It is a privilege to serve the Lord.  We feel honored that each day He allows us to glorify His name.

Adoption

I wanted to give an update on our adoption since so many people have asked us how it is going.  We are still in the process of adopting and waiting to get the call or email informing us that we will have a new addition to the family.  We have had some possibilities which have been exciting.  We have had about 4 opportunities so far where we were able to present our profile and allow the mother to consider our family.  So far, none of these opportunities have worked out but the Lord continues to give us other opportunities which is exciting.  Right now there are two possibilities that we are praying about.  Things are moving along and we ask that you would continue to pray that the Lord would give us the right child at the right time.

Ministry

We have enjoyed being able to share what the Lord has done in our ministry in Spain.  We appreciate the investment that each church has made.  We have thoroughly enjoyed seeing old friends and people that we met years ago.  Many of the churches have been really excited about what the Lord is doing in Spain.  We have been in some great churches and appreciate their heart for missions.  I have found that furlough is a great time as it allows you to step away from the ministry and revaluate what is going on and how you can better things for the future.

The ministry continues to move along.  The team in Spain is carrying on and doing a wonderful job.  As most of you know, we were able to complete our evangelistic projects.  The church had been open a little over a year and we have been able to make the Gospel available to our entire city 2 times.  We are excited about that and we have seen much fruit.  At the heart of our ministry is life on life discipleship, training, and church planting.  We have some great people in our church and it is a joy to see men coming to Christ and expressing the desire to grow and serve the Lord.  Our desire is to seed Spain with the Gospel and see more churches planted for His glory.  

The church has been growing during our absence.  When we left for furlough, the church had grown to an average of around 25 people.  Over the past couple of months, the church has grown to average around 35-40 people!  The last two Sundays, there were 48 and 49 people, respectively, in attendance!  Praise the Lord for His goodness!  One of the young men that I have had the privilege of working with and building a relationship with since before he came to Christ has expressed interest in the possibility of being a Pastor or Missionary one day if the Lord so leads.  We are so thrilled to see people who knew not God, coming to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and expressing the desire to know Him and His Word more and serve Him in the ministry.  That’s what it’s all about!  

Family

Furlough is always a wonderful time because you get to enjoy a lot of family time.  Aaron has thoroughly enjoyed traveling to many different places and meeting new people.  However, one of the things that has been a real blessing is Aaron’s willingness to participate in the ministry.  Since we have been back, Aaron has been able to sing with Deanna and minister to the churches through song.  Check out the video of Aaron singing by clicking here.  We praise the Lord for allowing our family to serve Him!

Thank you for your prayers, support, and love!

Dear Pastor, Congregation and Friends, 

While on deputation, during a mission’s conference, the guest speaker at this particular church event had some great advice to offer all of the missionaries. I cherish what he said. He recommended that we get a copy of the ministry presentation that we gave at various churches and listen to it after we had been on the field for a while. The idea was, “Are you still doing what you said you would do?” I know that in order to see God move in Spain it’s going to take work, but we must never lose focus of the objective. I believe that Christ gave us the blueprint for world evangelism and we must always go back to the Master plan to measure our success in the ministry. I want to be used of God to make disciples and start churches. It seems like a simple goal but I must be intentional in my efforts for his Kingdom. 

I believe discipleship begins before the person is saved as we teach them the gospel and it continues until they reach maturity in Christ and are reproducing themselves in the lives of others. We have made it our goal to evangelize our city continually in order to make Christ known and begin the process of discipleship. Through these efforts the church has grown to a core group of thirty people. With this group we are now investing our lives in them and teaching them to impact their world for Christ. Please pray for two men that I am especially devoting time and energy in training. Their names are João Gonçalves (Portuguese) and Cesar Barbero (Spanish). I have been working with João since June and recently he has been going with me as I disciple Cesar. I make it a point to do as much as I can in the ministry with others so as to prepare them for the work of the ministry. Soon we will be starting a Bible study in the home of João. He is already praying and seeking out people that he can invite to these Bible studies. I would love to see a couple more Bible studies started sometime next year. These Bible studies will give more opportunities for evangelism and discipleship in the church.  

