That All May Know Ministries Blog

Tonight was a memorable night, one I will never forget. The Lord allowed 2 great blessings in my life. I was able to administer my first ever baptism and I was also able to baptize my own son. On top of that, it was our first baptism in our infant ministry.  There will be many more baptisms in our ministry but I will never forget this one.

We thank Missionary Marvin Robertson who allowed us to use his baptistery. My father-in law preached and gave a clear message on Salvation and Baptism, explaining that Baptism is not a requirement for salvation but instead, a step of obedience in following the Lord. Later, I had the privilege of baptizing Isabel and my son Aaron.

You can watch the video of the Baptism below.

The team from That All May Know Ministries would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

May we never forget the true meaning of Christmas. God looked upon a sin cursed world and sent His only Son to be born among men, to die for Man, so that you and I could become part of God's eternal family.

"But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." - Galatians 4:4-5

It is hard to believe that 2009 is almost finished. The year has flown by and so many things have changed around us. With the world economy in focus, a new president inaugurated, tremendous job loss and unemployment data, the death of some famous icons, as well as secrets being unveiled about others, there is always something on the news that changes life as we now it forever. However, as Christians we understand that there is one constant thing in life that we can have comfort in...that our Lord Jesus Christ loves us and is always there for us. The truth that we serve a loving God who would send His only Son to die for you and me is a truth that will forever set us free and give us hope in an ever ailing world. God has a message of hope for the nations that we must deliver to them. There are so many in this world who have no hope.

Our desire is to deliver this "hope" to the people of Spain. We are gearing up for our big "push" that will begin at the start of the new year. In January, we will begin the journey of delivering the Gospel on DVD to 18,500 households. With an average of 3 people per household, approximately 55,500 people will have the chance to watch a very simple, clear, straight forward Gospel Message on their TV or Computer.

The DVD's have been duplicated and are ready. We have been fixing up the building trying to get it ready before we start delivering the DVD's. We are hoping that through the Gospel on DVD project, english classes, and other means of making contacts we will build a core group of people. Once we have this core group of people, we will then hold our inauguration service as a church. That is our plan for now. Pray with us as we try to make a dynamic impact in our city. Pictures of the progress on the building to come.

Dear Co-laborers in Christ,

“Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift” As Christmas time approaches again, we are reminded of God’s unspeakable gift, the gift of His dear son, our Lord Jesus Christ!  What a joy it is to serve our Lord and Savior and we are so grateful for the free gift of salvation which He gave to us and which we share with the lost here in Spain.  We are excited about having our first Christmas back in Spain after so many years of being away.  We are happy to be able to be part of the Spanish Christmas traditions and to eat all their traditional Christmas foods, but greater than all of these joys is the joy that we will have to share the gift of God with so many of them.  We are almost finished duplicating 18,500 DVD’s which contain a clear presentation of the Gospel and very soon we will be putting them into the mailboxes so that 18.500 households will be able to listen to the Gospel, many for the first time in their lives. We can’t emphasize enough the importance of needing your prayers so that as the people receive these DVD’s they will watch them, listen to the message and that the Holy Spirit will begin a work in their hearts and that many will trust Christ as their personal Savior.  Will you please partner with us to pray for this project?   Our goal is to not only distribute these DVD’s to the city of Parla, but to at least 10 more neighboring cities over the next few years.  We need your prayers and we need money in order to purchase more DVD’s.  Will your help this Christmas Season?

We have a building for our future church! Praise the Lord we have found a building in a strategic area of the city which is on a busy street and only one block away from public transportation.  We have much work to do now in order to get it ready for services.  It is one large room with one small room that we will use for an office.  We are needing at least one more room and so we will be building two walls to form a nice size room.  We also have to install heat and air conditioning.  Then we will fill in holes in the walls, paint, lay carpet and put up a sign on the outside wall.  In January we are planning on starting English classes and piano classes in order to make contacts.  Through these activities, we are praying that the Lord will allow us to share the Gospel with them and that many will be saved.   We are praying that we will be able to open the building for use by the beginning of January.  Please pray with us about this. 

New Contacts! Please pray for new contacts that we have made.  We have neighbors who are from Colombia and they are very much interested in the Gospel.  I have also had the opportunity to witness to several Muslims and have made friends with a Muslim man who lives in our apartment complex. They need Christ!  Will you pray for their salvation?

The Family is Growing! We are very happy to announce the birth of our third grandchild.  Hayden Mikaela Velasquez was born on November 5 and she is our first granddaughter. David and Favianna are thrilled with this special gift from God and Ian is a very proud older brother.  We are so anxious for them to arrive in Spain to help us in the work.  Please pray that they will be able to raise the remaining 40% of their support  in a very short time so that they can join us in the ministry. 

