Oceanside Ministry

In addition to the Bible School teaching at SouthWest School of the Bible (www.SouthWestSchoolOfTheBible.org) and the Law Enforcement Chaplaincy, we have been going over to Oceanside CA for a week of ministry every month at Community Lutheran church. This little church has a preschool, a monthly Food Pantry, and a healthy Bible teaching ministry. It's such a pleasure to be able to serve them! We have been staying on a sailboat in the harbor and working in English and Spanish. So much fun!

Second Term at SWSB

The first term at SouthWest School of the Bible was a success! We prayed for 12 students to begin; 14 signed up by the end of the first term. We offered classes in Introduction to the Bible and Bible Doctrine 1: the Way of Salvation.
Today we begin the second term. This is a short term lasting two weeks at the end of January 2016. The first week we are offering Philippians and the second Hermeneutics: How to Understand the Bible.
Classes will be taught from 10 am to noon and from 7 to 9 pm each day, Thesday through Friday of these two weeks. The same class will be taught twice each day to accommodate students who are unable to attend either during the day or after dark. (In general the younger students work during the day while the older ones prefer not to drive at night.)

The new Bible School is being launched at Calvary Free Lutheran Church in Mesa AZ.  Classes will begin on October 19th.  The Faculty is composed of Pastor Al Monson, Ryan Tonneson, and Dan.  Dan will be the main teacher this first semester, so there is an enormous amount of work to be done before the 19th.

The new website is up and running at southwestschoolofthebible.org  as of last Wednesday.  we have published a catalog and a flyer to pass out to local area churches and interested individuals.

After a long hiatus, we're back.

I see the last post was in 2009. Amazing how much has happened; I just haven't had time or inclination to write for three years.

Not long after my last post, my Dad passed away at the age of 92. Mom continues to live with us, and she is now 92.

I have continued working at the Software company with occasional trips to Mexico and other places, to train clients in the use of the software.

Our six-year-old granddaughter Ariadna was checked into a hospital in Aguascalientes about seven weeks ago. When Marcela (her Mom), called Daniel (our son, her husband) to tell him about it he got on the first airplane he could find to Aguascalientes.

The day he arrived they were given the diagnosis: Ari had a brain tumor. She has had seven surgeries, including two craneotomies, since then. They were unable to remove the entire tumor, which had begun in her eye. She is currently still in the hospital and we hope she can be sent home tomorrow. A week ago she was fitted with a tracheotomy tube to help her breathe and a g-tube (gastrostoma) so her parents can feed her.

So far she has not been able to move very much and she can't talk yet. We will see what comes next. Meanwhile, the Doctors have said that they don't think that radiation or chemotherapy will help in her case, and that given the aggressiveness of this tumor, she probably has from six to nine months to live.

We appreciate the wonderful and amazingly skilled Doctors that have given her such good care, but realize that isn't their call. Ari will go home to heaven whenever God calls her; not before and not later. We are still praying for a miracle of healing. We have seen tumors disappear after prayer. Why not this one?

The good news is that Daniel and Marcela are together, taking care of their (our) precious Ari and raising their other two little ones as well. Daniel will be working as a local representative for the Software company, which will enable him to stay there instead of returning to the US to work.

Ingrid is here with us in Phoenix and has launched a language school where she teaches Spanish-speakers English and English-speakers Spanish. She is sharing the bedroom with her grandma and the dog she brought out of Mexico, since launching a business takes all the capital for a couple of years until it starts being profitable. She is having a great time with this project.

Pray for Ariadna. We need (another) miracle.

Trip to Jerez

Last week we had a wedding here in Phoenix on Friday for Paul Junior, my brother Paul’s oldest son. The next day, Saturday, we flew to Aguascalientes, where our Son and Daughter, Daniel and Ingrid, met us and drove us the last two hours to Jerez. We got there about midnight, so Marcela and the kids had already gone to sleep. We slept downstairs in Ingrid's apartment. Upstairs was already full of relatives from Aguascalientes who were there for the baptism that was to take place the next morning, all gone to sleep already.

The next day we got up to hug our daughter-in-law Marcela and the grandchildren, including the baby, Roberto Emanuel, who is four months old. That was our first chance to actually see him! Then we went to the English church service, where we got to see the Schierkolks, who had just gotten back from a 4-month trip to the US themselves.

The church was full for the Spanish Service, and we filled up the Salon de Fiestas that Daniel and Marcela had rented for the afternoon’s party. People came from Aguascalientes - many relatives from Marcela’s side as well as people from the old church there, some of whom we hadn’t seen for several years. It was great!

We had Monday to visit with Ingrid, and Tuesday we drove to the border with Daniel and Marcela and the kids, as they had to take care of some international paperwork.

We had an uneventful trip to the border, except for getting lost after a wrong turn in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. That delay, however, kept us out of Reynosa, Tamaulipas (the city on the border) just long enough to allow a gunbattle that was going on in that city to finish and for things to quiet down. (We found out about that the next day.)

We have learned over the years to not get too upset when some unexpected delay seems to inexplicably detain us on a trip. After 20,000 coincidences of this sort, it’s easier to believe that God is in control than that such things can happen for no reason at all.

