November Newsletter

Prayer Partners,

November was an eventful month, and it was so full of blessings. I had a wonderful Thanksgiving here with some other missionary friends and was able to reflect on all God has given me to be thankful for over the long weekend. I had been craving a deeper sense of community and connections with people here, and God provided these relationships for me this month. It has been such a blessing to fellowship with friends and other church members in more meaningful ways. The Lord continues to restore my soul and give me strength daily. I am learning what it means to truly seek God as my refuge and my strength in the day to day tasks and struggles. He is so good.

Updates

• I officially became a member of IBEM this month! I also joined a small group and the praise team at IBEM. I started practicing with the praise team this week. It made my heart so full to worship with other believers around the piano. Both praise team practices and small group will also give me more opportunities to improve my Spanish conversational skills since a lot of the communication at these gatherings is in Spanish. I will be singing in the church's Christmas Program on December 11th and I will be singing a trio at church this upcoming Sunday with two of my missionary friends. I am excited to serve the church in this way.

• IBEM had a baptism service at the beginning of the month and 6 individuals were baptized. It was encouraging to see brothers and sisters in Christ take this step of faith.

• We had Semana de la Chispa (spirit week) at school the week of November 14th. This is the "spiritual emphasis" week at Las Palmas. We had extra chapels for the students and had more time to do devotionals in our classes. The theme this year was "Encountering Jesus." We taught the students about different stories in the Bible where individuals encountered Jesus and experienced healing, satisfaction, forgiveness, and resurrection. There were six students in 6th grade that received Christ as their Savior during this week! It was such an encouragement to our community at Las Palmas. God is working in the lives of our students. It's always a blessing when He lets us see some of the fruit. We also ended the week with a Family Fun Day for students and their parents.

• I am becoming more confident as a teacher and I have seen major improvements in my B class over the last few weeks. There are still hard days, but I am making progress with some of the difficult students and feel like I have better control in the class overall. I am learning what behavior management systems work to motivate each class and getting the behaviors under control is allowing me to really fall in love with teaching my students. Thank you for those of you who have been praying specifically for my B class.

Prayer Requests

• Pray for the teachers at Las Palmas to have endurance, wisdom, and patience as we complete the daily tasks of teaching. Pray that God would work in our school and open hearts and minds of our students to receive spiritual truths.

• Continued prayers for the residency process. I am still working through this process and figuring out exactly what I need to do to complete it.

• Pray for my classroom management over the next few weeks as it can be difficult to teach leading up to Christmas break.

• Pray for me to have safe travels as I fly back to the United States for Christmas break. I will be flying back to Ohio on December 17th.

So thankful to the Lord for the ways He has answered prayers in this last month. Thank you again for partnering with me in this ministry and continuing to lift me and Las Palmas up in prayer.

Blessings,

Natasha Dobson