Our family enjoyed the World Mission Conference and Orientation at Green Lake, Wisconsin this summer.We are back home in Kalamazoo until November 6th when we will depart for Durban, South Africa. We have been privileged to visit churches in Michigan.

We are preparing for our coming ministry. We will attend conferences related to Christian health ministry in Bristol, Tennessee with Dr. Daniel Fountain. Dr. Fountain has established an important training center at King College for Christians who work in health ministries both here and abroad. We attended a conference in May 2002, which was taught by Ms. Grace Tazelaar and Dr. Fountain on training midlevel health care workers. Ms. Tazelaar has shared generously with us from her work in Uganda and the Mississippi delta in training lay health workers who use the Bible as the starting point in health work. We are grateful to have found such workers here in the United States, and look forward to future collaborations.

We have missed the people of Allegan, Michigan where we used to work. We thank the community of Allegan for its support and acceptance of our call to mission elsewhere. We will miss these good people in the years to come.

Support for missions comes in many forms. The World Mission offering is the single best way to contribute to American Baptist International Missions. All World Mission Offering proceeds go directly to support the work of International Ministries and missionary support.If you wish your support to be directed towards the work of a certain missionary, you would need to indicate this on the World Mission Offering donation. I would like to recognize the contribution of Project MedSend, which is a privately funded Christian organization. They have elected to pay the final portion of Rick's school debts while we serve in mission.

We are grateful that Jesus Christ is working amongst the people of Durban, South Africa and specifically the Baptist Mission of South Africa, which has called us to join them in ministry.

We thank you all for your faithful prayers and support. We are encouraged to remain in the Word and to trust our Jesus in all moments and with all things.

Yours in Christ,

Rick and Anita Gutierrez