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.

When we arrived in Spain nine months ago after finishing our deputation I was finally able to witness first-hand the wonderful reports that I had heard from the team about the church that had recently been started. God was doing a work in Parla, Madrid and it was evident! The church had been started a few months earlier and already souls had been saved and people baptized (every person that was saved, was baptized and was faithfully attending church services). It was great to arrive on the mission field and immediately get involved in the work of the ministry. One thing that quickly caught my attention was the fact that the church was comprised primarily of men and that the men were showing the greatest desire to grow and learn. That is still the case today. As a matter of fact in two weeks we will be starting our first official men's meeting (the guys are really excited). In most churches the women talk like crazy, but in our church it's the men that can't stop talking and the wives have to finally beg the men to leave. I think that's great. If there's one thing that we need in our churches today is godly men. In order to train leaders and start churches we desperately need men. 

I believe, and this is really what I would like to emphasize, that one of the reasons that men are showing such an interest in the things of God is because of the multiple witnesses in the church to the truth of the gospel. This, to me, is one of the great benefits of working as a team. From day one, anyone that visits the church has the opportunity to see that the gospel has impacted the lives of multiple families, in different life stages, from different backgrounds. This is especially true when it comes to men. As soon as the first men began to get saved they had other men with which to fellowship and share their lives. 

My father was born in Peru into a Catholic home and was saved in his twenties. Jeff was born in the U.S.  but didn't grow up in a Christian home and was also saved in his twenties. I was saved at a young age but something caused me to want to continue serving God even after I moved out from under my parent's roof. You see, it’s one thing for one man to preach week after week about the power of the gospel, it's another thing entirely for three men coming from different backgrounds to attest to the same truths. Once again, I am not saying that it is wrong to do missions alone. As a matter of fact, most of the missionaries I know have done it alone. I simply want to share the blessing of having multiple witnesses to the glorious truths found in God's Word. I have found that it has been very easy for men to integrate in our little church as a result of our team. Also, this models what we would like to see in the future as the church in Parla produces other churches. We want to give them the opportunity to start churches as a team where they will also have multiple witnesses to the truth. I think that is what we see in the gospels as Christ sent the twelve and the seventy in pairs. We see it clear as day when the Holy Spirit (men didn't come up with the team concept) commanded Paul and Barnabas to be sent out. I believe one of the reasons for the birth of corporate missions in the New Testament was to have several witnesses to the truth that the gospel is real and it changes lives. 

One of the many purposes for our ministry blog is to share our personal experiences in the ministry here in Spain in hope that we can offer some help to future missionaries who are starting a new work. Except for my father, who has been a missionary for over 30 years, my brother-in-law Jeffrey Andrews and I have very little experience in the ministry. I may have grown up on the mission field and worked in various ministries throughout my youth but doing the ministry in the capacity that I am doing it today is very new for me. I say all that to explain that we do not consider ourselves experts in church-planting or in missions but we just want to share some of the things we are trying in Spain that may be a blessing to you in your ministry. We also really want help and input from other missionaries and pastors because we want to learn every day to be all that God intended us to be for His glory. 

One this occasion I would like to start a series of blog posts about Pioneer team missions. I want to share some of the benefits that we have witnessed already as we are starting a new church in Parla, Madrid. So what is Pioneer team missions? Well, it's very simple. A pioneer is someone that is the first to do something or go somewhere. So when we talk about pioneer missions we are talking about going someplace where the gospel has not been preached and starting a work from scratch. That's exactly what Paul was talking about in Romans 15:20, 21 when he said, "Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation." But when we talk about Pioneer team missions we are talking about a team of missionaries that go and start churches. 

Now I want to be very careful to explain that we don't believe that PTM (Pioneer team missions) is the only way to Biblically evangelize and start churches. My only desire with this series is for you to see the benefits of this particular approach as we have witnessed in our ministry. Team missions is certainly not easy but we believe that it's worth trying because when it's done properly it can be a real blessing. I understand that different people have differing opinions about team missions and I respect everyone's opinion as long as it's in the right spirit. I did have one pastor kick me out of his conference because he completely disagreed with team missions. I think that's a little extreme! You can argue about which church-planting concept is the best, but you can't deny that team missions is Biblical. 

I do not want to write a Biblical defense on team missions because a lot has already been written on the subject. What I will do is share some of the blessings we have discovered working as a team. I'm sure we will encounter difficulties but I believe the pros greatly outweigh the cons. If you are interested in reading a treatise on the concept of corporate (team) missions here is one that I found interesting. I don't know anything about the missionary that wrote the article and I am unfamiliar with the missions agency but it was a Biblically sound treatise and so I thought I would share it with those that are interested in what the Bible has to say about team missions, specifically in the life and ministry of Paul. Please keep reading as I will share about how working as a team has helped our ministry.

