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Sep 02
2010
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They approved my visa!Posted by David and Favi Velasquez in Velasquez Family , Spain , Prayer Requests , News , Money , Missions , Missionaries , Ministry , Finanaces |

I wanted to share some wonderful news with all of you! The Lord has answered our prayers. I got a call from the Spanish Consulate today and the lady told me that they have approved my residency visa. I have until December 30th to leave the country (we are planning to leave much sooner than that). Believe me, I’m ready to go! Don’t get me wrong I have enjoyed deputation but everything has a time and a season and right now I am in Spain mode. I have 32 wonderful churches to visit from now till then and we have complete faith in God that we will have all of our support raised by our departure date. As a matter of fact we are currently at 86% of our needed support. They haven’t approved everybody’s visas yet but the lady told me that they should be ready in about two more weeks. I am so amazed at how God has opened every door for us. During the end of March of this year we really felt the Lord leading us to step out by faith and set a departure date. At that point we were at 66% of our support. In just 5 months our support has increased by 20%. Also, we have been praying that the Lord would supply the money that we need for our Setup Fund. Just in these past two days we have had 2 churches and 1 individual give towards our Setup Fund. The amount that they have generously given is exactly what we need to purchase our tickets. We are seriously considering leaving for the field November 29th, 2010. That is 2 days earlier than we had originally planned. You can’t imagine how excited we are. I would ask that you pray for the rest of the visas to be approved shortly. We really feel great peace in our hearts because we know that right now we are in the center of God’s will. Amen.













As we clearly saw in Part 3 of our ministry philosophy, Jesus did not spend equal amounts of time with all of those that followed Him (this would include the multitudes that followed him, the 70, the 12 and even the 3). How can we expect to do more than our Master? Jesus is our supreme example on how to make disciples and so we must be careful to follow in His steps. We really will have two general goals for the discipleship ministry in our churches (I say churches because our desire is to establish multiple churches throughout Spain and the regions beyond). On the one hand, we share the same desire as the apostle Paul in Colossians 1:28, “that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.” The only problem with that, of course, is that not every Christian in our church is going to cooperate with us in that process. We want every born again believer to love God and be actively involved in carrying out the Great Commission, but we know that unfortunately many “Christians” will remain spectators (from the outside looking in) of what God is doing in and through the rest of the church. This will not impede us from trying to present perfect (complete, mature) in Christ Jesus as many as possible. On the other hand we find Paul writing to his disciple Timothy in 2 Tim. 2:2 and he says, “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” Here we are commanded to train faithful men who will become disciple makers themselves. In other words, these men will become the future leaders and pastors of our churches. As we have heard many times, “The cream always rises to the top.” This group of people will receive more one on one time with us because they are faithful, proven men that are hungry for more involvement and responsibilities in the church. It may seem like we are playing favorites but that is far from the truth. As soon as someone is saved in one of our churches we will immediately seek to involve them in the discipleship process. Already in this phase we will have people that will refuse to receive even basic discipleship lessons. But many others will begin learning the basics of the Christian life and start growing and maturing. They will start learning how to read and study God’s Word, how to pray, how to give biblically to the work of God etc…. But once they reach a certain level of growth many will refuse to take that extra step into service and teaching others. Only a select group will want to go further and become disciple-makers. This group is not content with sitting on the sidelines while others get the work done. They want to be like Christ in every way possible. Not all of these believers will become pastors and missionaries but they will all have a very important part in the ministry in Spain. It is only natural that we will spend more personal one on one time with them. It would be a mistake for us to beg and plead the others to move forward for Christ (we can’t force people to serve) when the faithful men (and women) are willing and desiring to take the next step. What’s amazing is that the more mature and faithful Christians will begin to impact and influence the rest of the congregation so that some will venture out of their comfort zone and begin to do more for Christ.
The word philosophy literally means, "Love of wisdom." Every human being has an intrinsic desire to answer the three most essential universal questions, "who am I, why am I here, and where am I going?" Man has developed all sorts of philosophies attempting to rationalize and explain what our purpose is on this earth. The only problem, of course, with unregenerate man's philosophy is that it is based on personal opinion and it lacks an authority. For Christians, however, as Pastor Clarence Sexton (Temple Baptist Church Knoxville, TN) has very truthfully stated, "our philosophy is based on our theology." As Christians we don’t have to wander through life aimlessly wondering what life is all about because our Creator and Savior, Jesus Christ, has given us our marching orders and all we need to do is obey and everything else will come into focus. Our fixed point of reference, which keeps us from losing our way in this dark world, is the Word of God. We need to read the Holy Scriptures and discover where to invest our time and energy. Life is too short for us to live without a focus. As a missionary team we desire to place the emphasis in our endeavors where God places the emphasis.