VOLENTEERS!!! Yes everyone, as of right now there are around five openings on the first team. If you or someone you know is still interested in going on VFC 2007, now is the time to act. Please contact Tom Orme as soon as possible (See: How Can I Go?). The dates for the first team are October 6th to October 21st. Also, please keep in prayer that we can still use more Spanish speakers on both teams. We already have some bi-lingual people for both teams, but a few more couldn’t hurt.

You may have noticed that there is another picture of the orphanage from space. This picture shows what the orphanage would have looked like in 1999 if there had been a satellite picture from that time. You also might want to think of this as a “what if we never went to Chile” picture. Because without the hard work of the 16 teams that have visited Santiago from 2000 to 2006 this is what the orphanage would look like. Please see the previous post to see what it looks like now. Our thanks goes out to those that have gone and those that are going this year. Looking forward to the VFC 2007 season!!

One thing I like to do is to look at pictures of places I’ve been on a program called “Google Earth.” Last year, I was able to find a picture of the orphanage in Santiago, Chile from space. It was very exciting, but it was an old picture. I could tell that it was taken after the October 2003 trip but before the October 2004 trip. Over the last year I routinely go back to Google earth to see if they have taken any new pictures of Santiago. However, it seemed no mater how many times I looked, it was never updated, until today! I have pasted those two pictures together to get a good look at the progress that has been made since 2003. So, in the above thumbnail, the picture on the left is from 2003 and on the right is from 2007. Just click on the small picture above and you can see how much God has blessed the orphanage and us in the past four years. As I look at the two pictures together my excitement for the coming October trip grows bigger! I cannot wait to see the orphanage, the girls, the team, and what God has in store for us this year!

by Mark Kromeke

Some of you have not heard from us in weeks; we have communicated with churches and with families, but we have been juggling weeks of medical appointments after a suspicious tumor was found in Cheryl during a mammogram.

Our prayers for the last month have been that Cheryl would not need radiation or chemotherapy after surgery. Prayer was answered in a marvelous way. The oncologist had some very good news for us, in that the lump that was taken out had good margins, meaning that there is no need for any further treatment like radiation or chemotherapy in that area.
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