Patrick Thomas Sheridan

Our new little bundle of joy arrived last week! It was a long journey. We hit a few struggles along the way in the hospital, but we are just thankful for a healthy baby and all of God's blessings in our family. I love his name! I got to choose it this time. I think it's neat that he has my dad's name and Annie's dad's name. The motive for choosing Patrick was after my dad, and there were actually three men named Thomas who inspired the middle name: my father-in-law, my grandpa William Thomas Sheridan, and my good friend Thomas Ware. I got a shot of Micah meeting Patrick the day after he was born...Micah is wearing his festive Chilean clothes for Independence Day (er, WEEK, because here we literally celebrate it all week long). Please enjoy these pictures, real baby pictures are coming soon, and hopefully an updated family picture.

Conference was a success

Our first annual missions conference went very well. We plan to start supporting our second missionary who is a Mexican brother serving in India. The only thing stopping us is figuring out a few logistical difficulties, but hopefully those will be resolved soon! We had our guest speaker and his family in. There is a gal who attends services who does art by burning drawings onto leather. We presented Pastor Cristian and his family with a personalized gift made by her. We were challenged to take the gospel to every creature in our generation. Here is a picture from one of the services, in the background you can see our new banner that says "TO EVERY CREATURE IN OUR GENERATION":

Murta, Sanchez, and Tranquilo

We planned to hit one more town on our evangelistic trip, but because of a flat tire we didn't make it to Puerto Guadal. It was a memorable trip. We passed out many gospel tracts, at least one to each home in these three places, and we also got to preach the gospel to people in each place. They all desperately need a church to be planted there. Sanchez is so small, maybe like 50-75, and it is not too far from Bahia Murta. It is a little community that up until the last decade was only reachable by boat or a very dangerous road. One of the most memorable moments on this trip was after witnessing to two men in Puerto Sanchez, one of them yelled to me as we were walking away, "Don't forget Sanchez! Come back to Sanchez!" I will not soon forget him, or Sanchez. Here are a lot of random cell phone pictures from the trip:

 I thought this waterfall that had frozen over was so beautiful. This was at the highest point of altitude as you are making your way towards the Villa Cerro Castillo/Puerto Ingeniero Ibañez area. The roads were pretty icy. This picture is from on the way, but if you want to get an idea of how icy the roads were check out the last picture in the post.

 These two pictures are from the entrance of Bahia Murta. Just under 600 people according to this sign, but I suspect it has grown a little. These are 600 people whom God loves very much. Most of the town was gathered the day we were there for a funeral, I was moved with compassion as they wept without hope.

 Oh, just a pig in the plaza at Bahia Murta.

This dear man welcomed us into his home. I preached the gospel to him and used his guitar to sing some gospel songs. He said Bahia Murta needs a pastor...he's right. He asked if I would send one and gave me his phone number for when we do.

This is on the scary road winding through the mountains on the way to Puerto Sanchez. From what I hear it is no where near as bad as the old road.

These two frost-bitten pictures are from in front of our cabin in Puerto Rio Tranquilo. I plan to take my parents and family here in a couple of weeks. It got really cold that night. It was so cold when we woke up that I went and had devotions in the car with the heater on! What a whimp! I remember doing that once on deputation with Annie. 

What a trip! This was my last shot I snapped when we were still about 2 hours away from home. I was so excited to get home to the family, sleep in my bed, and I was thankful for what God had done on this journey.