Raymer November 2008 Prayer Letter

November 2008

Dear Praying Friends,

Psalm 20:7 Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God.

The past few months have flown past for us. They have been filled with opportunities and with change.

As we finished up the summer we were able to take one of our supporting churches to Monterrey to help a church with two vacation Bible schools each day. It was exciting to see the children’s reception to hearing God’s Word both at the main church, as well as at another location that the hosting church is considering opening a mission church in the future. It was fun for us to renew friendships and make new friends with the folks traveling with us. During this same week we were able to finalize the purchase of our house in the Monterrey area. We praise the Lord for His provision of this house just 3 blocks from the Universidad Cristiana de Las Américas. We thank the group from Colorado that they had the desire not only to help with the VBS classes, but also had the desire to help us do some painting on our new home.

We anticipated finalizing the sale of our home in McAllen the same week we finalized the purchase in Monterrey, but the Lord had other plans for us. Upon returning from Monterrey, we found out that the sale of our home had fallen through that day. This had been the second contract that had fallen through, but the Lord quickly brought another buyer and about 40 days later we were able to close the sale of our home in McAllen. During this time we imported our household goods into Mexico. We praise God for providing for this move and for all those who helped us move. We ended up having to park the trailer moving our belongings at a friend’s property about 15 minutes from our new house to transfer the items to smaller vehicles because the semi could not fit in our neighborhood.

We have been busy getting our house set up, as well as, getting the new OREMUNDO office set up in Monterrey. I am thankful that God has provided a young man, Elfego Ramirez, who is studying in the theology program to come and assist in the office for two hours each day as part of his work scholarship. It is a special blessing because Elfego and his family have been close friends of ours for 16 years.

The end of September took us to Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico, where we were able to hold another one of our Intensive Courses. There was great excitement once again among those who took the course. We had 35 in attendance and they were constantly asking when we were bringing the next course. I am thankful for Matt Bixby and AJ Gibson who each taught 8 hours during these 2 ½ days. We are looking at several other locations for future courses as well as working on editing the courses that we will be offering to pastors on DVD through a new correspondence program. It was a special time as Debbie and Carena were able to travel with me on this trip.

Carena has seemed to make the move very smoothly. We enrolled her in K4 when we arrived. She is quickly learning her Spanish. It is a blessing to hear her converse with others. We knew she had a good understanding but was not speaking a lot of Spanish. Each day we hear her speaking more. She loves having so many of her friends close by and asks everyday who can come over to play. She is definitely a people person. It is hard to believe how quickly she is growing up and will turn 4 on the 28^th of this month.

Please pray for our family as we continue to make the transition here in Monterrey. We are excited about the opportunities that God has already opened for us and are praying for His direction and wisdom in new areas of ministry that we can serve. Today I submitted the forms for my visa. Please pray I will receive a new visa quickly.

Thank you for your prayers and support,

 Russell, Debbie & Carena Raymer

Raymers to Mexico - Presentation 2008

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Mexico Independence Day Celebration at Carena's School

Carena started out not sure about what was going on and really wanted to be with her Mommy, but by the end she was happily waving her country's flag (Carena and Debbie both carry dual citizenship).

House Sold!

We just wanted to update all those who have been praying for the sale of our house in McAllen that today we finalized the sale. This has been a very drawn out process as this was the third contract on the house. But we just continued to trust God who continued to remain faithful as always as we have moved to Monterrey. Thank you for your prayers!

First day of School

We arrived in Guadalupe, NL, Mexico on Thursday evening, and the following morning Carena began school (school had actually begun Monday of that week).


In front of our house ready to head off for school.


My little girl is so grown up. Sometimes I wonder what happened to my little baby.

Carena's school is a short 4 blocks from our house, so as long as it is not raining it is a nice walk to school. It is only 1 block up from where my office will be, so that makes it very handy for walking Carena to school.

Move to Monterrey

We are officially in Monterrey! Our household goods left McAllen yesterday evening and headed across the border. This morning our truck arrived here in Monterrey and a number of our friends and coworkers graciously helped up unload everything from the semi to a smaller truck, then to the house (the semi would not fit in our neighborhood). We are now very busy putting everything away.
Thank you for your prayers. Please continue to pray that our house in McAllen will sell soon. Our house is under the 3rd contract, so we pray this will go through.

Virtual Tour of New House

Photos of painting the new house

Raymer Update - July 2008

July 2008
Dear Praying Friends,

Psalm 89:11 The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them.

