Discipleship truly transformed our ministry many years ago.  30 years ago as new missionaries we did not know much about Biblical discipleship.  Of course when people got saved we would help them as much as possible in their spiritual growth and we would encourage them to be faithful to church so that they would hear the teaching and preaching of the Word of God.  But so many of the believers would get discouraged or would start causing division or would leave the church and take others with them.  We had fruit, but that fruit would not remain.  During our  second furlough we were in one of our supporting churches that showed us Biblical discipleship and how to do it.  We went back to Spain for our third term excited about trying discipleship.  What a change.  Our ministry began to grow, Christians were maturing in the things of God, they had a desire to serve God and we truly began to see fruit that remained and still remains til this day.  These mature believers were then ready to become leaders and we trained them in our Bible Institute and  many of them are serving the Lord as missionaries and pastors today.  When we moved to Venezuela we immediately began discipling new believers and the same thing happened.  We left a church in Valencia with mature Christians that have a desire to serve God with their lives and the church is growing and thriving even today.  Since returning to Spain, we have made discipleship a vital part of our ministry.  Since we are working as a team we have more people to disciple the new believers and we are able to spend valuable time with each one of them and help them grow in the Lord. The material you use is not the key, but the time spent with these new believers, teaching them the Bible, praying for them, helping them through their spiritual growth, answering questions, visiting them and inviting them to our house.  We make it our responsibility to make sure that the person we are discipling becomes a mature servant of Christ and that he or she knows the Word of God and is able to disciple other new Christians.  Our next goal will be to take their training to the next level and begin preparing leaders for the ministry.  We pray that God will help us to train pastors and missionaries to continue the work here in Spain and around the world.