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 30^th 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 29^th, 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. 

We are church-planting missionaries. We understand the command in Matthew 28:18-20 to evangelize, baptize those that are saved, and teach them to be like Christ (discipleship), but these demands can only be fully obeyed within the context of the local church. The first century Christians comprehended that they would be unable to reach the world (“…Jerusalem…Judea…Samaria, and…the uttermost part of the earth.” Acts 1:8) without establishing churches in every corner of the earth. That is why they naturally were involved in church-planting. They understood it to be the obvious and practical conclusion of our Savior’s command. We have a mission and God has chosen the church to carry out that mission. If a “church” is not obeying the Great Commission then it cannot biblically be defined as such. We understand the church to be a group of baptized believers gathered together to carry out the Great Commission. We are pioneer missionaries (we are starting a new work from scratch) that have moved to Parla, Madrid and have begun to proclaim the gospel to every individual in that city for the purpose of establishing a church that will obey and fulfill its mission. We are not in the business of constructing church edifices, but of organizing (directly or indirectly) visible groups of believers (starting churches) in every city to shake up Spain for Christ. As we start more churches our reach will be greater and we will be able to effectively evangelize more places than just Parla. We will reach Madrid as well as the other provinces in Spain, Southwest Europe and the world. In other words, we must start churches in order to reproduce what we are already doing in Parla, Madrid in other places around the world. Our desire is to establish churches that will fulfill our three basic and essential ministry goals.

1. Evangelize the lost: Every single individual within the reach of the church must have the opportunity at least one time in their lifetime to accept or reject Jesus Christ. The church must find every way possible to accomplish that task.

2. Enable others: This means that we are to follow our Master’s example in training faithful men who will reproduce themselves in other Christians. This is not an option, but our solemn duty.

3. Establish Churches: We must start churches that will perform the first two goals in other places. The ideal would be a church for at least every 50,000 people.

 We could go to Spain for a short period of time and carry out massive evangelistic campaigns and distribute millions of bibles and gospel tracts. Although through these efforts many would hear the gospel and some would be saved the effects of this style of evangelization are short-lived. The only way to make a lasting impact for Christ in this world is by establishing churches. A bible-believing, gospel preaching church will faithfully and continually evangelize until everyone within the reach of the church has heard the gospel. But then the church will disciple and train the converts and involve them in the work of the ministry and the cycle will be never-ending.

 It is clear that there are more ways than one to establish a church. Some churches are started by a solitary pioneer who goes someplace where the gospel has never been preached. Some are started by a group of pioneers (a team). Both of these methods are perfectly acceptable but we have opted for the latter. We believe that we can accomplish more in less time for the honor and glory of God as we work together towards a common goal. Team missions is not a new or modern idea but it goes all the way back to Jesus and the Apostle Paul. God has given each of us different gifts and abilities that we can use for the furtherance of the gospel. One clear example for us is the technology aspect of our ministry. If it was up to me or my parents we would have no evangelistic website, no gospel DVD project, and you wouldn’t be reading this article because we wouldn’t have a blog or team website. Of course we would still be able to preach the gospel but with these tools our reach is even greater. Thankfully one of the members of our team is gifted in that area. All of us are commanded to evangelize but some people seem to have a greater God-given ability to make friends and start conversations with people. My father is that kind of person. He has never met a stranger. I remember going on door to door visitation with him in Venezuela and seeing how he would somehow convince a grumpy, unfriendly person to allow us in their home. Before the conversation was over he would have them laughing and attentively listening to the gospel message. Without getting into all of our team’s strengths and weaknesses it is sufficient to say that “two are better than one…” (Ecclesiastes 4:9).

 Once the church that we have started in Parla begins to grow and leaders are trained we will practice a third method of church-planting. While some churches are started by pioneers (one missionary or a team of missionaries) others are the product of churches producing churches. We could work diligently as a team to start a church and leave it with a pastor as soon as possible. Let’s say we were able to start one church every five years (It’s not impossible but we have never witnessed this in Spain). In a fifteen year period we would have started three churches. We could certainly attempt such an ambitious goal, but what if we invested ourselves in training men for the same period of time? What if we allowed the church in Parla to naturally produce more churches? Every pastor trained would equal a new church and members from the “mother church” would go and help those pastors start the new works. We want every pastor to enjoy the blessings of working as a team whether they start a church nearby or in a distant place. Please continue reading. Next week I will post the sixth and final part of our ministry philosophy.

