Reaching Out

Here are some photos of our outreach to the community in the past months.

The clinic is packed up and ready to go to mobile sites.

Natan was one of our translators. We are getting the bus ready to head out.

The patients waiting to be seen in Candelaria.

These kids were great and happy patients.

Some happy patients that we had the privilege of seeing.

Andee is a missionary who is getting trained at the camp. He now knows how to take care of his teeth so it won't hold him back from serving the Lord.

Children in Our Community

     July is always a busy month for the Gendreaus wherever we go because both our daughters celebrate their birthdays on this month. We decided to celebrate their birthdays this year at their school, Liceo Castilla, with all their new classmates. Selah celebrated her birthday on July 8 and Shiloh celebrated her birthday party on July 21. A few weeks prior to their parties, God told me he wanted to use the girl's parties to share the gospel. With the help of the Master Commission students from UCCR (Ultima Cosecha de Castillo Del Rey), we were able to share the gospel, sing worship songs, pray with the kids, and provide opportunities to receive Jesus.

    For Selah's class, 17 classmates accepted Jesus in their hearts! For Shiloh's class, 6 classmates received prayer for healing. It was a great feeling to know that as we celebrated their birthdays, they also had a chance to share about Jesus and minister to their friends. 

    Living in El Salvador has been a blessing to our family. There have been times when we would have to reinvent our routines due to the changes in our environment such as water shutdowns or power outages, but God always helps us find a way to make things comfortable for the family. We learned to be resourceful and content in every circumstance. It has been an answered prayer for me and Phil to find a community for our family especially for the girls. Every afternoon after the girls do their homework, the girls play with the children from our community. Our neighbors are very friendly and loving towards us. El Salvadoreans go above and beyond to make sure you feel comfortable and accepted. Because the girls are transitioning so well in this country, Phil and I can start focusing on ministry work.

     Phil has successfully been able to set up the clinic at the camp. He has been able to treat several patients and he has assisted in a few medical teams that have come from the U.S. With the equipment that we have, Phil is able to clean teeth, do fillings, and extract teeth. We are working on getting better equipment to be able to do other procedures such as root canals. 

     Phil has worked with a few teams so far in the last couple months in different towns such as Nueva Esperanza, Lago Coatapeque, and Candelaria.  The most recent team that Phil worked with came from Coweta, Oaklahoma. When they visited the town of Candelaria, they had a chance to see a total of 450 patients. Each patient was given spiritual counselling; offered a chance to hear the gospel;  and received the opportunity to accept Jesus Christ. A total of 120 of these patients made decisions to follow Christ. In addition, local pastors were able to follow up with the patients. According to Pastor Erick Zamora, one of the local pastors of Candelaria, there has been an increased church attendance after the team visit. 

     We want to thank all our partners for allowing us to share God's love to the people from El Salvador. Our ministry's goal is to make Jesus' name famous all over the world.

     Stay tuned on my next post about more information about the clinic and also about my new role as a basic English teacher to the first year students of UCCR....

Prayer Requests:

1. To maintain our monthly support for the next 2 years.

2. To have open doors to share the gospel and God's love to everyone we meet.

3. To have perfect health for the entire family.

4. To build a stronger community among the missionaries.

Blessings and Love, 

Phil, Mia, Selah, and Shiloh

El Salvador... We Are Finally Here!

We have arrived!

     It has been almost a month since we arrived here in El Salvador. A missionary from Castillo Del Rey, Anne Prentiss, picked us up at the airport, and the first 2 weeks, we stayed at Don and Terri Triplett's apartment at the campgrounds for 2 weeks to help us have time to look for our home.  Don Triplett is the founder of Castillo Del Rey. They were in Ecuador during the first few weeks that we arrived here, and we are so thankful that they allowed us to stay at their place until we could find a home.

Castillo Del Rey, Coatapeque, El Salvador

     Thankfully, we have been able to find a nice home in the city of Colon which is a 30-40 minute drive away from the camp of Castillo Del Rey. With much thought and prayer, we decided to move in. In addition, we also purchased a reliable second hand car to help us get around the city safely. Most importantly, we also found a good bilingual school, known as  Liceo Castilla, which is about 5 minutes away from home. We are slowly settling in and making sure that the girls are transitioning well in their new environment. They seem to be loving their new school and making new friends each day. Once we have established a good routine for the kids, we can spend more time doing ministry work.

First meal at our new home with our friend Jessica

Shiloh at her new school in Liceo Castilla

     We have cleaned and organized the clinic little by little to see what items are still needed in order to perform basic cleaning, oral surgery, and restorative procedures. We have started to make toothbrush kits for the patients and Dr. Phil has started to give fluoride treatments to some of the children.

Setting up the Dental Clinic at Castillo Del Rey

     There is still a lot of work to be done, but for the first few months, we want to make sure that we are stable and that the kids are thriving in their studies. Homework has been a challenge since there is a lot of catching up to do since we started the girls in the middle of the school year, but we know that with perseverance, we will be able to get them up to speed.

