Hello from Guaimaca. We have been trying to get our newsletters out but have been having some difficulties. I think we are on the right track with help from Bruce Johnson, who is a whiz bang with computers and such. We appreciate his help and hope you won’t have any more weird things happening with our newsletters in the future. Thanks for being patient with us. JoAnn and I send the warmest greetings to you from Guaimaca. We want to report a wonderful new beginning of our work here in Honduras and a bright and exciting future that has already begun. God is certainly blessing every part of the ministry work here in Guaimaca. This report is going to be rather lengthy so we have decided to break it up into categories so you can enjoy reading about one subject, take a break, then read more when you have time. We think you will enjoy each subject and hope to hear from you soon. Here goes. Be sure to check out the photos too. Have fun. General Report JoAnn and I are enjoying having Tully and Dawn here to take the helm of the Ministry. They are doing an excellent job and are obviously called of the Lord to be here. With their seven children they are facing the challenges of raising children, educating them, and somehow working in quality family time as well. Like grandparents, we are enjoying their children very much, but don’t have the 24/7 responsibility of taking care of their needs as parents. We ask you to keep Tully and Dawn, as well as their children, Ana, Carmen, Gabriel, Elijah, Luke, Timothy, and Trey in your prayers. We will be returning to the States in a few weeks to see you, speak to churches and to mission groups, run errands for the Ministry, and to report personally on all the wonderful things that are happening here in Honduras. Please let us know when it will be convenient for us to see you. We are putting our calendar together now and would like to hear from you ASAP. Speaking Engagements We want to meet with you personally to discuss our work here in Honduras. We will be speaking at churches and want to speak at your church, SS class, or mission group, if you will have us. We need to hear from you soon to get you on our calendar while we are in the States. Just e-mail us at sandy@bmdmi.org  or joann@bmdmi.org . Please drop us a note soon. More on Our Home in Honduras We are continuing to work on our house, but with a greater determination than ever before. In the future we will be hosting more and larger teams than ever and need the space our little apartment occupies now for an enlarged dining and activities area. Hopefully we will be able to move to our house before going to the States on April 12. For two old folks we are really funny. We go over to the new house almost daily to “play house” as we anticipate enjoying our new home soon. For the first time it seems real and that it may really happen. Check us out sitting in our “love seat”. How do you like that view out the window?    We are working hard to finish our bedroom, bathroom, and closets so we can move in. As funds are available we will finish the rest of the house, but since all we have now is a bedroom, bathroom, and closet it will be great blessing for them to be larger and a bit more private. Thank you so much for all you have done over the years to help us make our new home a reality. We certainly could not have done it without your prayers, physical labor, and financial support. One day it will be passed along to other missionary couples to enjoy until Christ returns. The photo of us sitting on the love seat in what will eventually be our living room, kitchen, dining, and sitting area in the center of the house. The other photo is the view from our bedroom of the beautiful mountain behind the campus that is over 7,000 ft. high. That’s the view we will wake up to each morning. We hope this gives you an idea of how beautiful it is. Thank you so much for helping us to make it this far on our new home. It is absolutely beautiful and will continue to be part of the work being done here in Honduras for the Lord long after we are gone and until Christ comes. WBM/BMDMI Merger We are so very pleased to report the merger with BMDMI is going very well. Dawn and Tully are now heading the Ministry here in Guaimaca and JoAnn and I are helping in the transition and ongoing mission activities. Tully and Dawn have asked JoAnn to be Director of the Food Program. She has already begun working in that area and Yolanda is serving as head of the day to day management. I will serve as Director of Grounds and Facilities. That includes all repairs and maintenance and some construction. President Dwight Carr has also asked us to continue working with the LWBC and mountain churches. More will be explained in the Cheves Ministry section below. We are looking forward to this new and exciting challenge when we return from the States. Cheves Ministry JoAnn and I have been seeking God’s direction for our future Ministry here in Honduras. She and I have been praying about and discussing this for several months as we have sought His will for our continued work here as a BMDMI Missionary. After many discussions and prayers we decided to ask if we could be allowed to serve the Living Water Baptist Church and numerous mountain churches, which have been established as a direct result of this Ministry. We were prepared to ask Dwight Carr, President of BMDMI, if we could be allowed to serve in that capacity. Well, he came to us first to ask if we would serve in exactly the same capacity we had been praying about. It is so very amazing how God works when we seek His wisdom and direction. As a result of our meeting with Dwight we will be returning, after a couple of months in the States, to assume the duties of coordinator between BMDMI and LWBC and the mountain churches. We will be sending you photos and a brief story about each church and its pastor/leader so you can follow along as we serve the churches. We will be asking you to support our Ministry, the “Cheves Ministry”, with your prayers, personal participation (That means coming to Honduras to help us with this work.) and financial support. We will be asking you to come to Honduras as often as possible to participate in church activities including door to door evangelism, providing and distributing Bibles and literature, helping purchase generators, sound equipment, and other items needed. We will also be organizing the mentoring of individual families and many other things to help win souls for Christ in Honduras.  