That All May Know Ministries Blog

I wanted to comment on Jeff's (my brother-in-law) blog entry that he posted yesterday about working with resistant people. I recently heard a message in one of the missions conferences that I was a part of last week and the main speaker was talking about sowing and reaping. He said that some missionaries are in reaping countries and others are in sowing countries. Being a Missionary to Spain I understand that it is a sowing country.  However, I really believe that a harvest is going to come as long as we continuing sowing, maybe not in our generation but it will come.  God does not reward us according to the number of souls that we lead to Christ. He will reward us for our motives, our heart, and our faithfulness. While on deputation, the Lord has given me a message about what missions is all about. The main premise of this message is that the core responsibility of missions is to make the gospel available to every person on earth, not to save the most amount of people, like many think. This really transforms what we consider as success. This principle will give us perspective for our ministry in Spain and help us to have the right outlook.   The question is: "How do we measure our success?"  Do we measure it by the number of souls saved or by the amount of people that have had access to the gospel through our efforts.   In my opinion, if more missionaries would understand this concept than less would leave the field because of discouragement. That doesn't mean we won't have discouragement but as long as we keep the right focus we should make it just fine. Jesus never commanded that we save people but only that we evangelize them. That is the challenge of missions.  

Dear Pastor, Congregation and Friends,

Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. (Phil. 1:6)

I

t is so wonderful to see how the Lord has worked in my life. I was five years old when I was saved and I surrendered my life to be a missionary when I was eleven. All of these things came to my memory just last week as I attended a mission’s conference in North Carolina. The speaker was veteran missionary Bro. J.T. Lyons. He is well in his eighties and has suffered a great deal with his health. In spite of it all he preached five blazing messages that stirred my heart once again for the need of missions around the world. You see Brother Lyons was a missionary in Liberia, Africa as well as in Spain. I had known him growing up in Spain and the last time that I had seen him was when I was eleven and it was precisely under his preaching that I answered the call of God in my life for missions. The last night I went forward and recommitted my life to Christ’s service. I pray that the Lord will continue to perform His work in me until I see His face.

Deputation News

Since our last letter we have had six new churches partner with us and that means that we are now at 52% of our needed support. Praise the Lord! We are are confident that we will be in Spain soon.

Also, a couple weeks ago we were able to find out that we are going to be having a little girl! My parents are really happy because this will be their first granddaughter.

We have very exciting ministry news to share with you. Although we are not on the field yet we have been very busy alongside the other families in our team planning ways to reach the community of Parla, Madrid with the gospel. In the city of Parla, where we will be working, the population is roughly 150,000 and we figure that there must be approximately 50,000 households. Our goal is to reach every one of these households with a gospel DVD. We have produced a professional DVD which clearly explains the gospel message. It is very hard to get into the homes of the Spanish people but we are praying that God will use this DVD to not only reach souls for Christ but also allow us to gain contacts to begin our church. We are praying that many of you would be involved in this great ministry opportunity. It is easy to give. Kids, Sunday School Classes, Adults, Churches, etc. can participate in this project.  We have figured that the cost to make each DVD is around 50 cents. So for 50 cents, the Gospel on DVD will be given to someone who may have never heard the Gospel before.  For $5.00, the Gospel on DVD can be given to 10 people. For $100, the Gospel on DVD can be given to 200 people and so on. We are not asking for money for ourselves we simply want to give you the opportunity to have a part in someone hearing the gospel. If you would like to be involved you can send donations to:

Every dime that you give will go directly to getting a Gospel DVD into the hands of someone who doesn’t know Christ as their Savior. In the future we would like to follow up with even more DVD’s as well as gospel literature. What a great way to make our way into the homes of the people in Parla and allow them to hear the good news of the gospel for the first time in their lives.We couldn’t be more excited about this project. We are so grateful for all of your prayers and financial support. Only one life will soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last. We love you. God Bless.

Dear Pastor, congregation and friends,
 
    “But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” (Romans 8:25) Although we may not have reached the end of our deputation quite yet, we have faith and patience and we look out into the horizon knowing that the prize is near. We are encouraged to know that with every new church that takes us on for support we are one step closer to our goal. Since our last prayerletter we have had five new churches partner with us and we are now at 46% of our needed support.

Praise the Lord! We are praying to have all of our support raised in one more year. For those of you who may be wondering we are still driving our 1990 Cadillac Deville and it’s still going strong. We have put 70,000 miles on the car and I really believe that it will be with us till the end. What’s funny is that the car is only two years younger than my wife. Next year it will be a classic.