     So far, we have been adjusting to the hot weather, daily water shutdowns, and occasional flooding in the house from leaking roofs, but with God's help, we will be able to maneuver our way through these little obstacles. We are so thankful that we are in a safe neighborhood, and that we have found a wonderful school that our kids will learn so much from, and so thankful for the leaders and missionary team from Castillo Del Rey for being available to help us when we need them.

      Most of you are probably wondering about the safety issue living here in El Salvador. It is true that there are many areas that may not be safe for us to drive around in, but the missionaries here have advised us well of which areas to avoid. So far, we have not felt threatened or unsafe. On the contrary, we have found that the people that we have encountered have been so warm and friendly..or as they say in Spanish “muy amable!"

       We will continue to keep you posted on our journey, and thank you for following us on this mission to bring the gospel to the lost, and to give free dental care to those who are in need.

Blessings,

Phil, Mia, Selah,and Shiloh
Gendreau 

Back In California

    

   We made it back to California a few weeks ago. We have spent the first couple days getting paperwork ready for El Salvador. Some of the requirements we needed to do while we were there was to get our birth certificates apostilled, get fingerprint and background checks for our resident cards to El Salvador, renew Selah's passport, replenish supplies that we can only buy here in the U.S., and reorganize the things that we will need to bring to El Salvador.

    After taking care of the paperwork, we were able to spend quality time with family, friends, and some of our ministry partners. The time spent here went by fast, but God gave us great opportunities to connect with the people we needed to see. I was happy to see my mom and help her prepare her things for her trip to the Philippines. I am happy that she will spend some time with family.

   As we prepare for our journey in El Salvador, we ask for prayer for the following:

    

    To find a comfortable home in a safe neighborhood

    To find a good school for our girls

    To be able to set up the dental clinic with all the equipment needed

    To establish community and build strong relationships with the Nationals

         and other missionaries

    To maintain our monthly budget for the next two years

    We thank God for all His provision. Thank you to all our family and friends who have helped make our stay here in California comfortable and memorable!

    Stay tuned for our next post about El Salvador.

Spent some time with my family

With our good friends in California

The kids having fun

We Will Miss Costa Rica

  

"Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. 

Let nothing move you. 

Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord,

because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain."

                                                                            - 1 Corinthians 15:58

Photos above taken at Punta Leona, Costa Rica

          Our family photos were taken by Clarita Castro Photography, our fellow missionaries whom we met at CINCEL and are headed to serve in Chile. They will be working with the Chi Alpha group there which will be ministering to students in the universities.

   

The Graduates

   Four students have  graduated on this First Trimester 2016. Phil and Mia Gendreau- El Salvador; Kiersten Hakes- Nicaragua; Beth Shaffer- Ecuador

     The last 8 months have gone by so fast. Graduating from CINCEL has truly been life changing. Not only did we learn to speak Spanish, we also learned the importance of culture and community. The friendships we have made in this country are so precious. Despite the language barrier, we somehow were still able to make meaningful and genuine connections with both the missionaries and the locals.  We wished we could have stayed another semester to further our knowledge and spend more time with our new friends, but we trust that God will use whatever we learned so far once we get to El Salvador. Knowing that we were able to thrive in a different country in such a short period gives us hope that we can do this all over again in a different place. 

     A special thanks to the directors,  teachers, and staff for giving their time and skill to help us become the people who we are now- a family who is willing to lay aside their own cultural upbringing to better adapt into a new surrounding in order to serve in whatever way possible.

     As the staff mentioned in our last days at CINCEL, "Graduating does not necessarily mean we are able to speak the language very well...it only means that we are finally ready to learn Spanish. This idea may seem discouraging, however we  have found that this whole experience has been a huge blessing. It is not about who has had the best linguistic ability, it is all about cultural integration and the willingness to reach a culture in all forms of communication...that includes emotional and spiritual connections with each other. What good is a language if we are not able to communicate to the culture in the appropriate way? We came with hardly any expectations of what we would get from this school. From living a busy life in California to going to a country where all we had to do was go to school allowed us to have an attitude of thankfulness and humility. We are grateful that our friends and family have partnered with us on this remarkable journey!

    Thank you, CINCEL! It has been an overall positive experience.  We hope to see you again very soon.

Graduation Day

Our Final Days in Costa Rica

      We finished taking our Final Oral Proficiency Exam also known as ECOS. When we first arrived in Costa Rica, we had to take a similar exam so that the teachers can determine our level of knowledge in Spanish. The final exam is taken to see how much we have learned in the last 8 months. We were so nervous because we didn't know how much we actually learned, but thankfully we survived. Both Phil and I are far from being fluent, but we are comfortable to have a decent conversation in Spanish. We are looking forward to applying everything we learned at CINCEL (including the customs and values that we learned in our small community). 

     Thank you for praying for us to complete language school so that we can be more effective in serving the people from El Salvador. If you would like to be part of this amazing ministry, please send us a message so we can give you more information.

        Here are photos of our final weeks in Costa Rica.

The day of the ECOS test!

With the girls at CINCEL

Our girls with their friends and saying goodbye to Teacher Cindy

School activities with Teacher Raquel