Pastor Roberto Rios is coming to Clermont TODAY.  He has been at a church conference in Miami and will be coming up to the Orlando area to visit with us for a few days.

L-R Tony & Emily, Maria & Roberto Rios, Gardenia & Fernando Ubilla, in Santo Domingo, Ecuador

Pastor Roberto pastors a church in Santo Domingo, Ecuador, a growing commercial center about 6 hours north of Guayaquil at the foothills of the Andes Mountains.  He is well known in the area and currently serves as the president of the local evangelical pastors council. 

Heart of Titus helps Pastor Roberto and his wife Maria with 2 feeding programs in poor areas of Santo Domingo.  Visit the page on Facebook with hundreds of photos of feeding and teaching children by   clicking here. 

If you would like to visit with Roberto check back here or email us.  We are going to try to get a meeting for this coming Monday night. 

 This video is so good I wanted to post it again:

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 It is about 1:30 in the morning and we are packing to leave here at about 8 a.m. to start our trip home.There is so much to tell about our trip, we don't have time to write it all down now.  But let me tell you just 2 stories that happened tonight:

 I wrote most of this starting at 2:20 a.m. Friday morning.  We got back here to the "Christian Embassy" about an hour ago.  We were at a church in a poor area of Guayaquil. There were about 40 people in church and all 3 of us shared the Word.  Emily shared about women of noble character, referring to Ruth.  Paul shared about how tired we can get spiritually and how the Lord wants to give us rest.  I also shared on that theme and quoted from Matt. 11 where Jesus says, "Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest."  For the altar ministry time after I spoke Emily and I took one side of the room, and Paul and our translator Marcel took the other side and we went out to where the people were standing at their chairs and prayed for each of them there. Emily and I ministered to many women in particular.  Quite a few times Emily would just hug them and love on them and the next thing you know they are crying, and filled with the Spirit, even though she wasn't always able to speak Spanish. Paul had a blast, the highlight being that he got to lead 2 people to the Lord!  Afterwards I got a chance to speak privately with the pastor about his financial and marital struggles and by God's grace was able to connect him to some practical human resources that are equipped to help him in both areas. 

Sunday morning we all travel together to a city about 2 hours north of here called Vinces.  Vinces is where our team leader started a home group less than 2 years ago just for teaching about biblical marriage to 9 couples.  It grew and grew until they became a church which now has 400 members and over 700 in attendance every Sunday.  We will minister there in the morning, then we'll minister to their church leaders in the afternoon, and then on the way back to Guayaquil we will stop at another church plant about 30 minutes north of Guayaquil for an 8 pm service.

Our first ministry opportunity was Wednesday afternoon when we ministered to some of the employees of host church.  It turned out that the messages we all shared were right on point with some of the troubles they are facing together that we didn't know about.  God is good. That night we ministered in a church meeting designed around improving marriages.  Paul shared briefly, Emily shared from 2 Kings 1 about how Bathsheba encouraged the prophet Nathan to speak into her husband's life as a friend (King David) and analogized that to wives today who should encourage their husbands to have godly friends. I then shared on how men have the authority in the home but the authority is to serve and not be served, as Jesus taught in Matt. 20.

A highlight of that Wednesday evening service was the healing of a man born with a congenital birth defect in his back which caused him constant pain.. After some prayer and counsel it was revealed that he had some deep wounds from his childhood in connection with his disability. We then prayed through some of those issues and he got some help, and then the Lord healed his back!  All the pain was finally gone after so many years.  We serve an awesome God!

It was also a blessing to see the couples who got reconciled that evening. Couples came forward during the invitation to seek help for their marriages.  At our urging many asked for and received forgiveness from their spouses for various things they had done to hurt them.  It was wonderful to see a couple married for 42 years crying and embracing at the front of the church after asking each other's forgiveness for various issues.  Our team also dealt with a younger couple in which the man went forward and repented of adultery.   Somehow the wife found the strength after prayer to forgive him.  There is so mudh to report, but more on that later..  

 We arrived late Tuesday night to Guayaquil and were met by most of our team, who as usual warmly greeted us.  We caravaned together to the Christian Ëmbassy, where we ate our 4th meal for the day and laughed and conversed til about 2 in the morning.  Thankfully we didn´t have to go anywhere until 1:30 in the afternoon so we got some good rest.