We want to help the churches grow, plant more churches, provide Christian fellowship activities, provide movies and training, and many other activities. There is so much that needs to be done and we want you to be a big part of it all. Stay tuned, there’s more to come. We’re counting on you and your support to make it all happen. The church in San Jose is in one of our most remote service areas. The San Jose Baptist Church is the only church in town. It was built of mud brick by the members of the church. We’ve included a photo of the church under construction showing the mud brick and a photo of the finished church. It is now painted inside and is absolutely beautiful. San Jose is very remote and very difficult to get to. That makes it near impossible to transport building material to. Mud was available locally so we chose to use mud instead of cement block. This is a wonderful example of how God is working through BMDMI to establish churches in extremely remote areas of Honduras. Ever seen a church built of mud before?    Teams This has already been an exciting year with a large surgery team from Greenville, a really fantastic team of college students from UGA, a great team from Iowa, and another from Indiana. People are coming from all over the United States to help us get the word out about Jesus, His love, and His burning desire to save everyone. We want to thank all of you who have already been this year and also those who will be coming later this year. If you are not on the BMDMI calendar to serve this year it is not too late. Go to the BMDMI web site now at www.bmdmi.org to get more information and to sign up to serve here this year. You can also call Dee Kitchings on our toll free number 1-800-273-5901 to get more information. Surgery Week The recent surgery week was a grand success in every respect. There were twenty four in the surgery team from the Greenville, SC area. More than twenty people accepted Christ. By the end of the week there were sixty one major procedures done, twenty four minor procedures, and twelve procedures for joint problems. In every way the week was a blessing to everyone and it gave our churches and pastors a large measure of credibility in their individual ministries to be able to offer this service to their congregations and others. This type ministry brings many people here to the BMDMI campus who need to know Christ as their Lord and Savior. We are working toward having one surgery team each month. In the past we have had only two weeks of surgeries. This year we will have five. Hopefully by 2011 we will be able to offer surgery every month. Please continue to pray for this important part of the Ministry here in Guaimaca. New Highway You won’t believe your eyes. We are actually getting a new highway from Tegucigalpa to Guaimaca and beyond into Olancho. More than half of the eighty seven kilometers are either paved or ready for the final asphalt layer to be applied. They are making the highway wider and are even straightening out some of the curves. The highway in front of the Hospital is much wider and the ditches have been graded and the bottoms lined with cement to provide better drainage. I’ve attached a couple of photos to give you an idea of how it looks. Construction continues as I write this. We are told the work is being financed by the country of Germany. With so many people being killed and so much destruction to vehicles through the years because of the holes and other dangers we are so happy to see the highway being rebuilt to make it safer. We thank God for this wonderful blessing. They’re not finished by a long way, but it is so much wider and better than before. Hope you enjoy seeing this photo. Help We can’t do any of our assigned work here without you. You are our lifeline. You make it possible for us to continue here in His service. Think of us as partners in His personal service. We are counting on you to urge us on, pull for us, pray for us, and to provide the financial support, all of which we must have to continue serving here. We are here to do what God has sent us here to do. He is providing everything we need through you. We pray we will be able to always count on you to encourage, pray, and support us. Thank you for all you have done in the past and for all you will do in the future. May God bless and keep you siempre (always) as we serve together. We want to hear from you. Please!!! We always enjoy hearing from you. Please continue writing as often as you have time. Several of our Cheves Ministry Partners, however, have responded to our newsletters by using the “Reply” button. Please use our e-mail address instead. Our addresses are sandy@bmdmi.org and joann@bmdmi.org . We always want to hear from you, but please use our e-mail addresses to write us instead of using the “Reply” feature. Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom. We pray you have found this newsletter interesting and informative. Thank you so much for your prayers and financial support. Without both of them we could not continue to do the Lord’s work here in Honduras. Our next newsletter will be more about our Ministry to the churches and children, with photos. We are also developing a web site with more stories and photos of our work. It’ll be out in a couple of months. In Christ siempre, S.P.(Sandy) Cheves Missionary Baptist Medical & Dental Mission International 11 Plaza Dr. Hattiesburg, MS 39402 Phone: 601-544-3586 E-Mail: sandy@bmdmi.org Website: www.bmdmi.org IN HONDURAS Apartado Postal 10 Guaimaca, F.M. Honduras C.A. Phone: 011-504-769-4134 (Hospital) Cell: 011-504-9751-8153