We spent a day on the border, during which we took care of the 3 kids, playing grandma and grandpa, so Daniel and Marcela could have a day out by themselves. We had a lot of fun doing that, and in the process learned two important things: 1.) why God gives children to parents while they (the parents) are still young and 2.) why Daniel and Marcela are so tired so much of the time!

Then we had a 26 hour bus ride across the US from McAllen TX to Phoenix. It wasn’t as grueling as it sounds, although the seats seem to have been designed for hunchbacked midgets and American buses are not nearly as nice as Mexican buses. Greyhound doesn’t even play movies on their long bus lines! No sandwich and coffee service! Such barbarians!

Anyway, we are safely at Phoenix and all is well.

In Jerez for a visit

Debbie and I flew to Jerez a couple of weeks ago. Debbie stayed here with Marcela, who is due to have the baby any day now, and Ingrid and the two little girls, our granddaughters, Ari and Andi. Daniel and I loaded up the van with stuff we had left here and can use in Phoenix, and drove out of the country. Daniel needed to renew his papers, which requires him to be outside of Mexico for ten days.

We drove to Phoenix and unloaded, stayed a few days so he could touch base with his cousins there, and then drove back. On the way North I got really sick with a "stomach flu" (probably food poisoning), so I was out of it for about a week, recovering just in time for the return trip.

Now we are back in Jerez. We got to see most of the church members on Sunday and will have dinner with the Schiekolks on Thursday- all plans are tentative and postponable if the baby makes his debut.

It's so good to be here and see everybody.

Mexico is under siege with the AH1N1 "Swine" flu, but so far the Giles and Schierkolk families have stayed healthy, thank the Lord!

Debbie and I fly home on Tuesday the 12th of May. We hope we get to see our grandson before we leave. The Dr just told Marcela that he could be born any time after this Sunday.

Minneapolis

On Monday I flew to Minneapolis, to teach a class at the Seminary and meet with Del Palmer, the World Missions Director and a couple of members of the World Missions Committee. I was warmly received, saw a lot of old friends and met a few new ones, and was reminded all over again what a privilege it has been to work in the AFLC all these years.

The Mission Board is meeting this Friday and Saturday (March 28th and 29th) and will discuss my letter of resignation which I gave to Pastor Palmer on Tuesday. Please pray for them as they seek the Lord on this and a number of other matters that affect the work of World Missions.

We will probably be going to Jerez the last week of May to explain ourselves to our friends and church there, say goodbye, and pick up a few things we will need for our new life in the US.

Big Decisions

We have been increasingly faced with the fact that in spite of wonderful progress with therapy and a large measure of independence that has resulted from it, Dad will still be needing someone to provide full time care for the foreseeable future. We've been warned repeatedly by different Physical Therapists, Doctors, Nurses, etc., that Mom must not be given the task of sole care giver ever again. She is also 88 years old and has some osteoporosis going on, so a fall while helping Dad could be disastrous for both of them.

After much prayer and careful consideration, Debbie and I have come to the conclusion that the only viable solution, and what also seems to us to be God's answer, is that we resign from the Mexico mission work and stay here in Phoenix to provide the care that Dad needs.

We spoke with our adult children in Mexico (Daniel and Marcela, and Ingrid) and they told us that the Lord had spoken to them last week to let them know that this was coming, so it wasn't a total surprise for them. They will continue working as Short Term Assistants under AFLC World Missions with Todd and Barb Schierkolk and living in what has been our house there in Jerez. If any of you would like to help support them, please send to AFLC World Missions in Plymouth MN. As STA's they have no guaranteed salary, medical insurance, etc. and are supported entirely by what is sent to AFLC designated for them. They are doing a wonderful job, working as full time missionaries in Jerez and we are very proud of them.

Keep tuning in to this blog, as we will continue to update from time to time both with news from here and from the Mexico field.

(By the way, we all need your prayers now more than ever!)

Dan Giles

Some Pictures and More

Here are a couple of pictures of our grand-daughters, Ariadna and Andrea. They are with their parents, Daniel and Marcela, serving as Short Term Assistants (STA's) in Jerez, together with Ingrid, even while we are with my folks here in Phoenix. They are all living in our house. It's a big house, so they have plenty of room for two families, especially with us out of the way!

The work is going well there, with Ingrid continuing to translate Sunday School material and Daniel and Marcela handling the Youth Ministry. Todd and Barb Schierkolk are heading up the whole operation, Todd pastors the church, and they also have the Kid's Clubs outreach ministry. Barb's music is a powerful blessing at the heart of the work.

Dad home!

My Dad came home today!
He was able to come home a day sooner than our most sanguine hopes. This is good.
Please pray that he will get stronger every day and be able to get to the point where he can get up out of a chair unassisted. he has made so much progress in the past few weeks that we are very encouraged. The doctor said that there seems to be nothing wrong with him except the polio, which he has has all his life. This is just a new stage in the disease, and he will learn to work around it as he has done at every previous stage.
The good news is that at 90 years old, this is the only serious health problem!