Dear friends and family,    

We are excited to announce that Jose Daniel's case has been accepted by Children's Hospital in Cincinnati.  Now begins the paperwork here.  I spent yesterday afternoon getting connected with the right connections to help us receive his passport and visa without too many problems.  Today I spent the whole day working on paperwork.  To make a long story short the mother needs a second ID but she never attended school and has no photo identification.  In Honduras a person has to have a citizenship card.  Thankfully, since we just had elections a representative of the winning party was there and made the path a lot easier for us.  They finally agreed to documentary proof for her.  The father has to bring in some school records to prove his identity.  Hopefully, Thursday we will get his document and then go to get his passport done.  Even though we have letters to get us through the process it still takes days to get this accomplished.  Jose Daniel and I will becoming to the states at the end of February for his surgery.  The organization that is helping get Daniel's Visa and passport also does cleft palate repair.  Because of the September 11th attack a group that was supposes to come to do surgical repairs on my cleft palate patients could not get their things down in time.  I happened to mention to Peggy, their coordinator, that we had talked before about cleft palate repair and whether or not they had a group coming in or not.  She said she was just ready to call me and tell me about a group coming to do surgeries March 2nd.  By April all of my patient's that need surgery will have their surgeries completed.  Praise the Lord!
   
    It has been interesting to try to accomplish all the legal work that we need to get done with the nationals.  We are trying to purchase property in La Union.  The people think that the property is worth a lot more that what it is.  They also believe you just need a verbal agreement to exchange property and that no legal documents need to be done to legal prove the exchange of property.  We tried to explain it to them but it does not work.  So we take them to our lawyer so she can explain.  I think she about lost it Monday afternoon in dealing with the people.  She cannot imagine people not having paperwork, never have gone to school, cannot read, and cannot write.  It was amusing to watch since we deal with misconceptions on a day to day basis.  It has been over a year since we started looking and bartering on prices.  The one house and property that we really wanted did not work out.  The lady lied to us so many times.  We would have all the problems worked out and paperwork ready and she would back out.  She owes a debt to a wealthy man.  The both of them thought we should pay four times the worth of the property even though we had someone come up to evaluate the worth of the property.  Anyway, the man is going to put in her prison for not paying the debt.  He would have then sold us the property but it would have caused the church and clinic problems since people would have thought we put her in prison. Perhaps in a year or so we can approach this property again, it would be ideal and an area is cleared there for a new church building. Meanwhile, a month or two ago, we switched to the offer to Don Hencho, Martin's Uncle, to avoid problems.  Lexington Church of Christ is coming in March and June to build help us with remodeling and projects in La Union.  Thursday, Lord willing, we should have all the paperwork signed.  That will be a big praise.       
    We have added on a new employee.  Martin Diaz is now a driver, errand runner, and whatever else we need him to do.  He is married to Yami my nurse who runs the clinic in Martin's village.  He has been a tremendous blessing to us.  He was the one who drove me all over San Pedro today to get the paper work done for Jose Daniel.  It has made a huge difference for Toby to have Martin's help.  He is walking around the mountain visiting people and discipling a lot more.  The best part for him is that he has more time to work on his sermons and his discipleship material.  It really has made a huge difference for him.

    I have started a small discipleship group with two of the ladies married to two of the men in Toby's group.  Gloria and Silvia are really excited and happy about the changes in their husbands since Toby has been working with them.  Toby and I had talked about discipling these women too.  It was really neat when at the same time they approached me about.  It is really going well.

    Speaking of married couples we have two couples that have decided to be married some time this year.  Emilio is one of our ministers.  Sergio is one of the young men that Toby is going to send to the Bible Institute.  Emilio is marrying Serio's sister Annabel.  Sergio is marrying Emilio's niece.  We are look forward to seeing how these couples serve the Lord together.

    Some of you may remember last fall that we had Harvey and LeAnn Waddelow of Missions Alive come to video tape our ministry here.  The fifteen minute edited and voiced over videos are currently being distributed.  If your church is one of our supporters you should be receiving a copy soon.  If you are not a part of one of our supporting churches or supporting individuals and would like to have the video please contact my father Dennis Weaver by e-mail (brodennis@aol.com) or by phone (513) 825-9618.  We are looking forward to you seeing the work here and to know what we are doing. We haven't seen the finished product yet, but should have our copy this week. We are very appreciative of the help of the Waddelow's and The Church at Mt. Gilead who provided financing for this project.

God bless,

Toby and Amy Hill