We praise the Lord for His goodness and provision for our family. These past few months have been even busier than our normal schedule. The month of May started with a special celebration dinner marking 50 years in the ministry for Debbie’s dad Valente Hernandez. We are thankful for the faithfulness that Bro. Hernandez has shown to our Lord for these years. We were also thankful that Debbie’s sister Karen along with her 5 month old daughter Liana were able to come from Hawaii for the special celebration. We enjoyed spending time with the family.

The first week of May took our family back to Monterrey to continue working on our new program to provide continuing education to pastors. Russell recorded a two week module course taught by Missionary Jim Gardner on Youth and Camp Ministries. The course was well received by the students and area pastors. During the same period of time, we hosted our second Intensive Course for pastors. This was the same course material that was taught last October in Saltillo, but this time we were able to share it with pastors in the Monterrey area. We were excited to have 20 pastors in attendance at this conference, and we are looking forward to more of these conferences in the future, with the next one in Cd. Madero in September.

We were also able to be in Monterrey for the graduation services of the Universidad Cristiana de Las Américas. Over the past several years we have been able to get to know several of the graduates on a personal level, most notably was our close friend Idai Ramirez whom we have known for 16 years. Idai graduated with a degree in Linguistics. She has helped our family with the groups traveling into Mexico with us for the past three summers, and it was a special blessing for us to see her walk across the platform and receive her degree!

In June we were busily working on preparing for the mission teams and packing up our house to get ready for our upcoming move to Monterrey. It has been great seeing how God has brought everything together for our move. We should be closing on the sale our house in McAllen and close on the purchase of our new home in Monterrey within a week. We are excited about our future ministry with OREMUNDO and the university in Monterrey.

July has been busy with mission teams. Our first group traveled to work at the Christian university in Monterrey to assist in different projects around the campus. Our main project was to paint the interior of both dormitories.

Our next trip was with our home church, Tri-City Baptist from Kansas City. We were able to take the group to the north side of Guadalupe where we were able to assist in two vacation Bible schools each day. The first was at the church where we were staying. We had a little over 200 in attendance at this VBS. The second was at a new church that is being started by the main church. We had 100 attending this VBS located in the pastor’s house.

Carena continues to grow and make new friends everywhere she is. She is excited about the move to Monterrey (as long as we bring her toys ). She is looking forward to attending K4 this coming year.

Thanks for your prayers and support,
Russell, Debbie & Carena Raymer

Prayer Requests:
• Last mission team
• Finalizing sales and purchases of houses
• Ministry changes
• Carena as she starts school
• Furniture and household importation to be smooth

Hurricane Dolly

Today Hurricane Dolly has decided to come for a visit. Thankfully she went a little north, but we are now getting the wind and the rain that comes with a Cat. 2 hurricane. I went out and took a short video so you could see some of the rain here at my folk's place in Mission, Texas. The interesting thing is that the wind is coming in from the West and the hurricane is coming in from the East. This is due to the counter-clock-wise movement of the hurricane.
The wind and rain have picked up a little more since this video was taken at 5:23 PM central time.
One of the funniest things that I saw was a small animal running across the back alley and I was trying to figure out what it was as it was running like a dog, but looked funny. I then saw it was a jack-rabbit that was just scarred and trying to figure out how to get out of the rain.

House in Monterrey

We praise the Lord that the sale of our home in McAllen continues to move forward. We should close on both the house in McAllen and the new home in Monterrey this week. Here are a few photos of the new house.

South Padre Island

We were able to take a couple of days as a family at South Padre Island before our summer gets too hectic with trips and moving. We were happy that Ana and the boys were able to go with us.
Here are a few photos from the outing.

International Museum of Art and Science

We have enjoyed our trips to the IMAS museum here in McAllen. Carena loves to go and do many projects, as well as, play with her friends and cousins.
The museum is setup for children and has lots of activities. They also have a large wooden playground that the kids really enjoy.

[Here on the left is Carena along with her friends Obed & Genesis Ybarra (to her left) and Justin Fabela is right behind Carena.]

Carena and Genesis

School

Carena ready for School

Beginning this semester Carena began attending school at Faith Christian Academy - Mission, TX for one day each week. She was joining with the K4-K5 class of Mrs. Kim Harris. Carena enjoyed going to school each week and it was a great prep time for getting her ready for school next fall.

Carena and Mrs. Harris

Carena and her classmates!

