John and Rachel McDonough News June 2024

News from Paraguay June 2024

Conference, Furlough, Home-Assignment, back home, Ministry (PY-UK-PY)

Home assignment 2024 was a whirlwind tour of ministry, Elim Leaders Summit (ELS) and some special family time. Due to taking the children out of school, we could only be in the UK for a short time, which meant we had to forgo visiting many places. But we seemed to manage to pack an awful lot of activities into the precious time we had.

Spending time in Carlisle allowed us to share at several events and meetings with our Sending Church. Although Rachel was very jealous she was not able to eat the fry-up at the men’s breakfast (but very happy to have a lay-in), it was wonderful meeting and getting to know new people and catching up with old friends at all these events, too.

We were also blessed to hear a Ugandan children’s choir (Abaana's New Life Choir), and see kids at other events, allowing the children to share with our kiddos the similarities in life such as red soil, mandioca (cassava), and their love of singing in other languages.

They had the chance to hang out with the choir for a whole day at a farm park playing, burning off energy and going on scary drop-slides.

Alicia made friends with Eleojo and has talked about her for weeks since. It is so cool that Alicia has a friend at our Sending Church as she cannot wait to go back, get to hang out with Eleojo and her friends, and not just hear about Dad's lovely men's breakfast.

ELS gave us opportunity to catch up with Pastors and we had a wonderful time worshipping in English, learning some new songs and getting to share at one of the missions seminars with other Elim missionaries from across the globe. That would not have been possible if not for the amazing member care team, especially Kay, who took all the missionaries’ kids off to have fun and games releasing us all to share freely.

We were immensely blessed to receive a gift of books for the kids via a gift given to the missions department and to be treated to a meal out to celebrate our 15-year anniversary on the field. This year has been an ongoing out-pouring of God’s love and provision for our family through his Elim churches. Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts.

Many parks, farms and day trips out were had with family and friends. We felt spoilt by everyone’s hospitality and enjoyed eating our favourite foods and treats. Jesse especially ate his body weight in sausages and is missing them greatly. We are extremely grateful to all of you who hosted us, put us up and did our laundry!

The only hard thing was not being able to get to visit more of you and having such a short time with our family. We hope we will be able to have more time next year.

While in the UK, Alicia didn't miss a day of reading for her reading challenge. Wherever we were, sometimes with ice-cream in hand, she got in her 5 pages a day. Even reading 134 extra pages!

All their earthly belonging are gone . . .

Last week some friends of ours, who live in a community 60km away from our church community, went to pray with their neighbours. While they were all out, the fridge short-circuited, caught fire, and burned the house down. Consuming all their earthly belongings.

We have been blessed through our friends here in Paraguay to provide them with donated clothes, food, shoes and blankets. Through the support that you give for our ministry support fund, we have been able to buy them two double beds, new kitchenware and food. We took their daughter and husband (a leader in our church) to visit them and give them some much-needed help, spent some good time with them cleaning up, and in prayer.

Thank you for your support, it enables us to be His hands and feet here as we minister, sharing Love and showing Compassion through such benevolence acts.
We will let you know how the family are doing.

A few people have asked how they can direct financial support directly towards our ministry fund. Through this fund we can meet needs like with the Vai family, it is through this fund that we built the church toilet, replenish bible/outreach supplies and help people with contributions of medical costs/materials when there are emergency needs, with people we minister to, when they come into the hospitals.

If you would like to support this ministry fund directly then you can click the button at the bottom of the page and in the message part of the giving process write: M-PRY CP>

This will then instruct Tom, the fantastic Finance Officer at Elim Missions, to direct your gift to our individual 'ministry fund', when we get your gift we will use it straight towards ministry needs.

Note: This is not our 'personal support fund', and will not be used for personal things. This is a designated fund and if you would like to chat with us about this further please let us know, we would love to WhatsApp or Zoom with you.

A fully working motor

You may remember reading about the reduction in power and efficiency of the Toyota and how we had done a whole load of investigatory work on her to find the problem. Well, just before flying out it kept going into idle mode to prevent further damage (max speed was 25km/h. not fun to drive). The old trusty truck was not doing well.

So while we were in the UK we left the trusty truck with the mechanic to work on her. A full eight injector kit later, some pipes and no doubt some prayers from the mechanic, and the old trusty-truck is purring like she was 190,000km younger.

Now, it's time to put some more Kilometres on the clock ! ! !

BOAZ : 2013-2024

Last week we had to say goodbye to our 11-year-old faithful guard dog, companion, friend and craziest family-pack member.

Failing health meant the best thing for her was the long-sleep.

Having been with us through all our adventures in Paraguay, the house does feel emptier and a lot quieter. The kiddos have been great at dealing with the loss.

Thankful for. . .

the ministry developments and incorporation of children's material in the outreaches.
all our supporters who continue to walk with us on this adventure of faith.
our Boaz who served us so well. Loved us, remained by our side when we needed her and always came when called.
our family, friends and all supporters who loved on us while we were in the UK.

Pray for:

continued wisdom for our church members as they develop their vision for the church and how we can reach out to other communities.
for the family as they gather themselves after the devastating fire.

Many blessings,

The 4 McDs

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