2 Timothy 2:2, "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."

Starting a church is very hard work and takes much patience and prayer.  However, there is nothing more amazing then when someone realizes their need for a Savior and accepts Jesus Christ as Lord though repentance and faith.  But not only that, being able to teach them the Word of God and watching them grow and understand the principles of the Bible is one of the greatest joys of the Christian life. 

We have had the privilege of seeing 2 people saved in the last 2 weeks and also being able to begin teaching 3 people the Word of God on a personal, one-on-one basis. 

In the photo above, Isabel, who trusted Christ last year at a family camp and Estefan, the man who was saved 2 weeks ago, have begun learning the basics of the Word of God.  We praise the Lord for His goodness. 

God has done another amazing thing in our ministry.  Last week, I mentioned that Estefan, a man who has been coming for several weeks, was born again by the Spirit of God.  We are excited about being able to disciple him and teach him through our lives and the Word of God. 

Yet again, God did a great work.  A young couple, Robertson and Laura, came to our Bible Studies two weeks in a row.  The last time they visited, they mentioned that they were going to return the next week and bring their Aunt.  They didn't make it back after that so we decided that someone needed to visit them.  On Saturday, our team members, Julio and Andrea Velasquez, went to visit them.  The aunt was there and everyone was very happy to see them.  They said that they chatted for a little bit and then Robertson went to the back, grabbed several Bibles, came back and handed one to each person and they sat there staring at the Velasquez ready to hear and learn whatever they had to say.  Julio and Andrea began to share the Word of God with them.  They showed them scriptures and explained the sin that we all posses, but also God's remedy and forgiveness for our sin.  The Aunt (Sonia) bombarded them with her own questions.   At the end of the conversation, Julio asked Sonia if she would like to accept the gift that God has given us for Salvation.  Without hesitation, she emphatically said yes.  As she prayed, Andrea mentioned that she was really broken and truly seeking forgiveness for her sin against our Holy, Almighty God.  We praise the Lord for saving another soul. 

God is truly amazing and is working here and all over the world.  God works in so many different ways.  We continue to work hard at getting the Gospel to our city, not just a few here and there, but to our entire city.  We are reminded of what Paul said: "I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase."  We (as well as so many before us and with us) are planting and watering, planting and watering, however, it is God who gives the increase. God is the only one who can forgive a Soul and save it from impending judgment. 

We praise the Lord for what He is doing in us and in our ministry.   

What a day it was on Sunday.  As most of you know, Spain won the World Cup.  It was indeed a historical moment as they did what they had never done before.  Spain had never gotten past the quarter finals in the World Cup...ever.  Everyone was excited, the players, the coaches, the fans, and the country. 

As exciting as that was, I am not referring to that when I say, "What a day it was on Sunday."  For the first time in our ministry, we had someone come to Christ as a direct result of our ministry.  We are still in the very beginning stages of our Church Planting ministry, but God has blessed us with Estefan, a man who has been coming for the last 7 or 8 weeks.  If you remember, he is the man who I have asked everyone to pray for.  He passed by the building one Sunday morning and saw the "escaparate" (window with information). Isabel, one of the ladies who faithfully comes to our bible studies walked up and said, "Do you like what you see?"  They began talking, she invited him to stay, and sure enough, he did.  He came to every service since that time except for one.  Before and after each service, my father-in-law and I would talk to him extensively together and separately about the Lord, sin, salvation, repentance, the Bible, etc.  Every service he heard sound biblical preaching and teaching on salvation.  We took him out for coffee and went over to his house.  We have prayed for him ever since the first day we meet him. 

This past Sunday, he came into the church and said he had a surprise.  He said he was reading his Bible and he read a verse where Jesus said, "Come to me."  He told us that that day he accepted Christ as his Savior.  We were excited.  Today, he came out with us for the first time to deliver the Gospel on DVD into people's homes. 

It is always exciting when someone comes to Christ, but this one is special, being our first.  Lording willing we will be baptizing him soon.  Continue to pray for him as he grows in the Lord. 

