News and Updates from EFM Missionaries
Donald Smith M.D. has completed his first month at work in the home office of EFM. He has started to learn the daily workings of the home office. Many people have asked what a doctor is going to do at the home office. He will have three primary jobs. First, he will recruit personnel for, organize and run short term medical missions trips to Honduras. Second, he will travel for the mission thus giving Brothers Manley and Hight some relief. Third, he will work in the area of stewardship and donor relationships. He is scheduled to be in missionary convention the week of September 15. Please put “Doc” on your prayer list.
November 14-18 marked the special occasion of our Guatemalan brethren moving into a new place of worship. They are renting from a congregation that has purchased a large building that was once a Jewish synagogue and school. The stained glass windows in the sanctuary have symbols of the Jewish faith crafted into them: The stone tablets of the law, an altar with a burning sacrifice, and the burning bush of Moses, among others.
Rudy Solís, superintendent of our national church in Guatemala, was present to provide both singing and preaching in the evening services. Here he is (left), along with one of the men from the congregation.
Our people will have access to both the main sanctuary and a large auditorium in the basement of the school annex. We held service in both places, and God blessed with an attendance that reached as high as 143. There were several who bowed at the altar for prayer. Also during these days we were able to make contact with some people who expressed interest in continuing to attend services with our brethren. Pray that many of them will draw near to the Lord and become part of the congregation!
As I write I am in Trenton, NJ, accompanying EFM’s Guatemalan congregation as they “estrenar” (use for the first time) their new worship facility. It’s a rented hall at one end of a large church. The entire church and hall used to be a Jewish synagogue, was sold to a Baptist congregation, which lost it, and was later sold to another Baptist group. The part of the building our group is in used to be a combo gym and auditorium for the Jewish school.
Our group has grown in four years from about a dozen, meeting in an apartment living room; to about twenty, meeting in a home; to the rental of a store front, where the group enlarged to over sixty and couldn’t fit any more; to this new facility where they can easily seat 300 people and park a lot of cars. I’m looking forward to the day when this hall is filled, too. However, the way the pastor talks, it may not get that big. The group may split into smaller ones to plant churches in other parts of town that will make an even larger fellowship of Hispanic believers in Trenton. May it be so!
I was surprised on Thursday night, Nov. 15, by the visit of three Guatemalan friends whom I hadn’t seen for at least twenty-five years. Two of them were students in the Bible institute when my wife and I were there, and it was really great to make contact with them again.
How’s EFM’s website doing?
I don’t know if you wonder or not, but I do, so the other day I took some time to look at the statistics that are kept by a couple of web analysis programs.
In October we had a total of 10,747 hits. That’s about half of the peak activity we had last January, but is higher than the average of the last nine months or so of last year, according to an 18-month graph produced by one program.
In general, right now the largest numbers of hits are going to:
– radio programs
– Missionary Herald
– prayer page
One category is called Top Ten URLs by Kilobytes (I assume the number of kilobytes downloaded). Those are easily dominated by the radio programs, since the files are fairly large; but interestingly enough, there were enough hits on the third edition of Alianza Hispana that it ranked about in the middle of the top ten.
By the way, we’re reducing the size of the radio files so that they can be downloaded more quickly. At least on a computer or MP3 player, the smaller files still seem to have good sound quality.
What time of day do people come looking? The most popular hours in October were: 8:00pm, 7:00pm, 9:00pm, 1:00pm, 5:00pm, 8:00am, and 3:00pm. We must not have a lot of morning people in our camp!
What days of the week are most popular for coming to us? During weeks 1,2, and 4 of October, Monday and Tuesday were easily the busiest days. In the third week it shifted slightly to Tuesday and Wednesday.
From what countries are people coming to visit? The top five, not counting the good ol’ USA, are: Guatemala (177 hits), Thailand (59), Switzerland (51), Brazil (46), and Mexico (43). Four other nations of interest are China (18), Lithuania (13), Peru (6), and Bolivia (3).
Mexico led the way with the highest volume of downloads. Lithuania is interesting because we have received three or four donations from someone there via PayPal on the website. Guatemala and Bolivia are two of our mission fields.
Steve Hight
The summer is passing quickly! Lots has happened for us , bringing many changes! Then on the first we traveled to WV to visit a very special friend (almost family to us). We took dinner and enjoyed a special visit with Sis. Loraine Straight who was a main figure in our first pastorate many years ago, and still very special to us. After leaving her place, we stopped again in Waynesburg to see another past parishoner of ours, and felt we had a profitable day.
The following day we traveled to the Kittanning area to attend Armstrong Camp and spend time with old friends and make new ones too. The Lord’s presence was felt in the evening missionary service where Dave was the speaker.
We count it a privilege to be serving our Savior and enjoying days such as this!
August will be a busy month! Trust it is a good one for all……. ~~marilyn
My wife, Kathy, and I, along with Rex and Hannah McDowell, had the pleasure of taking part in a missionary convention in St. Louis, MI, located at “the middle of the mitten.” Unfortunately, a predicted blizzard, which never fully developed, cut our convention short.
However, on Saturday evening about seventy people turned out for a pitch-in dinner and PowerPoint slide presentations. The theme of the convention was “Planting Seeds for Harvest,” and the hall where we ate was decorated to depict that idea. A paint-stirring paddle was fastened to each end of the tables where we ate. The sticks held a string that ran from one end of each table to the other, as if to support beans or peas. Down the center of each table someone had placed seed packets and loose seeds. One stick on each table held the name of one of the countries where EFM labors, as if to remind us what was growing in that row of the garden. Betty Derschied, missionary president, even handed out gummy worms to many of those who were present!
Of the four planned Sunday services, three were cancelled because of the bad weather. Even at that, about sixty people gathered in the St. Louis Wesleyan Holiness Church to hear a missionary challenge and to both see and hear a story told and dramatized by Hannah McDowell. Despite the cold weather, we were trying to fan the flames of missionary interest and plant the seeds of missionary service in the hearts and minds of all those present.
–Steven E. Hight
Welcome to EFM’s new blog! This is where you will find news, updates, perhaps even photos, from our staff–both at home and on the mission field. We trust you will find the blog interesting as well as a means of information that will help you to know how to more intelligently pray for our missionaries. Come back often to see the latest news. Better still, click on the RSS Feed link at the bottom of any page to subscribe to the blog (this only works with RSS capable web browsers such as Firefox). You will then get a live bookmark that automatically updates when new information is posted.
–Steven E. Hight