Please pray as we plan for our mass outreach projects for next year. We are going to try to systematically evangelize every household in our city at least twice a year. It was exciting as I listened to a recording of the ministry presentation that I gave while on deputation. I was talking about the gospel DVD project and how we hoped that one day God would use it to see souls saved. At that time when I was sharing our burden Paco and Veronica and Carlos and Olenka had not yet received a DVD in their home. Now they are faithful members and are growing in Christ. When I would talk about the “Bible in every home” project it was all a dream. Today, João and Raquel and Cesar Barbero are part of the church because they received a packet in their home. I can’t wait to see what God is going to do through future projects and through the testimony of the people from our church. Thank you so much for your prayers and faithful support. God Bless.

Dear Pastor, Congregation and Friends,

Great news! If you remember in our last letter we talked about a special service that we were going to have at our church in June. We called the service “Friend Day” and we really encouraged our people to invite their friends, family and co-workers to the service. We had really been preparing our people to focus their attention on the people that they already knew to start making an impact in their lives for Christ. We told them that maybe their friends and relatives would not come on that day but they would have at least started the process of introducing them to Christ. We, of course, led by example and were able to invite several people. We had some good quality invitations printed up and gave our people a month to invite their friends and pray for them. Two weeks before “Friend Day” we had the opportunity to preach a mini-series about how God used Andrew to bring his brother Peter to Christ and how Phillip did the same with Nathanael. Then we talked about how God values every individual soul and we used the example of how Phillip was sent to preach the gospel to the Ethiopian eunuch. The result was that the people really got the point. We have a core group of 25 people in our church and that’s usually our weekly attendance. On “Friend Day” the Lord blessed us with 50 people in attendance. We had 25 new visitors on that day and they were all the friends, relatives and co-workers of our members. Although no one was saved that day many people were able to hear the gospel preached in a clear way. The best part of this approach is that our people will have the opportunity to follow-up with all those that visited because they are part of their lives already. Praise the Lord!

As we have mentioned already in previous letters our ministry philosophy is based on the model of our Lord Jesus Christ and how he invested His time on this earth primarily on 12 men. We understand that we cannot do the work by ourselves and we must involve them in the mission. In order to do that we must disciple and train those that are saved in our ministry so that they can become reproducing Christians. This also means that we cannot be a one-man band and have to begin to train and equip them to do the work. As you know the Andrews family are on furlough and someone had to take over some of  Jeff’s responsibilities.   Instead of having us do everything Jeff prepared Eduardo (The guy who heard about us through the ministry website) and He has been doing a fantastic job. What’s awesome is that Eduardo immediately got busy training Joao (He came as a result of the “Bible in every home” project) in case of an emergency. Joao, whose main job is to be the greeter and usher, went ahead and trained Paco to take his place in the event that he had to take over Eduardo’s job. Another way that we involve and train our people in the ministry is by having them evangelize the lost with us. If we have the opportunity to visit someone or deliver a Bible to someone we always take someone that we are training with us. We never want to be alone and we try to use everyday situations and turn them into training opportunities. We really appreciate your prayers and support. Please pray that God would continue to work in Spain. God Bless.

We will be taking our first-ever furlough and we are very excited about reporting of what God has done in the work here.  We have made a video presentation to show in our churches.  This is a glance of what God is doing in Spain.

You can also view our presentation that we used before we came to Spain. It shows our burden for Spain and what we planned to do. You can view that by clicking on the link below.

http://www.thatallmayknow.net/video-presentations.html

My husband and I have been missionaries for 30 years in Spain and Venezuela.  We have tried many ways of reaching people with the Gospel.  Some of the ways have worked, others not.  Two years ago we returned to Spain to work as a team with our children and their spouses.   As we serve the Lord over many years, there is a tendency to keep on doing things the same way.  We think our way is the only way.  We are so excited that God has allowed us to be part of a team in which each member is excited about doing a work for God and is attempting to try new methods to reach lost souls for Christ.  Since they are young, they understand how this generation thinks and what things will make them interested in hearing the Gospel.  We live in the city of Parla, with approximately 120,000 people.  We are committed to making sure that every person in this city has an opportunity to hear the Gospel many times. 