The DVD Project

A little over a year ago, I was talking to David Velasquez (the other member of our team) and we were discussing plans for the ministry and how to effectively reach the people with the Gospel. I expressed to him my belief that Spain has not been seeded like other countries. For years there has been “pockets” with the Gospel message, but a constant seeding of the Gospel year after year has seemingly eluded Spain. In our discussion, David mentioned being in a mission’s conference and hearing the preacher talk about going door to door and leaving a bag full of goodies on each door handle. Inside the bag was information about the church and a cassette tape containing a clear message on Salvation. The preacher mentioned that the next Sunday, 40 new visitors showed up. As we went back and forth, based on this idea, the DVD project was born. Shortly after our conversion, we set the wheels in motion. We came up with a script, bought the equipment, recorded the video, and there began our DVD project. It has taken some time to get everything set up, duplicate the DVD’s and strategically plan out our attack, but with the Lord’s help, we have been able to get the Gospel DVD into 22,543 homes. So what does this mean? We calculate that on average, there are 3 people per household. That means that we have given 67,629 people the chance to hear a clear presentation of the Gospel. Why is this exciting? If a person on average talks to 2 people per day 7 days a weeks, 365 days a year about the Lord, in a span of 50 years, that person would have talked to 36,500 people. That is great. With this DVD project we have been able to give almost double that number of people a chance to hear the Gospel in less then 3 months.
So is the DVD project working?

That is a question I get a lot. What results have we seen from it. Actually, our primary goal for this project was not to fill our church, although, we hope people come because of a result of it. Our primary goal for this project was to give everyone in our city a chance to hear a clear presentation of the Gospel. You ask, “Isn’t that what church and the preaching is for?” We would love it if in 30 or 40 years of ministry, every single person in the city walked through the door of the church to hear a Gospel message, but ask any pastor or missionary and you will see that it just doesn’t happen. As a matter of fact, the number of people from your city that will visit the church will be a very low percentage. Understanding this, we decided to take the message of the Gospel to them. By placing it in their mailbox, every home and the people in it, will have a chance to hear a Gospel message on DVD even if they never grace the doors of the church. So, yes, it is working because we are fulfilling the purpose that we set out to do. At the end of the DVD, there is a website that they are directed to so they can learn more about the Bible. We have averaged 400 to 500 hits per month on the website. The message is being heard.
We have been able to get the DVD to half of the homes in our city. Lord, willing, we will finish the other half very soon. We don’t plan on stopping there. Part of having a good harvest is continuing to seed and seed. Our plan is to continue getting the Gospel to our city, not just by way of DVD, but in many different ways. We want to thank every individual and every church that has given towards this project. Rest assured that every dime went to the cost of producing this DVD.
THE CHURCH

We are not “officially” a church yet, however we have been holding Bible studies. A lot of work has gone in to readying the building and preparing and doing the DVD project. However, the Lord has been so good as over the past 6 weeks, we have had visitors every week. Stefan walked by the building and saw our “Escaparate” (window with information) and was interested and came in for the service. That was 7 weeks ago and he has been back every Sunday except for one. He has heard the message of the Gospel many times and my father-in-law and I have had good conversations with him about Salvation. Please pray that the Lord would work in his heart. Last week we had 5 visitors with a total of 12 people. We are very excited about what the Lord is doing and is going to do here in Spain.

The DVD project is going well. We have gotten out over 16,000 DVD’s into 16,000 homes in Parla, Spain. This means that if there is an average of 3 people per home, 48,000 people have had the chance to hear and watch a clear presentation of the Gospel. We are excited about what God is doing through the DVD project. I will update more on that later.

For this post, I wanted to concentrate on our friend Estefan. Estefan has come 3 Sunday’s in a row. It is always nice to have visitors but when they come back it is even more exciting. Estefan came because he was out for a Sunday morning stroll and he passed by the building and saw the posters and books we had in the escaparate (window). He joined us for the service and has come back every Sunday since then. The amazing thing to me is that we haven’t even officially opened the doors of the church yet. The escaparate had only been up and visible for one week when he passed by. Up until about 3 or 4 weeks ago, the metal door that protects the window had been closed and it looked like the building wasn’t open. We haven’t made a big announcement, passed out flyers, etc. letting the community know that we are starting a church. We are still a little ways from being able to do that. We don’t even have a sign up yet. People don’t yet know what we are. You see, our purpose is two-fold. Not only are we starting a church, but we are trying to evangelize our city, our entire city in a systematic, organized fashion. What does that mean? That doesn’t mean that we are going to win every single person to Christ, however that would be nice. What it does mean is that we are going to give every person in our city a chance to hear the Gospel at least once, but if the Lord allows and we fulfill all that we have planned, we will give every person a chance to hear the Gospel over and over and over again in a very systematic fashion. I am not talking about standing in a populated area passing out tracts or randomly witnessing to people on the street. There is nothing wrong with that and we will do that, however, there is no way to measure that. But what I mean is getting the Gospel into every home by means of various ways in an organized fashion, so everyone has the chance to hear the Gospel. Our first attempt at this is being accomplished through the DVD project. We have done a lot, but much more needs to be done. So all that to say, so far we have been concentrating on seeding our entire city before we actually have our grand opening. We are also dealing with paperwork (which is a process in and of itself) and waiting for our last member of the team to arrive before we open officially. In the meantime, as we saturate the city, we have been systematically thinking through how we can make our building as appealing and informative as possible so people will be curious and stop in. We are offering free Bibles via our website www.estudialabiblia.com, Facebook.com and will soon be offering them via our escaparate (window) and possibly by way of Billboard or advertisement. Much groundwork is being laid so it amazes me that God is already bringing people.