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

About two months ago we had the idea to have a special day at the church on June 12. We decided to call the special day, "Friend Day." The purpose of the special service was to give our people the opportunity to invite their friends and loved ones to church so that they could hear the gospel. We explained that if the people that they invited didn't come it wouldn't be a failure because they had at least initiated the process of introducing their friends and loved ones to Christ. Two weeks before the special day we preached a mini-series titled, "One, not everyone" to encourage our people about friend day. The idea behind the series was to help them understand that God wants us to do what we can do, not what we can't do. We can't single-handedly reach a city for Christ but we can make the difference in the life of one person. If all of us would impact the life of one person at a time than we would ultimately impact the world for Christ and we believe that to make an impact in someone’s life is to lead them to Christ and then to lead them into maturity until they become fruit-bearing Christians that can initiate the process in the life of others so that the cycle is never ending. We used the example of Andrew and how he brought his brother Peter to Christ. Our people really got excited and got busy finding people that they could bring to the special day. Well, on June 12 we had 50 people in total attend the service. We usually average 23 people each Sunday so more than half of the people there were guests. What encourages us the most is that they came because people from our church invited them. All of them were friends and family of the members of our church. Among the guests were Atheists, Catholics, Agnostics, and people that believe that all religions lead to God. They heard a message titled, "How good is good enough?" No one made a profession of faith that day but they clearly understood that good people don't go to heaven only forgiven people go to heaven. What's great is that our people will be able to follow up with them and continue sharing the gospel with them. This day was truly a high point for our young church (we are only a year old) and we expect many more things to come. Just a year ago only two people along with my parents and sister and brother-in-law were attending church services. Now a year later 23 people gather each week faithfully and all of them have been baptized, are currently being discipled one-on-one, and are getting involved in the work of the ministry. We are humbled to see what God is doing. 

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 Pastor, Congregation and Friends,

Sometimes as I walk through the streets of Parla I am reminded of my childhood here in Spain. I remember like it was yesterday all of the fun things I used to do as a kid in this incredible country. I remember our church in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid). Although we had a small church many pastors, leaders and missionaries came out of that ministry. My friends, Alberto, Francisco (They are both married and on their way to serve God as missionaries in Seville, Spain) and I  would stand outside of our church many times and pass out gospel tracts. What is still recorded in my memory is how many of those tracts would end up on the floor. I remember how my Dad would offer a free Bible on the radio (he had a two- minute radio spot) to anyone who was interested. In five years only one person requested a Bible. So was it all in vain? Absolutely not.

It is very easy to get discouraged if we don’t see the results that we have envisioned. But, what has God commanded us to do? We know that we can’t save anyone. Ultimately a person must make a personal decision whether to accept or reject Christ. We will be successful in Spain regardless of how many people get saved if we have been obedient in making the gospel available to them in every way possible. Also, we will be successful when we diligently disciple and train those that are saved to reproduce themselves into other  Christians. All we can do is obey God and the results are in His hands. One thing that I have observed about Spain is that it desperately needs to be seeded with the gospel. That is why we have aggressively set out to saturate this city over and over again until everyone has had a chance. Then as the Lord blesses we hope to do the same in other cities. 
Because of the gospel DVD project and now the “Bible in every home” project thousands of people have had the opportunity to hear the gospel and some have been saved. We have a billboard in the entrance of the city. We have an ad in the newspaper. We have a gospel website. We have a church building with an attractive display that has allowed us to share the gospel and personally give Bibles to many people. We do all of these things because we want to make the gospel available to them. What thrills us is that more and more people know that we are here and that we want to teach them the Word of God. 

Last month a Bolivian lady named Primitva was saved. Also, we have a new couple that is visiting our church. They heard about us from one of the packets that we left in their mailbox! We have people visiting often. Not all of them stay but we are thrilled that they had the opportunity to hear the gospel.  Please pray for a very special service that we will be having June 12. We are encouraging our people to invite a friend or relative to church that day. We are excited about the possibility of more people hearing the gospel. Thank you once again for your generosity and prayers towards our ministry. 

Dear Co-laborers in Christ,

As we begin our 31st year serving as missionaries, we have to say that each year gets sweeter and more exciting. We are not tired, but energized as we see people come to Christ, grow in the Lord and desire to serve Him. We continually receive good news from people who have been saved in our first ministry here in Spain and also those saved in Venezuela and we praise God for how He continues His work in those places.