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.

I do want to be very clear that although Christ is our model to follow in discipleship, we are only humans and as such we have many limitations. We will be very careful to not make disciples of ourselves, but of Christ. It is very easy to center our ministries on ourselves and forget that our goal is to “present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.” When a new convert enters into a student-teacher relationship with one of us, he is going to naturally want to imitate everything that we do. While this is inevitable, we must remember that our ultimate goal is to point them to Christ and not us. The apostle Paul writes in 1 Cor. 11:1, “Be ye followers of me, even as I am also of Christ.” It would be easy to say that this verse proves that people are supposed to follow us, but I believe that the emphasis of the verse is, “Even as I am also of Christ.” We want those that we are discipling to imitate those areas in our lives that are Christ-like, but certainly not every facet of our being. If that’s the case then our children in the faith would possess our strengths as well as our weaknesses. When we begin to disciple someone we want them to understand that we are not perfect and that we will make mistakes. If we point them to the Bible and ask them to judge all things through the light of the Scriptures then they will learn what areas of our lives are truly worth imitating. I am very thankful that God gave me an earthly father that was not a dictator. Although I was expected to obey him in everything that he commanded, he made it very clear to me that he was not perfect. Many times I remember my father coming into my room and apologizing because he had not been a good example in a particular matter.  I learned that although my father was appointed by God to direct and mold my life, he was only a vessel intended to lead me into a personal relationship with my heavenly father, who is perfect in all things. He taught me that God’s word (not his own) is my ultimate authority.  Because my father pointed me to Christ I have an anchor that will keep me safe in the fiercest storms. Ministries that are centered on men will never survive after the death of their earthly leader. We want the men that are trained under our ministry to depend on Christ and not on us. Please continue reading. We will get into church-planting in the next article.  

Dear Pastor, Congregation and Friends,

“For from you sounded out the word of the Lord...so that we need not to speak anything.” (1 Thessalonians 1:8) Most of you have noticed that our website is www.thatallmayknow.net. We have named our ministry in Spain thatallmayknow ministries. The reason that we have chosen this theme is because we believe that this is ultimately God’s heartbeat. Our team members have recently started a church in Parla, Madrid with the vision to aggressively and proactively find a way to reach every single household and individual in the city with the gospel message. Like the church at Thessalonica we want to make a profound impact for the honor and glory of God.

Although the church has not been officially inaugurated, many exciting things have   already taken place! Our team members have been unable to obtain the permit which allows them to place a church sign on the building. This has made it difficult to pass out invitations for the church and no official service has been held to jump-start the church. In spite of all of these setbacks we are thrilled to announce that the team in Spain has been able to personally present the gospel to several individuals and two souls have already been saved. Praise the Lord! Not only that, several people have visited the church and many have shown an interest to visit in the future. 23,329 gospel DVD's have been distributed making the gospel available to 69,987 people. Over 2,000 people every month have visited our evangelistic website and many have requested free Bibles. One person has already been baptized and very soon another will follow. We are thrilled about those that have been saved and baptized, but it is wonderful seeing those same people faithfully attend church services and begin the process of discipleship.

Since our last prayerletter we have had 7 new churches partner with us and we are currently at 85% of our needed support. Based on our average support we only need 18 more churches to take us on for support for us to reach our goal. We have already turned in our passports to the Spanish consulate. As soon as they return our passports with the stamped visas (this should take one more month) we will have 3 months maximum to leave the U.S. for Spain. We are still on track to leave for Spain December 1st. Since we already speak the    language fluently and we have a team in place on the field, as soon as we arrive in Spain we will be busy with what God has called us to do. Thank you for your faithful prayers and support.

As we mentioned in our last prayerletter we will be keeping you updated about our Setup Fund. We have great news! We received two special gifts towards the fund for $500.00 and $100.00. So what we still need to raise is as follows:

 

Container: $5,900.00 ($100.00 already raised. Praise the Lord!)