That leads me back to Estefan. I ask that you pray for him. As I said before, he has been to 3 of our Sunday Morning Bible Studies in a row. My father-in-law and I had the privilege of taking him out for coffee yesterday and just simply “shooting the breeze.” We have “laid on pretty thick” the salvation message in our conversations before and after the Bible Studies so we decided just to go out and do a little “relationship building” with him. He, like so many others, is struggling in this economy without work. He tries to be a “good” person and even thanks “God” for many things, but he still lacks the repentance and faith that brings us into a true relationship with God. So please pray for him. Pray that God will draw him to Himself. Pray that Estefan will have a tender heart to the Lord’s conviction and that we will be able to be used of the Lord to help meet his need.

Dear Co-laborers in Christ,

The months of April and May have been exciting for us as we have had the privilege of distributing 12,900 Gospel DVDʼs to homes here in the city of Parla. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning we meet at the church and then head out to a different area of the city and begin the process of putting these DVDʼs in the mailboxes in houses and apartments. Six of us have been participating in this endeavor and it is truly an exciting project. We have received a few requests for Bibles and we trust that we will have some solid contacts in the days and weeks ahead. We pray that as the people watch this DVD, their hearts will be touched by the message, they will see themselves as sinners and in need of a Savior. We still have over 35,000 DVDʼs that we will need to distribute in order to reach every home. We have duplicated over 5000 more and are in the process of doing another 5000. After that we will need more money in order to continue duplicating more DVDʼs. Remember that each DVD costs us .50 cents. If an individual or Sunday School class or church would like to send a love offering to help us duplicate more DVDʼs, please send to us at BIMI and designate for DVD project. For the past two Sundays we have had a man visit our services. He is of Romanian and Greek descent and has shown an interest in hearing the Gospel. Pray that Esteban will come to know Christ as his personal Savior. Also pray for our neighbors who are Colombian. I have had the opportunity to visit them several times and just recently gave them a Bible. Pray that they will come to the church and also come to know the Lord. We know that the process of sowing is necessary and it takes time and we pray that God will bring in the harvest in His time.

The second week of April I was on my way to Madrid to renew my resident visa, when my leg went down hard on the first step of the escalator at the train station. That simple motion caused me to tear the ligaments in the calf of my left leg. After two weeks of complete rest, several doctorʼs visits and 20 sessions of rehab I am beginning to be able to walk without crutches. The healing process is long and tedious, but praise the Lord that I am getting better. I have been able to witness to several doctors at rehab and that has been a real blessing. Last week when I visited the main doctor, he found that I have also developed an inguinal hernia. This was probably due to the stress from my accident the month before. I will have to have surgery to repair the hernia sometime before the end of the year. Please pray that all will go well.

Please pray for our son David and his family as they have set the date for their arrival in Spain for December 1. They have 80% of their support and are trusting the Lord to bring in the remaining 20% by that time. Pray that they will be able to obtain their resident visas without any complications. Also pray for Jeff and Deanna as they have been approved for adoption of a baby and are now waiting for the agency to call them about an available child. We want to thank each of you for your faithful support for our ministry and for your prayers. We need you to pray specifically that we will have boldness to share the Gospel with the lost around us. Spaniards are usually very closed when talking about spiritual matters, but we pray that God will open hearts that only He can open. May the Lord richly bless each of you as you serve our Lord in your area.