Last year we produced a Gospel DVD and put one of them in every home in Parla (over 38,000).  This year we are handing out Gospels of John and Romans along with a Gospel tract and an invitation to our church.   We would like to put some piece of literature or DVD into every home every year so that people know that we exist, where we are  and that we want them to know Christ.   We also have a webpage where people can readarticles on the Bible and see a Gospel presentation.  We have also put a monthly advertisement of our ministry in a local newspaper that reaches all of our city.  The Lord has also allowed us to rent a billboard at the entrance to our city with an advertisementto our church.  Our job is to share the Gospel with everyone.  We leave the results up to God.  So far 2 families have come and been saved and baptized because they received the Gospel DVD, one family has been saved after finding our webpage and another family came because of the Gospel of John and Romans that they received in their mailbox.  It is exciting to see what God is doing.  We will keep on trying every method to reach Parla and other cities with the Gospel.

Dear Praying friends, family, and churches:

FURLOUGH PLANS

I would like to announce again that we will be taking a FURLOUGH this year starting in the summer.  We are planning on being in the states from the summer through the fall.  Many churches have responded since our last prayer letter and our schedule is filling up fast.  If any church would like for us to come and give an update about our ministry, please let us know.  If you have contacted us by one of the methods listed and I have not responded, this means I have not received your request.  Please contact me, preferably by email, with your request.  We have provided a form with this prayer letter that you can mail back to our overseas address or you can email me at the following address:  jefe40472@gmail.com.  You can also go to the web address below and contact us via the form that is available there. 

http://www.thatallmayknow.net/furlough

We would also like to make our supporting churches aware that we will be trying to raise more support while we are back.  Due to the economy and churches that have dropped us or who have lowered our support, we have lost almost 10% of our support since we arrived in Spain.  We need to gain back this loss.  If some of our supporting churches were able to raise our support a little, we would not have to seek out too many new churches.  We are certain that the Lord will provide for this need. 

MINISTRY

The Lord continues to work in our midst.  In our last prayer letter, we mentioned that we finished the Gospel DVD project.  We were able to place a Gospel DVD into every household in our city.  We have now started a new project.  It is called “A Bible in Every Home.”  Bearing Precious Seed donated 50,000 copies of John and Romans to our ministry.  We are placing a copy of the John and Romans, a Gospel Tract, and an invitation to our church in each household.  We have already been able to get the Bible packets into over 13,300 households.  After the first week of doing the Bible project, we had a family visit our church.  They said that they were on vacation and during their vacation they decided to get serious about finding a church.  They prayed that the Lord would direct them to a church.  When they returned home, they checked their mail and they told us that the Bible packet was sitting in their mailbox.  Countless others have received the Word of God and a clear presentation of the Gospel. 
On March 27th, we had our third baptism.  We were able to baptize 5 people.  It was an exciting time in the life of our ministry.  Paco and Veronica, a Spanish couple who recently received Christ as their Savior were baptized.  Carlos, who gave his life to the Lord several weeks earlier, was baptized.  His wife Olenka, who placed her faith in Christ a couple of years earlier was baptized and Angie, who has struggled with the issue of baptism for many years, surrendered her will to the Lord and was baptized.  Each person mentioned is also getting one on one, life on life discipleship.  We praise the Lord for all that He is doing in our midst and we thank our supporting churches for making all of this possible. 

Dear Pastor, Congregation and Friends, 

It wasn’t too long ago that I was sitting in my office in Atlanta imagining myself in Spain. I am so thankful that I am now exactly where God wants me to be. As a teenager I wanted to go back to Spain but never as a missionary. I had bought into the lie that the work could never really be done in this dark place. I wanted to go someplace were I could be a “successful” missionary. God began to work in my heart and gave me the desire and the vision to go back to my people and attempt great things for His glory. I’m not saying that it’s easy but God has not given up on Spain or Europe for that matter. He is still at work and I have seen it first-hand. In the short time that I have been here I have witnessed God do amazing things and I get goose bumps when I think of the possibilities for the future. He is able.

In February we have been busy getting things ready for our next project, “a Bible in every home.” In the container that I brought from the States we were able to load 50,000 John and Romans that were graciously given to us by Bearing Precious Seed in Ohio. We have placed a beautiful invitation to our church along with a gospel tract in every Bible and we plan to saturate the city once again with the gospel. As a direct result of our Gospel DVD project we have seen 3 people get saved. We are excited to see what God will do through this new endeavor.