 

3 Airplane Tickets: $2,400.00

 

1 month of rent: $1,200.00 (We have found a home to rent and have put 2 months down already but we still need to pay one more month in advance when we arrive in Spain)

 

Vehicle: $9,500.00 ($500.00 already raised. Praise the Lord!)

 

If you would like to be a part of helping us with our Setup Fund please send all gifts to:

 

David Velasquez

c/o M.W.B.M

P.O. Box 519

Braselton, GA 30517

Designated to:

006 Shipping/Travel

While the evangelization of Spain is our ultimate objective (really our vision is for the whole world but we will be starting in Spain), the biblical method to accomplish that goal is discipleship and church-planting. I would like to discuss discipleship first and then get into the matter of establishing churches. It really doesn’t matter which subject we discuss first. It’s like saying, “Which came first the chicken or the egg?” What matters is that we obey God in both of these areas. In Matthew 28:18-20, which is probably the fullest expression of the Great Commission in the Bible, we find our Lord’s command to evangelize (this is implied because we cannot make disciples if we don’t evangelize), establish churches (although we don’t find a clear command in the Bible that says, “go start churches;” obedience to the great commission necessitates the establishment of churches), and disciple the converts (“teaching them…” Verse 20). It really doesn’t matter what our opinions are regarding world evangelization because God has already chosen the method for His mission to be carried out.  We are not going to attempt to reinvent the wheel (that is what we are doing when we ignore Christ’s instructions) because we have the biblical model and it works! It may appear the obvious choice, but how many times are these commands completely ignored in our churches today because some “new” method has been discovered. We are in trouble! Bill Hull quotes George Orwell in his book The Disciple-Making Pastor and leaves us with an eye-opening declaration, “We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” In other words, the obvious has become revolutionary. We are not discussing something new, but simply restating what has already been clearly delineated in Scripture. Faced with these truths we can either ignore them or obey them. As a missionary team we have chosen to obey and trust God for the results.

Much has been written about the Pauline method, but why not go directly to the Master (Jesus Christ) and discover His method for evangelizing the world. Jesus did many things while he was here on this earth. He preached several sermons, He rebuked the Pharisees, He healed the sick etc…, but if we carefully read the gospels it is plain to see that Jesus spent the majority of His ministry investing His life in twelve men. Although many others followed Him, His earthly work was centered on the twelve. If we viewed His ministry through the prism of the majority of today’s church-growth experts, we would have to conclude that the time that our Lord invested training the twelve was in vain. Yet every single Christian today is a result of those twelve men. The early church went from 120 members in Acts 1:15 to 3,000 in Acts 2:41 to 5,000 men in Acts 4:4 to the point that they “turned the world upside down.” (Acts 17:6) So what is the difference between the first century church and the 21^st century church? That the first Christians actually believed and obeyed our Lord’s command to make disciples and they evangelized the world (Colossians 1:5, 6, 23). We must go back to the Bible if we will ever accomplish such a feat in our generation. We believe strongly in working as a team. We will be working in Spain with my parents Julio and Andrea Velasquez and with my sister and brother-in-law Jeffrey and Deanna Andrews. Our desire is to see more families join us. We know that God has given us different gifts and abilities that we will be able to use for the furtherance of the gospel. Although God has blessed us with a team that will work together to obey the great commission we cannot evangelize Spain alone. We can only do so much before the task becomes insurmountable. We plan to disciple and train those that are saved so that they can join us in the mission. We must reproduce ourselves in other people so that our labors can be multiplied. If all we do as a team is personally add new converts then our reach will be limited. But if we make disciples of men (and women) that are able to disciple others who will reproduce themselves into others etc…then we could begin to multiply and train an army that will turn Spain and the world upside down. Our goal in discipleship is “that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” (2 Timothy 3:17). The true measure of success in discipleship is not the number of people attending the church services each week, but the quality of their love for God and dedication to His cause (World Evangelization). We cannot expect the preaching from the pulpit or the Sunday school lessons alone to get the job done. We must follow Christ’s example and invest our lives in people in order to produce fruit that will remain and produce more fruit. This form of discipleship goes beyond written discipleship lessons (we certainly will use discipleship materials to start the process) and into what has been called, “life-on-life” discipleship. Our Lord Jesus Christ lived with the twelve, He ate with them, spent countless hours teaching and preparing them for the awesome responsibilities that would come. You may be asking yourself, “How will they personally spend one on one time with every Christian in their church?” The answer is simple, we can’t. Jesus had great multitudes that followed him; He had the 70 that were a little closer to him and of course the twelve that spent the majority of their time with Him. Even more specifically he had 3 disciples that formed His most intimate circle. Please continue reading next week as we continue on the subject of discipleship. We will get into church-planting as well. 