One of the things that burdens my heart as I travel and visit different churches across America is the lack of laborers to reach the Hispanic community with the gospel. Time and time again we have heard from pastors that desire to reach the Hispanics but simply cannot because they are unable to communicate with them in Spanish. Please pray that God would raise up men and women to learn Spanish and be used of God to evangelize the vast Hispanic community of America. I was so blessed as I visited a church in Ardmore, Alabama that had a Spanish ministry. The man that was in charge of the ministry was a man that had taught himself Spanish and with the little Spanish he knew was being used of God to reach souls for Christ. He invited me to preach to the small congregation that was gathered as a result of his labor and after the service I was able to lead a young man by the name of Armando to Christ. What went through my mind as the young man announced to the church that he had trusted Christ as his Savior was that had it not been for this faithful laymen in the church he would not have his name written in the Lamb’s book of life today. How many young people like Armando have come to our nation and never heard the gospel. Thank you once again for your faithful prayers and financial support. To God be the glory. We love you.

NEW BABY

Well, I am excited to announce that we are going to be having another baby. Last year around this time Favianna had miscarried our second child and we had been praying faithfully that the Lord would bless us with another little munchkin. Favi and I have always loved children and we are excited about raising them to love God and serve Him with their lives. I know that God has a special plan for them and I would sure love to see my children serving on the mission field.  But more than anything I pray that they will love God and put Him first in every decision that they make. Our baby is due on November 15th. So please pray that God would protect our child and that the pregnancy would be smooth for Favianna.
 

Trusting God in Trying Times

Dear Pastor, congregation and friends,

 

How that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality. (2 Corinthians 8:2)

 

 

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t never ceases to amaze me how in moments of necessity and difficulty I tend to draw nearer to God and I realize my total and complete dependence on Him. This has certainly been the case with many of the churches that we have visited in recent months. In a time when all we hear is doom and gloom about the financial state of our country and when many people are losing their jobs we have seen churches grow in their faith and confidence in God. I cannot begin to express my gratitude for all of the churches that have been faithfully supporting us while on deputation. We would like to inform our supporters as well as those who plan to support us in the near future that we are working as hard as we can to raise our support to be in Spain in 2010 and we will continue to work while in Spain to see souls saved, churches established and leaders trained. We will serve Him until he takes us home. Thank you for your liberality in this time of recession!

 

 

 

This month I had the wonderful blessing of being ordained at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church. The reason we chose this month is because my parents are leaving for the field March 31st and they wanted to be in my ordination. During the ordination I had the privilege of hearing my father present the charge and my pastor, Lamar Rackley, preach the message. I was blessed to have my uncle, Lee Lawrence, in the ordination council. He used to be a missionary to Spain and is now the assistant pastor at my church. I was also able to have my other uncle, Carlos Arce, who is a missionary to Venezuela. Both of these men have known me from when I was young and they have had a great influence in my life. One of the pastors that came was Alberto Puente. He was saved under my father’s ministry in Spain and is now serving as the Spanish pastor at Madison Baptist Church. As he placed his hands on my head he prayed that God would use me in Spain to see souls saved. My heart was touched as I remembered how he was saved and his life changed by the power of the gospel and now he was praying that God would use me to reach his people. Thank you once again for your prayers and generosity towards our family. God Bless.

 

Last week we had the opportunity to visit Bible Baptist Church in Savannah, GA for their annual Missions Conference. The Lord worked in a mighty way during the conference and our hearts were stirred and encouraged for the road ahead. One of the missionaries invited to the conference was Jason Sykes (Missionary to Venezuela). He wasn't able to go with his family because his wife had just had a baby the day before the conference had started. I had met Jason in Venezuela when I was only 16 years old. He had gone down to Venezuela as a part of the mission program from the Bible College he was attending. During that trip he was able to visit several works and the Lord called him to go to Venezuela as a missionary. It was such a blessing to know that 9 years after I met this young man he is on his way to Venezuela with his beautiful family and I am headed to Spain. I remember when he was in my house he had left his bible on a chair in our patio. Unfortunately for him our dog, Honey, was hungry at the time and she ate his beautiful bonded leather Bible. Thanks to him I had the most spiritual dog in the neighborhood. Please pray for the Sykes family as they raise support for Venezuela.

Finally, we have a team website. We are really excited about having a website that is going to be highly informative so that you can better know how to pray for us. We are very thankful for the team of missionaries that the Lord has brought together. And we are very thankful for Jeffrey Andrews who is the tech guy on our team. Many of you have been able to see the video that Jeff made showing the need in Spain. If you haven't simply click on the link on the right hand side of the page that says "Video of Spain." This is one of the many benefits of working as a team. If it was up to me we wouldn't have such a nice website and I would be showing slides instead of a DVD presentation in the churches I visit. Thank you Jeff.

Dear Pastor, congregation and friends,

“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before...” (Philippians 3:13)

One of my favorite months of the year is January. What a wonderful time to set goals for the future and to forget the mistakes that we made last year. I am so thankful for the things