Do you remember that I asked for you to pray for Paco’s wife? Last month during a Bible study in her home my parents were able to lead her to Christ. Also, Carlos and Olenka (the Peruvian couple that came as a result of the DVD) have been saved. What a blessing! So far everyone that has been saved has been immediately involved in a discipleship relationship. I say relationship, because we firmly believe that discipleship is much more than just a series of lessons, it’s developing a relationship with someone and helping them to grow and mature in the Lord. We accomplish that by following Christ’s example when he trained the twelve. We want to train people who will train others. In two weeks we will have three more people baptized. So far just about everyone that is faithfully attending the services heard the gospel and was saved in our church. That encourages and humbles us because we know that God is already using our church to impact Parla with the gospel. 

As you can see, your prayers and faithful support are not in vain. You have already had a part in souls that have turned from  darkness to light. Thank you for your generosity. We know that God is doing the work and to Him be the glory and praise! Pray for my neighbors, Carlos and Monica as well as Juan and Asuncion. We are developing a relationship with them and we hope to see them saved. May God richly bless you. 

I was looking through my prayer letters and I noticed that I had failed to post my previous letter on the website and send it via e-mail. The letter was sent regular mail. I am posting it now just so that everthing will be up to date. Tomorrow I will post this month's letter. Here is the January Letter:

Dear Pastor, Congregation and Friends, 

We made it!!! Actually, we have been in Spain now for a little over a month and we have so many exciting things to share with you. First, we want to thank God for answering our prayers and allowing us to arrive in Spain a couple days before our original   departure date. It was April of last year that we felt the Lord leading us to leave for the field in eight months. At that time we had 66% of our needed support. Exactly eight months later we were on a plane headed to Spain with 93% of our support. We are amazed at how our great God provided for our needs and we trust that the rest of our support will come in soon. When we arrived it was wonderful to be greeted by our team/family members. They were such a help and encouragement to us. They helped us with a place to stay while we waited for our container from the U.S. to arrive. They helped us get settled in and made the transition from the U.S to Spain very smooth. We are thankful for the opportunity to work as a team with them. It took us a while to get our      container out of port and so it wasn’t until two weeks ago that we finally moved into our new home. So here we are, all settled in and ready to see God do great things in Parla, Madrid for 2011.

I want to share a little about what God did through the ministry in Parla in 2010. In January, our team members found a place to rent and meet for services and so they got busy remodeling and getting it ready. Then in February, two converts got baptized. In March the building was finished and they started holding church services in the new location (before they were in my parent’s house). In April, they started the gospel DVD project with the goal to saturate the city. In May they finished the window that      displayed information at the front of the church and as a result a curious Romanian by the name of Stefan came into the church and heard the gospel for the first time. In June many contacts were made as a result of the website and DVD project, etc. In July, Sonia was saved and Stefan also made a profession of faith. In August, Eduardo was saved as a result of our evangelistic website. In the meantime all of the converts began growing in the Lord and receiving one on one discipleship time. Also, in the month of August we had a high day of 41 people in attendance. In September, we were thrilled to see a young Spaniard by the name of Paco come to the church because he had received a DVD in his home and was searching for the truth. Since then he has been saved and is    growing in the Lord. His wife has also visited the church. Please pray for her salvation. In October, the DVD project was almost complete. Thirty-five thousand households received the gospel message. The last Sunday of October three people were baptized. In November, another young married couple began to visit the church also as a result of the DVD project. It’s exciting to see souls saved but what encourages us the most is to see those same converts growing in the Lord and with a desire to serve. This year we will be passing out 50,000 John & Romans, gospel tracts and invitations to the church. We can’t wait to see what God will do in this new year. Thank you so much for your prayers and faithful support. Let’s look forward and attempt great thing for God.

Dear Co-laborers in Christ,

What a joy it is for us to again communicate with you, our faithful supporters and prayer warriors. We are overwhelmed by your faithfulness and generosity even during these difficult economic times. May the Lord richly bless each of you as you labor for our Lord in your specific churches. We appreciate everything you do for us and never take you for granted.

We have finally been able to finish distributing the Gospel DVDs in every home in Parla! In all we distributed 38,883 DVDs. We have about 5000 DVDs left that we are going to distribute in the town nearest to Parla. We appreciate all the monetary gifts given to fund this project. In our last newsletter we mentioned two families who had come to church because they received the DVD. We are so excited to tell you that both couples are now saved and being discipled. Paco and Veronica are our first complete Spanish family to be saved! Amen! Carlos and Olenka (a young peruvian couple) are also saved! Lord willing we will be having our 3rd baptismal service on March 27 so that these new converts can take this step of obedience.

