Let us remember that Psalm 91 not only promises that “He shall give his angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways”, but also under His protection we need not fear “the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday”, nor any physical or spiritual danger, for whether we live or die, He will show us His salvation. Amen.

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