March 2008

Urgent prayer please!
Please pray for more first year diploma students. We currently have ten applicants but we need an absolute minimum of 12 by 6th March to know we can start the course at the end of this month. Many have telephoned for information about the course, but few have come in for application forms. Please pray urgently for the right number and the right students to sign up. (the photo shows some of our current third years)


Thank you for your prayers about the new language degree courses FEISA was asked to take on for the University. After much prayer and discussion, the Management Team felt it was not the right decision to accept these courses after all. Praise the Lord for his clear guidance on this issue.

Please pray for our cash flow situation this year. The exchange rate has fallen between the British and Paraguayan currencies, which means that for every ₤1000 that is donated, we receive ₤100 less than we did last year. High inflation in Paraguay means that every year our cash reserve funds in the bank are decreasing. A number of our students have decided to leave and this means we are receiving less money in the shape of tuition fees. Several of our major donors will be giving us their donations in the second half of the year and all these factors combined mean that for the first half of the year, we will be running down our reserves. We need more donations earlier on this year to make sure the situation does not become critical. Please pray for God to provide the money we need in good time.

Several times last year, we asked you to pray about the possibility of FEISA running in-service training courses for teachers in order to provide much needed training for professionals and an added source of income for the college. The Ministry of Education never granted Estela and Gloria of the Management Team a meeting about this so now we would ask you to pray for wisdom as the FEISA leadership makes decisions about what courses to provide and how to proceed.

More urgent prayer needed!
Andrea Friesen (on right in photo, with Sam Parsons), one of our 2007 graduates, has been in the UK since January, working part-time as a Teaching Assistant in a Christian school in Oxford. She has been living in temporary accommodation and now desperately needs to find somewhere more permanent. She has been unable to find anywhere within her means so far and needs to move out of her current place by 7th March. Please pray for her to find suitable and affordable accommodation near the school as soon as possible.

In the middle of February, there was an outbreak of yellow fever in Paraguay, for the first time in 30 years. This sent communities into panic as people in their neighbourhood were diagnosed with the disease. It is carried by the same mosquito that carries dengue fever, but is much more severe because it has a 50% mortality rate. There is a vaccine, but when the outbreak began, there were not enough vaccines in Paraguay. Other governments donated or lent what was needed, but the help was slow in coming and there were long queues of angry people at health clinics in the meantime. Praise the Lord for the Government's eventual provision of free vaccines to immunise everyone and the apparent containment of the outbreak.