Laynes' Line

Please be sure to read the preceding letter to get all the details of camp. BE SURE TO CLICK ON PHOTOS FOR BIGGER PICTURES. SHEEP! What else could they be? Armando Hernandez, Pastor Group from Guadalajara David Peach - 4 year director of camp, changing to field of Argentina soon. Lunch Time Pastor Horacio Gonzalez - 25 years

July 2009 Psalm 8:1 O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens . Dear Praying Friends, How excellent are His ways! We, the church, have just returned from a wonderful week at camp. It was the best spirit I have seen at camp in a long time. We have many new (younger) people who had never attended camp, so they came with an open heart and anxious to learn. Our pastors now all have nearly 15 years or more in the ministry, which gives them great wisdom in seeing the needs of the people and in sharing with them the appropriate verses. There were 11 major cities represented from all over Mexico. We honored Horacio Gonzalez for being faithful for more than 25 years as pastor of the same church. There was one decision for salvation, the only unsaved person we knew of at camp. Two hearing families, one American and one Mexican, yielded to work with the deaf full time. This is the first Mexican ...

Several years ago we were invited to an out-of-the-way place that most people have long ago forgotten about. The pastor also stated that he remembered several deaf in the area. We went with him with the idea of distributing clothing and food to the Indian population in the name of his church. At the last moment the pastor of the Huastecos (was- tĕ -kōs) said he would announce we were coming on the local radio and would round up the deaf for us. The Huastecos are very humble people who do not use currency for most exchanges, but rather barter for anything needed. When we arrived, there were five deaf ranging from 9-40 years of age who had never been to school in their life. Unlike most groups of deaf, they had no “home” signs and only communicated by pointing. We started teaching on Monday wondering how to reach them without a language. We started with mime and little by little taught them a few signs. By Friday, one of the boys asked the Lord to save him. The greatest blessing was to ...

Camp Everyone likes to go to camp! In 1983, when we first arrived in Mexico, one of our first “tests” of ministry was attending and teaching in a camp for the deaf. Ronald Henson had started the camp ministry several years before, but because of lack of help and a change of location, they had not been able to maintain a yearly camp. Nineteen eighty-three and the year following, the camp was held with a hearing group at the beach, sleeping in tents and meeting in hot, humid conditions. From that time on, we started looking for locations and teachers to help with both the deaf ministries and their hearing children. Since that time, we have missed two years of having camp, one because a camp location cancelled us out at the last moment and the other the year that the hurricane hit within 100 miles of where we were to meet. We later learned that the camp was covered with more than three feet of water for two days (what if we would have had 100+ DEAF campers to take care of ...

O nce again God has blessed us with a tremendous Sunday. We started out about 25 adults plus the children. By the time the services were over, we were in the sixties. Three young ladies accepted the Lord as their Savior(circled in red - those in yellow , last week). Remember you can double click the photo to see it bigger. F ederico is a young man we worked with several years ago who came to us from a gang background in the roughest part of town. He often came and went, but he always brought his new friends to us so that they could get saved. A couple of years ago, he took off for the States to work with his uncle. He appeared yesterday and presented his new girlfriend. His first words to me were, "she needs to get saved." He wanted me to present the Gospel, but I recommended that he allow one of our ladies to help her. It ended up being three new ladies, so several of our ladies had a "class" with them after the service. Sandra, a young lady about th...