Merendon Mountain Mission

Merry Christmas from the Hills

Merry Christmas to your family from ours! We greatly appreciate your support and encouragement through a year that God stretched to us. You are such a blessing to us. Words can not express our gratitude for your prayers and e-mails of encouragement. The ministry continues to do well with 14 men interested in attending La Cumbre Bible Institute starting on January 4th. We had 6 ladies at our home on Friday to make over 1000 cookies for Christmas Day at our churches. They also helped prepare food for the three weddings in one on Saturday. Saturday we had four ladies finishing up the rest of the food for the wedding. The church did an incredible job decorating and celebrating the union of these 3 couples. Sunday Toby and I celebrated our 12th anniversary. Tomorrow we will celebrate Christmas. At two in the afternoon the church in Penitas Arriba will have a big church service. Amy’s mom provided wonderful Christmas crafts for the children. So the children will have cookies, crafts, a nice meal provided by the church, and movies to celebrate. We hope and pray you have a wonderful Christmas as we remember the reason for the season in Christ birth.

May God bless you,

Toby, Amy, Cassandra, Sarah, and Jonathan Hill

Update

Dear friends and family,

We will be having 3 weddings at the San Antonio church on December 22nd. The Penitas church wants to have 2 weddings this month but I don't see how this is possible at this point. I think it will happen in January. A couple of the Vital Statistics places have ran out of paper to print birth certificates which is one of the documents needed to get married. The mission will be providing the food and cake since it will be combined. I will take some pictures and send you some after Christmas. The 21st a group of ladies will be coming up to make Christmas cookies for each church. The 22nd is the wedding in San Antonio. The 23rd is our anniversary. The 24th/25th the church will celebrate Christmas.

This week will have electricity put into the church and clinic. It turns out that all the lights in the clinic are totally burnt out. We have some electricians who will be working on getting everything working hopefully. It will be nice to have light again in the clinic. I have one light and it gets pretty dark in the clinic.

We are very excited that we received a document for Jonathan's residency that allows him to stay in country until his residency is completed maybe in June. Usually just to get this takes a year. We are grateful that we will not have a huge expense to fly him out every 3 months. Our kitchen cabinets will be done this week. Toby and I went to look at them today. They are really looking nice.

I had a little boy come in to the clinic with mumps. I just saw him today and he is still pretty swollen. I haven't seen it before so I looked it up in my book "Where There is No Doctor". His case was textbook. It was a nice break from all the respiratory stuff I am seeing. I took a young lady down to get a ultrasound done. I thought the baby might be breach and according to her dates she was due. It turns out that the baby girl is 7 pounds and 10 ounces. The mom is probably 4'9" so the baby doesn't have any room. I was relieved to find everything ok since she was telling me some things that were concerning. That is all the news for now.

Thank you for all your prayers.

May God bless you,

Toby and Amy Hill

Rainy Season, Prayer Requests

Dear friends and family,
December 5, 2007

Things continue to go well. It is definitely rainy season here and you can tell by the patient load. When the sun is out I will have 40 to 60 patients (which is rare for the sun to be out right now). When it is raining and cold, which is the norm, I have 10 or so patients. The asthma patients have been pretty severe. They sent Daniel home without treating him. I guess he cleared up and is going to be fine right now. The next episode I will take him to a doctor who sees my patients. Hector Alfaro is one of my patients that scare me to death. He is twelve years old. He has several severe asthma attacks a week. He has said to his parents several times I just don’t want to fight to live/breathe anymore. His parents have to carry him the two miles to the clinic to get him help when he is severe. I was so concerned that I asked the board if we could buy him the needed medicines. They approved. I took him to the doctor last week and explained the situation. He is now on the needed medication and doing much better. Praise the Lord! I had a two month old baby come in respiratory distress. Thankfully, Toby was able to take Ewin down quickly to the hospital. I haven’t heard how he is doing. Even my Sarah has croup and bronchitis due to the weather (no I haven’t slept much lately). It is literally every patient that comes in that has a respiratory illness of some sort.

Please pray for Ramona Gonzalez. Her husband is an alcoholic and verbally abusive. It escalated the other night to where her and her children literally feared and ran for their lives. Ramona has been having severe stomach pain and was throwing up while her husband was destroying everything in her home. He has burnt their blankets, sheets, and pretty much destroyed everything. The family usually does without food because he drinks the money. Anabel just told me today that the biopsy from the endoscope shows she may have cancer. The pathologist said she may have cancer but you need to pay for your results and take it to the doctor to know for sure. She has four little ones.

Toby continues to study and prepare for the Institute. He has several men who are interested in being elders and deacons who want to attend. We are so excited!!! It is rare for our group of churches to have elders and/or deacons. There are so many false teachings that we really needed men in the church who know their Bible. Also our ministers are attacked so often that it will be wonderful to have other men to back them up. It seems most days; one of the men has a question and wants to talk to Toby. So he spends a lot of days counseling men.

As always, we covet and appreciate your prayers.

May God bless you,

Toby, Amy, Cassandra, Sarah and Jonathan Hill