Our Mission Path
Serving God in Ecuador
Cultural Insight: Rumicucho
Friends, this post was first published in February of 2019.
With much love,
The Downings
Cultural Insight: Assumptions
Now that you have in your mind what the photo above means listen to the podcast below to see if you are right.
Friends, this cultural insight was first published in March of 2019.
With much love, The Downings
If you liked this podcast we invite you to click here for another episode.
Water
Friends, this post was first published in July of 2019.
The wellspring of the Gospel is powerful and freely flows into every culture. As you will find out on this episode of our mission path podcast living water speaks profoundly to the hearts of people with an Andean worldview. Just click on the audio player below for this week’s Cultural Insight!
With much love,
The Downings
We invite you to click here and check out this ministry story it also has to do with water!
Resurrection
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he gave us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, that is, into an inheritance imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. It is reserved in heaven for you, who by God’s power are protected through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
1Peter 1:3-5
Christ also suffered once for sins,
the just for the unjust,
to bring you to God,
by being put to death in the flesh
but by being made alive in the spirit.
In it he went and preached to the spirits in prison,
after they were disobedient long ago when God patiently waited in the days of Noah as an ark was being constructed. In the ark a few, that is eight souls, were delivered through water. And this prefigured baptism, which now saves you—not the washing off of physical dirt but the pledge of a good conscience to God—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who went into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels and authorities and powers subject to him.
1Peter 3:18-22
Love,
O Sorrow Deep
O sorrow deep!
johann Von Rist
Who would not weep
with heartfelt pain and sighing!
God the Father’s only Son
in the tomb is lying.
The Paschal Lamb,
like Isaac’s ram,
in blood was offered for us,
pouring out his life
that he might to life restore us.
Blest shall they be eternally
who ponder in their weeping
that the glorious Prince of Life
should in death be sleeping,
O Jesus blest, my help and rest,
with tears I pray thee, hear me:
now, and even unto death,
dearest Lord, be near me.
Blessings,
The Crimson Cross
See the cross, the cross of Jesus,
Crimson with His own life’s blood;
Thus He died, lest we should perish,
Wondrous love! Thou Son of God.
Refrain:
He will save you, trembling sinner,
Hasten to the crimson cross;
Oh, believe Him, He will save you,
Save you at the shelt’ring cross.
Dreadful weight of guilt and anguish
Fall on Him His love to prove;
Weight that on our souls had fallen,
But for His unbounded love. [Refrain]
Oh, His precious blood that bought us!
Oh, His pity for the lost!
Can you slight His love, poor sinner,
While so near the shelt’ring cross? [Refrain]
Hasten to Him, sinner, hasten!
Heaven yearns to make you blest;
Father, Son, and Spirit call you;
Come with all your woes oppressed. [Refrain]
Yield your heart and life to Jesus,
Freely He His grace will give;
With Him you shall reign in glory,
If for Him on earth you live. [Refrain]
S.G. Odell
Love,
Ye followers of the prince of Peace
Friends, as we enter into Maundy Thursday together let us ponder the hymn “Ye Followers of the Prince of Peace.”
Ye foll’wers of the Prince of peace,
Who round his table draw!
Remember what his spirit was,
What his peculiar law.
The love, which all his bosom fill’d,
Did all his actions guide:
Inspir’d by love, he liv’d and taught;
Inspir’d by love, he died.
And do you love him? do you feel
Your warm affections move?
This is the proof which he demands,
That you each other love.
Let each the sacred law fulfil,
Like his be ev’ry mind;
Be ev’ry temper form’d by love,
And ev’ry action kind.
Let none, who call themselves his friends,
Disgrace the honor’d name;
But by a near resemblance prove
The title which they claim.
Author Unknown
With love,
The Downings
When Was The Church Built?
Friends, this post was first published in April of 2019.
Have you ever thought about what the Church is? Who established it? When was it established? Today’s podcast is about when the Church was built.
When Was the Church Built?
The last text cited above [Matthew 16:18] speaks of her building as then in the future. Now read 1 Cor. 3:9: “Ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.” “And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” Eph. 2:20-22
“Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” 1 Pet. 2:5
In A.D. 32 Christ said, “I will build my church.” Matt. 16:18 In A.D. 59, and later, the apostles said, “Ye are God’s building,” “are built up a spiritual house.” So the church was built between those dates.
It is true that the church was begun under the labors of John the Baptist, Jesus, and His apostles, before the day of Pentecost (Luke 16:16). Many believed and entered the kingdom then, and constituted material for the church. But the coming of the Holy Spirit was the point of time when the church was really built, and set in order, as seen in 1 Cor. 12:6,11-13,18,24. The church is defined as “his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.” Eph. 1:23 The church proper then did not exist until the fullness of Christ came, which was on the day of Pentecost. Then it was fully set up, and “fitly joined together and compacted.” 4:16
Since that was the time of the founding of the church of God, it follows that every religious body that has since come into existence is not the church of God, but a daughter of confusion, born out of due season. This includes Catholicism and all the Protestant sects.
-D.S. Warner
D.S. Warner
With much love, 
The Downings
Who Are The Members Of The Church?
Friends this post was first published in June 2019.
If, as we have seen, salvation is the process of entering the church, it follows that no one is in the church who does not have salvation. The church is one “family in heaven and earth,” Eph. 3:15 named from the Father. This family is “the household of God.” 2:19
Therefore it follows that only the sons of God, such as are born of the Spirit, are in the church. And we are told that “He that committeth sin is of the devil,” and “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin…. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil” 1 John 3:8-10—namely, in the fact that children of the devil commit sin, and the children of God do not. The holy apostle repeats the fact with emphasis: “We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.” 5:18D.S. Warner
There are no sinners in the church. But all sects are more or less filled with sinners. Hence, no sect is the church of God.
Love,
The Downings
Holy Week
Friends, this post is a throwback post which was first published in April of 2019.
What do old Roman military funeral rituals and people in purple robes and pointed hats have to do with Easter? Listen to today’s Ministry Story and find out!
Click here if you want to learn more about Catholic Syncretism!
Happy Easter, 
The Downings
