Jim and Jill V. of northern Canada are Master Mechanics by trade. Each year they volunteer several months to assist ministries with their auto and heavy equipment repair and operation needs. This letter gives a sampling of their experience.

Well hello to everyone,

Sorry it has been a while since our last update but it has been just crazy busy here in Kona, Hawaii.

With meetings two times a week (two also at night) and visiting with Lonnie and Sally on weekends we have not had a lot of spare time to do much of anything else.

Just to keep you all in the loop, Lonnie and Sally are on the Board of Directors of Mission Builders International (MBI) who we are volunteering with here. We met them in Sweden when we were there in 2004 and saw what they were doing by helping out the long-termers in missions. We thought it was a great way to support those in the mission field who train and send out new missionaries. So we joined up with MBI and have spent several months in several locations working along side both long and short-term missionaries.

Sweden is where we started out doing mechanical work, or anything that needed to be done to serve the long-termers.

Here in Hawaii, Jill and I have met with many of the people we originally met at all the other mission assignments we have been on since 2004.

There have also been some Mennonite teams volunteering here from Pennsylvania and Virginia doing some construction work here as well.

In the last couple of years we were volunteering with Mennonite Disaster Services doing hurricane relief. We really enjoyed working with them. So Jill and I enjoy seeing Y.W.A.M. and the Mennonites partnering together in building the kingdom of God.

It's so great to see how different denominations can accomplish something when the goal is the same: to glorify God in all that we do! This has really shown us the importance of what unity can do.

Jill and I have been doing vehicle maintenance on about 40 vehicles here, as well as things like fixing lawn mowers, weed eaters, a gravel truck and a front-end loader.

We can't believe we have been here almost two months already!

We had a bit of a treat on Saturday night: Sonic Flood was here (for those of you who know contemporary worship music).

The sad thing is, is that we have only been to the beach three times since we have been here!

But we have been going to a great church here that is located ON the beach. The pastor is very detailed in his teachings. It's called Kona Calvary Chapel.

Well it's about 11:00 p.m. here and 6:00 a.m. comes real soon, so that's it for now.

Love and Blessings to all.

Jim and Jill