We also asked you to pray for the salvation of Angie, Eduardoʼs wife. Our daughter, Deanna, began having Bible classes with her and Angie told her that she had been saved years ago in her home country of Paraguay, but had gotten away from the Lord. She now wants to follow the Lord along with her husband. Please continue praying for her spiritual growth.

What a blessing it is each Sunday for us to go to church and see these new believers come, with a sincere hunger for the Word of God. Each one of them is being discipled and each one is taking steps towards spiritual maturity. We are amazed at what God is doing in their lives. Thank you so much for praying for them.

Our next outreach project is to distribute books of John and Romans along with an invitation to our church and a good quality Gospel tract, to every home in Parla. We are already meeting every Monday to staple these packets together. Very soon we will begin distributing them. Please pray that as people receive these packets, they will read them and that we will be able to to reach some of them for Christ. We will continue trying every method possible so that more people will come to know our Lord as their Savior.

We have two more prayer requests. We have mentioned Sonia before. She was saved several months ago and baptized. She is not able to come to church every Sunday because of her job, but whenever she is free on Sundays, she is in church. Please pray for her son, Javier, who is serving a 3 year sentence in a prison in Aranjuez. I was able to go to the prison this past Saturday to get to know him and begin a friendship in order to share the Gospel with him. Please pray for his salvation. Also pray for a lady named Doris, who has come twice to the church, who has serious physical problems, but her main need right now is to know Christ. Keep on praying for us and the ministry here in Spain. God is working and we are excited!

In His Service,

Julio and Andrea Velasquez

Dear Praying friends, family, and churches:

FURLOUGH PLANS

Before I give an update on what the Lord has been doing, I would like to announce that we will be taking a FURLOUGH this year starting in the summer.  We are planning on being in the states from the summer through the fall.  So, we would like any church that would like for us to come and give an update about our ministry to please let us know.  We have provided a card with this prayer letter that you can mail back to our overseas address or you can email me here.  You can also go to the web address below and contact us via the form that is available there. 

http://www.thatallmayknow.net/furlough

If you email us, please let us know if you have a preference of us coming for a missions conference or just a Sunday Morning, Sunday Evening, or Wednesday Night.  We are looking forward to reporting to as many churches as possible and giving an update on all that the Lord has done! 

MINISTRY

The Lord continues to work in our midst.  I am happy to announce that we were able to FINISH the DVD project.  When we started the project, our goal was to get a Gospel DVD into every household in our city.  We “guesstimated” that there were 50,000 households in our city of approximately 150,000 people.  Our estimations weren’t far off as we distributed, a total of, 38,883 Gospel DVD’s.  Every household in our city has been given the OPPORTUNITY to hear a clear presentation of the Gospel.  Our goal is to saturate our entire city each year with the Gospel in some form or another.  Our next project is called “A Bible in every home.”  Thanks to Bearing Precious Seed of Milford, Ohio, we have 50,000 copies of John and Romans and we will be placing a copy of the Word of God along with an invitation to the church and a gospel tract into every household in our city.  We have already begun preparing the Bibles, invitations, and tracts and plan on beginning the distribution in the coming weeks. 

So far the Gospel DVD has been our most effective form of outreach.  Thousands of people have watched the DVD and gone to our website that is listed at the end of the DVD and 3 people have come to know Christ as a direct result of the DVD.

It is amazing to see people come to Christ but it is also amazing to see God working in peoples lives.  One of our main goals is to train leaders.  We do this through discipleship.  We aren’t just talking about 12 lessons and we’re done.  We are referring to getting into the people’s lives, being around them as much as possible and always teaching and discipling them, one on one.  We have seen God do so many great things in the people’s lives as we walk with them through every situation and circumstance.  We have seen a random soccer game become a time of edification and training.  But we take it one step further.  We focus on teaching them for the purpose of them training someone else.  We must teach them so they can teach others also (2 Timothy 2:2).  Above all it is humbling to see God work in their lives and do things that we could never imagine possible!

We are humbled and gracious for all you do for our ministry!