June update

Hello all:

The summer seems to be rolling past in a hurry. Seems like just yesterday I was writing the May update. Maybe that is because I was so late in getting it to you. We have just come off a very full week with 49 visiting workers. We immediately prepared and begin yesterday with 75 guests in-house and I am excited about the possibilities of completing several projects, and the doors that will be opened to our evangelists by this effort.

The work during this time has been challenging as more people means more personalities, more preparations, more individualized thought on how things should work. Everyone is exhausted, but we continue to plug on as we still have several full weeks of guests on the horizon. The idea of thinking outside the box has risen to levels that we feel we are incapable (or unworthy) of reaching. We know this is only made possible by God who eventually zaps the right synapse in the creativity sector of our brains for us see it.

The photo below is of the board that I use to set which projects are used, how many American workers there are at each location, who is the translator, who is the driver, which intern, which Nicaragua leader is in charge, which vehicle they take and which venue works for that project. I set this in the middle of the week prior to a group coming in. Half of the activities change locations at mid-day. Many of the small rectangles change based on who shows up for work, who can drive which vehicles and which days school is in session. It's like a constant game of giant Sudoku, but with few numbers that remain constant. At the end of the day we start checking supplies for the next day.

yes, a graduate level course is required to decipher the thing

God has provided us with the opportunity to examine 840 pairs of eyes (most people had two) at the mid-way point of 2013. Of those we examined we fitted 579 pair, and referred 34 children. This is a direct result of your spiritual and financial support.

Please join us in our current prayer list:

• Peace about the work here
• Clarity for God's Will
• New opportunities in the development of a new program
• Consistently good health
• Acquisition of a new piece of eye exam equipment and the peripherals that accompany it.
• Dan and Marsha Swenson
• Residency and Adoption processes

Finally, on a lighter note, Sheila's distraction by the mice that have been running wild in the apartment has been greatly reduced. After months of trying traps, poisons and loud noises, the installation of a new feline-based rodent abatement system seems to be doing the trick - at least as far as we can tell. I don't know if the fear (smell) of the system is a deterrent to the rodents or the system is actually catching them.  So far we have only seen shoe laces suffering from her wrath. Nevertheless, we haven't seen many of the tiny monsters around lately. Ikaia (ee-KAI-yah) is a great name for a cat. But it is more than just a great name, because in the Miskito language it means assassin. Self-fulfilling prophecy? We'll see.

This picture does not need a thousand words to invoke fear...

God bless you and we miss you. Thank you again for all you do. We'd love to hear form you.

Grace, peace and Mercy...but mostly Mercy,

"Coach" Jonathan L. Holland,