Mike Cantrell received this update from John Bull, who is with the team at Elama, and passed it along by email.  Mike says:

I just spoke with John Bull, the American missionary working with the team at Elama.

Everything is going great. One small issue is that the wood is being delivered more slowly than we'd like. It hasn't slowed them down, as they've been able to work on other projects as they wait for materials. They've kept busy, and they are expecting to get finished with everything, and perhaps even do more than was planned.

They have the foundations finished for both buildings, and they've begun putting down the flooring. Tomorrow (Tuesday) they'll build trusses and hopefully have all the trusses on the large building set up. That's 21 trusses on the large building. The roofing was purchased today, so they hope to have the roofs on the buildings by the end of the day on Thursday, a day early, if there are no big problems. If they get done ahead of schedule, they may also build a storage shed that's needed.

Weather: it rained heavily for a little while yesterday morning, so they did team devotions while it rained. Since then it's been sunny with highs in the 70s, sunshine all day today (Monday). They are warm at night, even though it's chilly outside.

They said to tell me: "It's not too early in the season for mosquitoes." I had told them that I didn't think mosquitoes would be a problem this early in the year. My bad. Apparently they have a 'cloud of witnesses' joining them.

I could hear people laughing and talking in the background. John said everyone is doing pretty well -- they are all professional, competent and good looking. (Well, that's what John said.)

Sergei said that one or two men had stiff backs (I'm sure from the work and from sleeping on old soviet bunks). Let's pray for people to have good health.

The good work has begun and continues through a team that is unified in its purpose and trusting in God to make it happen.  As is a frequent occurrence on mission trips such as this, we make plans for a certain amount of work to be done and even in the midst of what seem to be set backs (in this case it's the weather and slow delivery of supplies) the Lord does us one better and multiplies it so we accomplish much more than we ever imagined we could.

"In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."  (Philippians 1:4-6)