We want to thank all of you for your faithful support over the years.  We have been missionaries for 29 years and God has been faithful in supplying our needs.  He has used you to supply that need.  Thank you for your prayers, letters, gifts and monthly support.  We love and appreciate all of you.  May the Lord richly bless you this coming year as you serve our Lord.

In His Service,                                                                                                                         

Julio and Andrea Velasquez

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.  

Watch the Video or read about it below.

WATCH THE DVD PRESENTATION BELOW
Watch the Gospel on DVD (Spanish)	Don't know Spanish?  Watch it in English

I wanted to give you an update on how God is already blessing this DVD Project. It truly amazes me how generous God’s people can be. So far, enough money has been given to produce and get the gospel to 8,622 households. Our team made the initial investment to buy enough supplies to get the Gospel to 5,000 households so in total and as of right now, we will be able to get the Gospel on DVD to 13,622 households.

BUT WAIT, THAT’S NOT ALL!!! Wait until you hear this. This is how amazing our God is. When we bought our first 5,000 DVD’s, the company that sold them to us shipped us the WRONG kind of DVD. The printer/duplicator that we have only takes InkJet DVD’s. When I ordered the first 5,000 DVD’s , it was with the duplicator so the salesman knew exactly what kind of DVD’s were needed for that machine. Apparently when they went to ship the DVD’s, they grabbed the wrong order and shipped us 5,000 of the wrong kind. So when I got the DVD’s here to Spain, I tried them out on our new fancy duplicator, and it didn’t work! I was about to pull my hairs out! So I got on the phone with the company and told them the problem and they decided to let us KEEP the DVD’s and REFUND our money. SO WE GOT 5,000 FREE DVD’s! HOW GREAT IS OUR GOD!!!. We were also able to find a way of using the 5,000 free DVDs. So right now we have enough to get the Gospel on DVD to 18,622 households. What an amazing opportunity. Remember, we are talking about households. You can multiply that number by 2 if not 3 and that’s how many people will have the chance to hear the Gospel on DVD.

The blessings don’t stop there. We have posted the video on YouTube and have had almost 1,000 views. We have given the weblink to various people who have wanted to share the video with their family and friends who don’t know the Lord. One man in particular sent it to many of his friends and family members. One of his friends who he has been witnessing to for many years received the video. He told me that after watching the video, something resonated in his heart and mind and he trusted Christ as his Lord and Savior. What a blessing it was to hear that. All the effort and money to produce the DVD was worth it for that one testimony. We have had such good response from this and we haven’t even started delivering them in our own city yet. Several missionaries to Spanish speaking countries around the world have already requested the DVD for use in their own city. We have begun duplicating the DVD and have duplicated almost 4,000. We are so excited about what the Lord is going to do through this Gospel DVD. Thank you for your prayers and gifts.

We have begun holding bible studies at my in-laws house. Our first official bible study was last Sunday and one lady came. Yesterday, we held our second bible study and had 2 people. In the picture above, the man on the right side is named Fernando. He trusted Christ as Lord in Argentina and came to Spain 8 years ago. However, he has not been a part of a church since he came to Spain. He recently enrolled in a correspondence course that requires him to be a faithful member of a church. So he came for this reason. We are praying that he will continue to come, but that the Lord will work in his heart about being faithful to the Lord out of love for Him instead of doing what is required to do. The lady sitting next to him is Isabel. She started attending the church in Madrid that Deanna and I were working in. She was very faithful to the services. She use to take a bus from where she lives to the church that would take over 2 hours one way. The town where we live is much closer to where she lives. She was with us last week for our first bible study. During the last family camp, she put her faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as her Savior. She now wants to be baptized so we may hold our first ever baptism very soon. We are very excited. Pray for the work as we move forward. We have not even started our big "push" with the DVD project and the Lord is working. It is His work and not ours and we are just excited and honored to be a part of what He is doing.

September 2009

Dear Co-laborers in Christ,

We are close to the end of a very hot summer.  Most days temperatures were in the high 90’s and nights would be very warm also.  Spaniards usually enjoy one full month of vacation time, either in July or August.  Now most people have returned home and within two weeks school will begin again.  This is the time we have been waiting for to begin distributing the DVD’s with a Gospel message.  We would like to thank all of those individuals and churches who have sent offerings for this project.  This will really help us purchase more DVD’s. If you have not sent in an offering yet, there is still time, since this is an ongoing project.  We will continue to give out these DVD’s until every home in Parla and the surrounding areas has heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Read More...

THE VIDEO IS NOW IN ENGLISH!

I have made the video in english so those of you who don't know spanish can understand what is being said.

We are exciting about this project.  Many people have already given so that they can have a part in getting the gospel on DVD to someone here in Spain.  You can learn more about this project, watch videos, and even donate  monetarily by clicking on the link below.

http://www.thatallmayknow.net/the-gospel-on-dvd-project.html

 

Watch the video below.  This is how we are going to get the DVD to 50,000 households in our city.