Yepci in the hospital

Just a quick update on Luz Maria's daughter, Yepci: She now can walk and started eating solid food after four days of intravenous feeding. Her fractured arm is still healing, but we expect that she will be released from the hospital this week.

We are left with the mystery of the man who saved the lives of Yepci and her taxi driver. Witnesses say they saw from a distance a man, who appeared to have been walking alongside the road, pull Yepci and the driver from the burning car. By the time the police arrived, he was gone. No one knows who he was or where he went.

Pastor Paul Pfotenhauer made another visit to the hospital along with some other volunteers from Minnesota. He prayed over Yepci, the taxi driver and another young man who requested a prayer.

The team of volunteers was a great blessing to us and Corpus Christi Lutheran Church. They spent Tuesday and Wednesday in La Caramuca, then went whitewater rafting in the mountains on Thursday. Their time here was quite an adventure as they encountered the oversized cockroaches that live here, learned why foreigners should only drink bottled water, and experienced one of our frequent power and water outages at their hotel. Nevertheless everyone retained a positive attitude throughout.

The people here were very touched by the fact that the volunteers traveled all the way from the United States to share their faith with them and their visit will not be forgotten.

On Friday the volunteers went into the city of Barinas and visited a nursing home. Saturday was a day of puppet drama, songs and games in the street in front of Corpus Christi Lutheran Church. There also were about 30 women and men in Rhoda Pfotenhauer and Dorothy Young's crafts sessions. On Sunday morning the group participated in the worship service at Corpus Christi.

They handed out many small New Testaments of the type distributed by the Gideon Society (the Spanish 1960 Reina-Valera version) and also such items as toothbrushes and toothpast, which were greatly appreciated, too. They left us with great quantities of crayons, glue construction paper and many other supplies.

We will always be grateful for this first visit by supporters in the United States.