Hello everyone!
We hope that you are doing well and that you are enjoying these summer months! We have been super busy on our end!
The kiddos are doing great! Noah loves school time with Momma. Kendra has done an amazing job teaching him. He now knows all his numbers in English and Spanish. He is speaking in more complete sentences and is very inquisitive. He loves airplanes and is always looking for planes in the sky! Ezra is advancing very quickly. He has his 2 bottom teeth, and his 2 top teeth have just come out! He is now crawling everywhere and loves standing against the couch to play with toys. Oh, where has the time gone?!
We recently traveled back to the States to meet with several supporters and potential new contacts. As you know, for the past 3 years, we have been raising support for the ministry in Panama; however, we put our personal support
on hold, to not divide our interests and to focus solely on the ministry. God has been so gracious in supplying all our needs, but with a growing family on the field, we felt the need to start raising funds for our family again. Stephen may travel back in August to continue raising funds while his in-laws are visiting the grandkids. That way Kendra has help with the 2 active boys while he is away.
Regarding the land, we have finally moved on with the purchase of the property!! We were still waiting for the zoning and survey information on the property in order to decide if we were going to go through with the
sale. Thankfully, by the end of May, we had all the information in hand and moved forward with the purchase. However, that is when the landowner decided to hold up the sale due to various clauses in the contract that
he disagreed with. It took nearly another month and a half to get him to agree to the contract. As of July 15th, we signed several documents for the bank and started the transfer of the funds from our nonprofit in the States to Panama. This is a milestone since the transfer of large amounts of funds is usually frozen until you can prove that they will be used for the designated purpose. In this case, we had to have several letters, contracts, and bank statements proving that the funds were, in fact, donations for the purchase of the land. Unfortunately, in Panama, this is the reality that most ministries and organizations must deal with, due to many money laundering schemes and drug trafficking.
Once all the funds are transferred, we will proceed to sign the first contract and give the landowner a down payment. He will use this to pay the transfer taxes and any remaining bills on the property. Then we can sign the last document, transfer the remaining funds to the owner and the deed will be signed over to Abraham Project Panama. Please keep us in prayers as we go through this whole process that God would give us wisdom, and that, hopefully, within the next month we will have finalized the purchase! This whole process is surreal and exciting at the same time. We will be one big step closer to having our prayers answered after 3 years of raising funds and we will continue with the development of our ministry in Panama.
At the end of May, Kendra attended a 3-day intensive conference from the non-profit called Save the Children based out of the UK. The information obtained and contacts made have been proven invaluable. The conference invited several Panamanian non-profit organizations that work with children under 18 to be further educated on the topic of “salvaguarda” (aka safeguards) and how to create an effective structure of safeguards within our organizations. Kendra is excited to put what she learned into practice with the ministry to help protect the organization, the staff, and most importantly, the children we will be attending to. We’re grateful that she attended this conference with one of our board members who actively advocates for children in her community. It was an excellent experience.
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