There is Joy! Psalms 30:5 (b)

“...Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning..”

News:

• Ecuador is still in a perilous time with COVID-19. Things were easing up a bit in Ecuador, but quickly deteriorating. We have provided food for several families that have reached out to us in dire situations. We are still working on doing more food distributions with the government.
• We have several families in two of our remote villages that have COVID-19. The government has placed armed guards and police around their houses to prevent them from going outside or anyone coming in for 14 days.
• We are still in the U.S. and do not know when we will get back to Ecuador. It is not beneficial to the ministry for us to be in Ecuador and have to sit in an apartment and only be able to go out once to twice a week for a few hours.

Big News:

• The Gospel is going forth during this time in which the Bible clubs cannot meet! The lesson packets that the E-team have been distributing (Bible lessons, crafts, craft supplies and a snack) to the children in our villages has been a huge success. Some children have been pooling their pennies to get a truck taxi for $1.50 and 12 kids pile in the cab and bed of the truck taxi to get to the location to say their memory verse and get their next Bible lesson packet, then they walk up to an hour and a half home.Pastor Gonzalo continue to work on their church/ministry center in Cochapata.
• COVID-19 Training with Teach to Transform; Dena and the E-Team participated in a Zoom meeting to learn about a training module for training on COVID-19 for our communities. We hope to use these modules to train our local leaders in the churches and house churches so they can teach their communities and share the Gospel at the same time.
• Things have opened up here in the U.S. for Gary and I to be able to share about what God is doing in Ecuador through Pate Ministries. We have been able to share in pre-recorded messages, live streams and live services.

Bigger News:

• We are so excited to announce that our "Bible Club Lesson in a Box" project is off and running. The first 42 lessons have been written in Spanish and are being translated in English right now. We are working on the next 100 lessons. This will be a huge part of our ministry expansion to provide Bible lesson materials to our current villages and house church villages to start their own Bible clubs. Each lesson will include a teacher overview, a history, an objective, the lesson (written at a level that anyone can teach it), a practical application, a memory verse and a prayer. The material will also include a game or activity idea, song ideas, visual aides, a craft and supplies for the craft. We even have a group in Honduras that would like to use the materials to start their own Bible clubs. Our long term goal is to put the materials up on our website for anyone, anywhere to use to share the Gospel. We have had this idea for several years, but have had no time to write it.
• Kid's are sending Andrés photos of their finished crafts via WhatsApp.
• Check out our Pate Ministries Youtube channel as Andrés has been working on new videos and posting them to the youtube channel.

Need: We are looking for an RV, Class C or motor home. We are traveling more and more to share about Pate Ministries and raise ministry support for the work in Ecuador. It is a great expense for hotels and food costs when traveling from Sunday to Sunday in churces away from where we domicile. With an RV, we could park it at a church while we are domicilled in the U.S. and when we travel to various churches, it would allow us to cook rather than eat out and stay on church property or in a Walmart parking lot at no cost rather than stay in a hotel. Do you know anyone that has an RV they haven't used in a while, who might be interested in donating it to the ministry for a tax credit or selling to us (at a very good price)? Please email us.

Special Prayer Request:

• Pray for our President and our leaders.
• Pray for Peace and Unity in our country.
• Pray for protection for our kids and their families and that they will come to the saving knowledge of Christ.
• E-team: Pray for them as they endure COVID-19.
• Pray that we will hear God clearly on when to go back to Ecuador.
• Financial Support: Please pray that during this time of crisis with COVID-19 that Christ will provide the ministry's financial needs, which is normally met through the financial support in the form of donations from our individual and church supporters. Our full-time Ecuadorian staff cannot afford to lose their saleries and are being paid as they work from home. Also, all of our ministry expenses are still having to be paid during this time of crisis.

Updates:

• Support: We thank you for your faithfulness in continued financial support during this crazy time.
• Teams: All of our teams have been cancelled for the remainder of 2020.