The theme verse for our ministry is found in 1 Samuel 17:46, “…That all the earth may know that there is a God…” Most of you have noticed that our website is www.thatallmayknow.net. We have named our ministry in Spain ThatAllMayKnow Ministries. The reason that we have chosen this theme is because we believe that this is ultimately God’s heartbeat.  We want to be reminded every day of what our main responsibility is in Spain. The central theme of Scripture is “that thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations (Psalm 67:2). Whether we read the Old or New Testament the message is the same: the redemption of mankind through Jesus Christ.  In the Old Testament God had chosen the nation of Israel to be a light to the nations (Isaiah 42:6). In the New Testament God has chosen the church to carry out His master plan. You may be wondering when I am going to mention church-planting and discipleship. I will discuss both of these topics in great length but I believe it is important for us to keep our focus on the ultimate goal. We are commanded and taught in Scripture that we are to establish churches (“baptizing them in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the Holy Ghost” Matthew 28:19b) and disciple the converts (“teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded” Matthew 28:20a) but the objective is to evangelize the world. Discipleship and Church-planting are the method and vehicle that God has chosen to accomplish the task.

We have recently started a church in Parla, Madrid and our focus is to get the gospel to every person in the city. We didn’t want to have a Field of Dreams philosophy from the onset (if you build it, they will come) but a biblical approach, “…Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in…” (Luke 14:23b). We cannot expect people to take the initiative and search after God or our church. Romans 3:11 clearly states, “…there is none that seeketh after God.” We have to aggressively and proactively find a way to reach every single household and individual with the gospel message. We will personally go soul-winning (house to house, in the parks, in the streets). We will try to build relationships with people in order to break down barriers and share the gospel with them. One of the things that we are interested in starting, in the near future, is English classes. We think that this is going to be a fantastic way to make friends and meet potential converts. We will systematically get the gospel, in one way or another, into every home. Because of this goal we have started the gospel DVD project. Spain has certain unique challenges that we don’t find in the U.S. (especially in urban areas). Most people (especially in the main cities) live in apartment complexes. The population of Parla is approximately 150,000. It would take us several years to knock on every door in the city and present the gospel to every person (we are certainly going to try to personally knock on every door). Even if we gained entrance into every apartment building (that isn’t always possible) most likely not everyone would be home or even interested in listening to us. That is why the gospel DVD project is such a useful tool for us. One thing that you can do in Spain, which is illegal in many other countries, is personally place material in their mailboxes. All of the businesses in Spain are able to advertise their products in that way. All you have to do is ring any doorbell from the apartment building and when they ask, “Quien es?” (who is it?) You simply reply, “Correo informativo” (informative mail) and they will let you in, no questions asked. Once you are inside the building you have access to every single mailbox. The DVD’s that we have produced have a three minute story that catches their attention and a five minute clear gospel presentation. Through these DVD’s we can gain access to many more homes in a much shorter period of time. Because the average household in Spain is comprised of three people we have made 50,000 copies of the DVD. If you multiply 50,000 by 3 the total is 150,000 which is the population of the city. At the end of the DVD we invite them to visit our website, estudialabiblia.com (studythebible.com). This website has all sorts of resources for them to study. Through the website they can learn about our ministry as well as request a free Bible or a personal Bible study. We want to distribute these DVD’s into every household at least once every year and we hope to make new DVD’s in the future. You may be thinking, “What about the people that don’t own a DVD player?” Although the vast majority of people in Spain have the necessary technology in their homes, we don’t want to exclude anyone. Because of that fact we plan to distribute, in addition to the DVD’s, New Testaments, invitations to the church, gospel tracts, gospel CD’s (the gospel message on CD) and much more. We have already placed one billboard about our church in the entrance of the city and would like to put up more. We would also like to advertise the church through the local newspaper. I hope to make it as clear as possible that we will not rest until every person has the opportunity to make a decision about Christ. We must use every tool at our disposal. I know that in the future we will try new things that we haven’t even thought of now. But regardless of the means, the message and our purpose will never change. I have much more to write on this subject. I would like to talk about discipleship and church-planting. Please continue reading.