The work here in Parla is growing numerically and spiritually. In March we were able to baptize 5 converts. In April we began distributing packets of John and Romans along with a Gospel tract and an invitation to our church. The following Sunday a young couple came to the church and said that they were saved, but were praying that God would show them a good church where they could worship and serve God. Their names are Joao and Raquel Goncalves. Joao is from Portugal and his wife from Brazil and they have not stopped attending the services. They are now taking discipleship classes and getting involved in every ministry in the church. Recently Paco and Eduardo finished their discipleship classes and their wives will be finishing soon.

We have been preaching the last few Sundays on discipleship, reaching souls for Christ and that each person needs to be involved in the Lordʼs work. Last Sunday was very special to us because after the service we had lunch at the church and then everyone stayed to help staple our Bible packets together in order to pass them out into the houses in Parla. Everyone participated. They were at the church for 6 hours working with joy in their hearts and sharing sweet fellowship. It was a blessed time for us to see how much these new believers have grown in the Lord! One year ago there were 7 people in the church and now there are 24! God has done great things!

Every day we make sure that someone is at the church during the day so that if anyone wants to know more about the Bible or our church we are there for them. Every day somebody comes into the church with questions and we are able to share the Gospel with them. Please pray for some of these people, Piedad, Blanca, Susana and Francisco. Also continue praying for the salvation of Javier who I visit in the prison once a month. In April and May we were able to distribute 27,000 Gospel packets into the homes of Parla. Lord willing we will finish the remaining 13,000 this month. Pray that we will see fruit from this outreach. Thank you for your many prayers and financial support. We praise God for you very day. May each of us keep on working for Christ till He comes!

In His Service,

Julio and Andrea Velasquez

Last night was a very special night for our church.  Our church has been open for bible studies and services for almost a year and we have seen God do some wonderful things.  It amazes us how God continues to work in the hearts and lives of people.

Last night, we were able to baptize 5 people.  Around 30 people came to the baptism from our church including friends and family members of the ones getting baptized.  I wish I could go through each person's life and their story in detail of how they came to this point.  It has truly been a work of God. 

If you watch the video below, you will meet Angie, the wife of Eduardo.  Eduardo found our website www.estudialabiblia.com.  He typed in a google search engine, "What is the true religion?"  Our website was the first one to pop up.  He read the info, watched the video, and requested a Bible.  We delivered the Bible to Eduardo and he eventually trusted Christ as his Savior.  His wife, Angie, didn't want to have anything to do with us at first.  However, God began to work in her heart and we found out that she had made a profession of faith but had been turned off by a group in Paraguay.  Above all, she was turned off because of their radical and unscriptural teachings on Baptism.  We knew that only God could work in her heart about following Him in this step of obedience.  Amazingly, God did do a work and much sooner then we thought.  Angie told Deanna while they were studying the Bible that she realized she needed to be obedient to God and take this step of obedience.  How wonderful it was to see her baptized. 

You will also meet Paco, a Spaniard who came to one of our services and then left before it was over.  We never though we would see him again but he came back the next week.  We, later, found out that he came because he received our Gospel DVD in his mailbox.  He never missed a service.  Eventually he brought his wife and family.  A couple of months ago, Paco repented of his sins and placed his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  We have seen so much fruit in his life.  He has a hunger for the Word of God. 

Carlos came to our church with his wife Olenka in November of 2010.  Carlos has always been a skeptic.  After each message, Carlos would question things that were said and things that the Bible said.  However, he kept coming back.  Slowly but surely, the Holy Spirit worked on his heart until finally he surrendered his will to the Lord.  If you listen to his testimony you will hear a clear understanding of salvation and how he is willing to be used of the Lord. 

Veronica is the wife of Paco.  Paco first attended the church for many weeks and then she finally came.  One day while my father-in-law was over at their house, Veronica said to him, "I would like for you to explain to me the subject of Salvation.  I have seen such a change in Paco, I would like to know what this is all about."  My father-in-law explained it to her and she trusted in the Lord.  How awesome it is to have a husband and wife following the Lord and starting a family as believers. 

Olenka came with her husband Carlos.  She trusted the Lord earlier in her life but was never taught about baptism.  She has seen her husband turn from a skeptic to a believer and has grown in the Lord herself through the teaching and preaching of God's Word and one on one discipleship.  Once presented with scriptural baptism, she made the decision to follow Him out of obedience. 

What a wonderful night.  It is a very exciting time in our ministry and we pray that the Lord will continue to work in our ministry here in Spain.  ENJOY THE VIDEO BELOW!