Justin's Birthday

We are thankful that we were able to be back in town and spend some time with Justin for his birthday. We were able to take Justin to Mr. Gatti's Pizza buffet along with Ana & Tevi as well as Grandma & Grandpa Hernandez before they left for Mexico again. The kids got into the photo both and we had this picture taken. In the picture from Left to Right: Carena Raymer, Justin Fabela, Estevan (Tevi) Fabela.

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We were also able to go to Justin's soccer game that was held on his birthday. His team beat the undefeated team on this day. These are a couple of photos I took. The boy with Justin is his friend from school Ezekiel.

Carena & Tita

While we were in Monterrey these past couple of weeks, Carena saw a picture on a billboard of a Chimp named Timo. She thought he was so cute. I told here I knew where he lived, and maybe someday we could go and visit him. A week later we were downtown Monterrey spending some time as a family, and we got to the street where Timo lived. I told Carena we would go see if Timo was home. We arrived in the store and Timo wasn't home but Carena immediately saw Tita, a much smaller Chimp playing and she decided she wanted her picture taken with Tita the Chimp in a little dress wearing a diaper (she thought that was so funny). After the picture Tita turned and gave Carena a giant hug - it was very cute.

Carena's AWANA Presentation

On Sunday, May 4, 2008 Carena participated in our church's AWANA presentation with her Puggles group. We thought you might enjoy the video.

Raymer Update - April 2008

April 2008

Dear Praying Friends,

The past several months have been full of activity for us. We thank the Lord for His provision and protection during these days.

As many of you have heard, we are currently preparing to transition our base of operation to the Monterrey, Mexico area. We will be continuing to minister with OREMUNDO, as well as, work closer with our sister ministry Universidad Cristiana de Las Américas (Christian University of the Americas). We will be working on expanding the new area of Advanced Pastor Training Courses that we have begun to record. We will also be expanding the publications area of OREMUNDO and UCLA. We have been busily trying to pack our belongings and get our house ready to put on the market to sell. We ask that you would pray for us as we have our house on the market, and as we look for housing in Monterrey. Our plans are to move once our home has sold.

Although we have been focusing on our upcoming move, it has not slowed down our pace. February began with Russell and Kirk Briscoe making a quick trip visiting a number of churches making plans for our summer trip ministry. We thank the Lord for the folks who will be traveling with us this summer. We have over 200 people scheduled to minister in Mexico with us this summer.

The second week of February took our family to the Tampico, Mexico area for a pastors conference. Russell was asked to assist with the technical aspects of this conference. It was a lot of movement of equipment as Russell sat up the sound and recording equipment in one location during the day, then in a completely different auditorium in the evening. We thank God for the wonderful preaching that was presented at this conference which was focused on different social problems facing God’s people in today’s world. While in Tampico we got to see several of the children that Debbie taught in VBS last August and their parents. What a blessing to see that 3 new families have been going to that church since the kids classes.

March took us back into Mexico for another pastors conference and a special service celebrating 50 years in the ministry for Debbie’s dad, Valente Hernandez. God has richly blessed the ministry of Bro. Hernandez, and there was a large group of people present whose lives have been touched through his ministry. The celebration marked a milestone not a completion of ministry. We thank God for the continuing ministry as an Evangelist that Debbie’s dad has throughout Mexico. As family, we wish that he would slow down a little, but we are thankful for his faithfulness to the Lord. Debbie enjoyed seeing family members that she had not seen in 15 years.

April took us back to Monterrey for a special conference celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Christian University of the Americas. Russell once again assisted with the technical aspects of this conference. It was exciting to hear the testimonies of how God was using the graduates in different areas of ministry. It was a special time of giving thanks to God for His blessings and provision over the years. We are excited about working closer with these students in the future.
Carena continues to grow. Recently she began attending a K4-K5 class one day a week. She enjoys going to school, but does not like sitting down for the classwork. She continues to grow and does not stop going. She is a typical 3 year old. She is excited about moving down to Monterrey, although she keeps asking if we are taking her toys with us.

Please pray for us as we will be spending the majority of the month of May in Monterrey recording a course on youth ministry. This course will be part of the new program for pastors that we are creating. Russell will also be coordinating another Intensive Course for pastors the 8th-10th of May.

Thank you for your faithful prayers and support. We are so blessed to be completing 15 years serving the Lord here in Mexico and realize that it is only through your generosity and faithfulness that we have been able to continue in this ministry.

May the Lord richly bless each of you,

Russell & Debbie Raymer