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.

1 Corinthians 15:34 leaves us with a sobering thought, “Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame.” The gospel message is a simple message, but how many people have never heard the gospel a single time in their entire lives. The gospel is the good news of salvation for the world, but it’s only good news if it gets to them on time. Oswald J. Smith, a well-known pastor from Canada said, “Why should anyone hear the gospel twice before everyone has heard it once.” God has given us a very clear command in his Word which is well summarized in Mark 16:15, “…Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” If we have been given a command that means we are able to fulfill what God has commanded us to do. So what is it exactly that we are supposed to be doing? Well, I can tell you what we can’t do. As much as we try (and believe me I’ve tried) we cannot save anyone. Only God can save! Ultimately, a lost sinner, when presented with the gospel, must make a personal decision to either accept or reject Christ. We reject the false teaching that some have been chosen by God for salvation and others for damnation. Equally, we deny that the grace of God is irresistible for the “elect.” Our mission is clear: every creature under heaven must have the opportunity, at least one time in their lifetime, to make a decision about Christ.  Our goal is to evangelize Spain in our generation. You may be thinking, “That is wishful thinking; they will never accomplish such a feat.” I don’t know how much the Lord is going to allow us to do in Spain for His glory. All I know is that we need to obey His command. It is His mission, His plan and I want to be involved with what God is doing in this world.  Next week I will share even more about our Ministry Philosophy. Don’t forget to read part 2.

For quite some time I have wanted to write on this subject. As today is the culmination of July I thought it would be appropriate to review this amazing month in sports for Spain. As those who know me can testify, I am a huge sports fan. I was born in Spain and I didn't grow up around football (American football as I call it) or baseball, but my passion was soccer (better known in the rest of the world as fútbol). Unless you were in a cave this month I'm sure you realized that the World Cup of soccer was going on in South Africa. You may not have seen a single game but you knew it was taking place. If you've ever had the opportunity to live in another country you would know just how big an event the World Cup is in reality.  I am sure you also heard that Spain won the World Cup for the first time in all of their history. It was amazing to see the millions of people lining the streets to celebrate this historic event. For just an instant the divisions between the different provinces, especially the Basque region and Cataluña, seemed to dissipate as the whole country united under one flag and sang in unison, ♫ - Yo soy Español, Español, Español - ♫ ♫ - I am a Spaniard, a Spaniard, a Spaniard - ♫. 

Add to that the amazing victory once again of Rafael Nadal in Wimbledon, which makes a historic 8 grand slam titles for the 24 year old (to put it into perspective he already has the same amount of grand slam titles as Andre Agassi and he is far from being at the end of his career). We would have to talk about the recent Tour de France victory for Alberto Contador (his third title) and Pau Gasol winning his second championship ring with the L.A. Lakers (of coarse I understand this is a team trophy and he is the only Spaniard on the team, but this man is huge in Spain). Spaniards are seeping with national pride (as you can expect) because they can say that they are on the top of the sports world looking down at the rest of the mere mortals that dare challenge them. I want to mention, however, that although I am thrilled for my countries achievements I realize that none of these accomplishments can fill the void and guilt in their hearts caused by sin. Fame only lasts for a season and eventually all that you are is a side note on some sports history book. Our desire is to make the gospel of hope and peace available to every Spaniard so that they can experience true forgiveness of sins and a sense of purpose and fulfillment that will never go away. As the Bible says in 1 Timothy 4:8 "...bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and that which is to come." Pray that Spain will go from soaring atop the sports world to understanding and knowing the maker of heaven and earth and living for the one who promises to bless them on this earth and elevate them to the heavenlies to live with Christ for all eternity.

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.