Great trip, great reception!  But my American cell phone didn´t work and there was no internet where we were staying. So this is our first report 2 days later.

Last night we ministered in the south extension of the main church, CEAD.  We tried to find the pastor, Israel Loor (who I remember as a pre-adolescent) who was out street evangelizing but couldn´t connect. So we ministered at his church and preached on marriage since that is what the Wednesday night service there is known for.  

I´m told my message was pretty hard and direct and Paul threatened to hold me accountable to it.   I´m not worried about him - Emily was there listening too.

Quite a few couples came up for a ´refreshing´ of the Spirit. There were quite a few who forgave each other, hugged and kissed, and reconciled over whatever offenses they had against one another.  There was even a couple married 42 years, crying and reconciling, thank the Lord.  Paul, Emily, Marcel, Miguel, Fernando, Cesar, Alexandra and others were all ministering with me at the front of the church.

This man then came forward who said all he wanted was more of Jesus.  After some prayer he told us that he was in constant back pain due to some defect from when he was born. After some circuitous counseling he got totally set free from some hurts from the past, which then led to his total healing.  The first time we prayed he said that he was 90% healed, the second he was totally pain free. Praise the Lord!

Got to go, my ride is here. More to come! 

This has been a long 2 years. It has been difficult to wait ... but now the time has arrived - Emily and I are going back to Ecuador!

It was a difficult decision to put the brakes on my travels 2 years ago.  Anyone who knows me knows how excited I get about these trips.  I had fallen in love with the city of Guayaquil and our friends there. It and they are incredible. You will never meet a group of people who are so giving, so loving, and so generous with their time and resources.

It's hard not to like these people.  They work hard for those they serve, believing that they are serving the Lord by doing so. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." [Matt.25:40]

Apparently my love for the people and for the country of Ecuador is nothing compared to the great love God has for them.  We all know love is proved by her actions and God proves His love for them continually there. What a privilege it has been to see what God does for those He loves!  We have seen countless supernatural healings and visitations of all sorts.  We have seen Him rescue so many from so much ... it just thrills my heart.

Faith can be a very fragile thing.  I for one need a lot of encouragement to keep believing that God not only exists but "that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." [Heb.11:6 NIV]. These trips have built my faith so much, and the faith of many others.

So I have the privilege of going to Ecuador tomorrow with a great expectation in my heart. I really believe I am going to see what I have seen before:  God pouring out His love on His children with miracles of healing, encouragement, restoration, reconciliation and best of all, reconciliation with Him.

I can't wait to share these stories with you.  God willing I'll be able to report some from down there as they happen. Check us out at www.facebook.com/heartoftitus - I'll be posting there.

God bless you, thank you for praying for Emily, Paul Madison, myself and all of our Ecuadorian friends.

Vacation is now officially over, Tony & Emily are returning to Ecuador after a 2 year hiatus from the mission field.  Paul Madison will be joining them on the trip which will be from February 22 to March 1. 

	Tony & Emily, Pastors Maria & Roberto Rios, and Gardenia & Fernando Ubilla, in Santo Domingo, Ecuador, in September 2007.

While there they will be ministering in churches and meetings in Guayaquil, the largest city in this country on the west coast of South America. They may also visit other cities such as Vinces, where the Ecuador Heart of Titus team helped to plant a church in the last 2 years which now has over 400 members. 

This is a hot and rainy time of year in Guayaquil, which is close to the Equator. If you would like to pray for them before they head out there is going to be a meeting at Tony & Emily's home in Clermont on Tuesday night, February 15. For more information email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

This is from the iguana park in Ecuador. See if you can count how many iguanas are in the tree! 

This video was taken at Dios Es Amor Church, and they had a dance team of children that danced during worship. Toward the end of the video there is a lady in a red shirt, it is the same lady God healed of deafness. It is amazing to watch how she worships the Lord. You can see such a hunger in her face. This church was full of people like her, hungry to hear the gospel!

To see the video click here ==> Children Dancing

Pat and Marcel at Dios es Amor (God is Love) Church in Guayaquil, Ecuador, sharing about what miracles of healing God has done. Click here ==>

Testimonies