Looking Back at an Amazing Year!

God has done amazing things in 2024!!

Ministry

By the end of 2024, we will have hosted 44 teams (over 680 people) from the US and Canada. We also had our first team from Hawaii this year! All of these teams were housed at Connections House where our staff cooked most of their meals as well. About 25% of the teams did ministry with other missionaries, so we set up the ministry for the majority of them. They served at orphanages, feeding kitchens, the garbage dump, churches, and more. There was a lot of kids’ ministry (VBS, which also reaches out to a lot of their parents), soccer ministry, construction projects, two homes built for families in need, and the gospel was shared at every single one of them.

This year we’ve also hosted almost a dozen events for our church and other ministries, a few retreats, and a couple of missionary training teams, a quinceañera and another wedding!

We also hosted the Calvary School of Missions for the sixth straight year. They stay with us in the summer for four weeks. They have classes five morning per week where they learn about missions and church planting, primarily focused on the 10/40 window. Then three to four times per week we take them out into the different communities to serve and visit some of our church plants.

Missions

We had the opportunity to take four mission trips this year! Kristy served with a team of ladies from our church (Calvary Rosarito) in Oaxaca. She led worship and spoke at their ladies’ conference. They also did a painting project and served during Sunday service.

Ron & Kristy took a small group from our church, which included some of our Connections House staff and interns, to Calpulalpan, Tlaxcala. There we served at Brian (our son-in-law) & Brittany’s church, Calvary Conexión México. We helped run a youth camp for about 70 youth, held a children’s outreach, and more.

Kristy also had the privilege of returning to Calpulalpan to serve with some of the worship team from our home church, Calvary Rosarito. We put on a worship conference where Kristy helped lead worship and led a workshop on EasyWorship (and other lyric presentations, such as PowerPoint).

Ron & Kristy also took a short mission trip to Loreto. We were able to bring down some belongings for an Assistant Pastor’s family and deliver some chairs to our church plant, Calvary Loreto. It is always a blessing to visit Pastor Elmer and his wife, Crystal, and serve wherever we can. While there, we did a movie outreach on the beach and handed out backpacks to over 80 kids!

Family

There are many highlights this year, but not the least of which is that our third grandchild will be born in January 2025! We are blessed to have Brittany and our two grandchildren, Joshua and Kimberly, here for over a month. We’ve enjoyed spending time with them and decorating for Christmas together. This year we also had the privilege of traveling to Loreto, Baja California Sur, for the wedding of one of our very first interns in Mexico, Claudia. Brittany was one of the bridesmaids and our whole family was able to attend. We’ve also had three different sets of family members come and visit. Kristy’s niece, Hannah, came to visit it with her friend, Annika. Ron’s cousin, Erin, and her husband, Charles, and their son, Eli, came on a week-long trip with their church. Ron’s brother, Phil, and his wife, MeLinda, came down to deliver 300 backpacks! Ron was also able to travel to Tennessee for a family reunion, where 9 out of 10 of his siblings were able to attend!

Visiting our Supporters & Supporting Churches

We were able to take a few weeks and visit most of our supporters and our supporting churches in Illinois and Wisconsin. It was a huge blessing and encouragement to us. We were able to attend the missions weekend at our sending church, Faith Community Church, in Fort Atkinson, WI. There, we shared a short update during the morning service, shared with a small group during adult Sunday School, shared with the kids during children’s church, attended a dinner and a church-wide pancake breakfast. We also managed to spend some time with family and have a little bit of fun!

Thank You!

The Lord is doing amazing things here in Rosarito, Mexico and beyond, and it would not be possible without our ministry partners! Thank you so much for your prayers and support. All of this is part of your spiritual fruit!

Prayer Requests

1 – Health – Please pray for Ron’s back and shoulder. He is planning to have shoulder surgery soon, and his back pain has worsened significantly again.

2 – Grandbaby #3 – Please pray that everything goes well with our granddaughter’s birth next month.

3 – Connections Staff – Please pray with us as the ministry has grown immensely over the last year and a half. We are in great need of staff to help shoulder the load. We are looking for self-supported missionaries to come on the field and join us. In the meantime, we will begin to hire staff soon. Please pray for wisdom as we prepare to begin this process.

We hope you have a Merry Christmas & a very blessed New Year!