In His Service,

Julio and Andrea Velasquez

I want to say Happy Anniversary to My wonderful wife, Deanna.  Today we celebrate 9 years of marriage.  The Lord has blessed me with such a godly, beautiful, wonderful wife.  She is truly a helpmeet to me.   She is my best friend and lifelong partner.  The first 9 years have been wonderful and I look forward to the next 30+ years.  We are not perfect and neither has been our marriage.  However, if we truly understand the meaning of love as portrayed in 1 Corinthians 13.  We will understand that love isn't just a sensation or a chill down our spine.  It's not the kind of love portrayed in Hollywood or on TV.  It is an everlasting love.  The love mentioned in 1 Corinthians 13 is not a romantic love.  The Bible never speaks of a romantic love as we perceive the word Love.  The love that the Bible talks about in 1 Corinthians 13, Ephesians 5:25 and so many other places in the scriptures is the ultimate act of self-sacrifice.  Love is an action and specifically an action of self-sacrifice.  This is exactly what God means when he says,  "For God so loved the world that he gave..."  God almighty sacrificed His Son, Himself, because he loved you and I.  Our Lord showed us the ultimate action of self-sacrifice....true love.

If we as married couples can grasp this type of Love, not the sensational, romantic, sexual type Love that we perceive, that Hollywood portrays, but the type of Love that Christ displays and talks about in His word, we would be able to live our married lives (and our lives) to the fullest, how God designed it.  Does that mean we would live problem and argument free?  Of course not, we are sinners, individuals, and full of fault.  However, what it does mean is that when we do have that occasional argument, when we do have those aggravating problems that arise, when we do have that not so often day where we just don't feel like we love our spouse as much as the day before, we will remember and understand that love isn't a feeling but the ultimate action of self-sacrifice.  If we want a successful marriage that will last until "death do us part" then each person in the marriage union must portray this action of self-sacrifice: LOVE! 

Thank you Deanna for Loving me (the action of self-sacrifice) and being such a wonderful wife.  I love you and look forward to growing old together.  Happy Anniversary!

Dear Praying Friends, Family, and Churches,

It is such a joy to serve the Lord.  The more I am able to do so, the more I realize how much of a privilege it is to serve Him.  We are excited about what the Lord is doing and is going to do in our ministry.

THE MINISTRY

We have been working on fixing up the building that the Lord has given us.  We are in a great location.  There are so many people that walk by the building each day.  I mentioned over the past few prayer letters that I would provide pictures of the building.  You can see below the before and after pictures.  There are still a few little things left to do i.e. decorating, etc. but the majority of it is done.

Click to Enlarge

Click to Enlarge

In Spain, most businesses have what is called an “escaparate” which is basically a window where they display products, sales, etc. so the people can see what they offer.  It is a pretty big thing here and many people take note of the “escaparate.”  The bottom right picture is our “escaparate.”  We have posters promoting a couple websites we have and displaying the time of our Bible Studies.  It also has several Christian books and literature displayed, as well as Bibles.  The “escaparate” has been on display for less then a week and it is amazing the amount of people who stop in front of the window to read and look at what is posted.

THE DVD PROJECT

The DVD project is in full swing.  We have been able to get the Gospel on DVD into 7,528 households.  This is very exciting because thousands of people now have the chance to watch and hear a very clear presentation of the Gospel.  At the end of the presentation, it directs them to a website.  We have had many people visit the site and several people have even requested a Bible.  The power of this project is not in the technology, the DVDs or the missionaries, it is in the Gospel of Christ.  “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth;...”

It is great to be back!!!  You may have noticed that our website was down for a few days.  We quickly put up a temp page and worked on getting the site back online.  Unfortunately, our site was compromised and flagged for sending out malicious spam mail.  We were able to figure out the problem and here we are again.  Sorry for the interruption and inconvenience.  We will be blogging over the next several weeks about our ministry, how things are going with the DVD project, our team members, etc.

Thanks for praying for our adoption process. I wanted to post the latest news on our adoption and I will do so by pasting in the post my wife wrote on her blog:

Grateful, So Grateful!!!

Our home study has been officially approved!! YAY!! Yipee!! Hooray!! Praise the Lord!

And...

as of yesterday,

our agency will now begin to show our family profile to potential birth mothers!!

We have completed one big hurdle and now begins the waiting game. We could get a call any day, like it could take a year to receive the call. Believe it or not, having to wait is not really bothering us at all. Just knowing that we are where we are in this adoption process is exciting enough. We have 'waited' for 5 years for the Lord to give us another baby and He has given us grace!! So I know He will provide us with the grace for this next phase of waiting. We are sooo excited and a little nervous, because it just seems more real now!!

Thanks to everyone who has been praying with us about this adoption. We get e-mails and calls from friends that say they are praying and that is so overwhelming to us. The Lord has given us so many wonderful friends around the world and such a supportive family. We are grateful, so grateful!!

http://www.thespiritofadoption.org/2010/05/grateful-so-grateful.html