Dear Pastor, Congregation and Friends,

It’s hard to believe that we have already been in Spain for one year! What’s curious is that we concluded the year almost the same way as we started it. When we arrived in Spain naturally we had to find a place in which to live and we found a house about seventeen minutes from the church. At that time our church had just started and so we had to ask some missionaries and members from other churches in Madrid to help us unloading the container that we brought from the States. Well, just about two weeks ago we moved into a new home right in Parla, Madrid. After living in Illescas for a year we realized that we needed to be closer to the people in order to be more effective in the ministry so we decided to make the move. We are so glad to be living in a home that is walking distance from the church. What blesses my heart the most is that this time when we needed help moving our belongings we didn't have to look elsewhere for assistance because seven men from our church volunteered for the job. This may seem like no big deal but to me it is indicative of the work that God has been doing here in Parla for the past year. I can’t wait to see what God is going to do next year. 

In October our church celebrated its first mission’s conference. The church really got excited about this event and the people were able to learn about the need for laborers all around the world. We invited two missionaries from Spain. They were able to share about the need for more churches to be established in our Jerusalem and Judea. We really wanted the people to know that God is able to use Spaniards as well to do a work for Him. Then we invited Tyler Masters who is a missionary to the Muslims. After he preached we gathered the men from our church so that they would be able to ask Tyler some questions. Two men asked the missionary about finding God’s will for your life and how to know if God has called you to preach. Please pray because our desire is to see leaders raised up and churches established in Spain and abroad. In order to accomplish those goals we need men. Through Tyler’s testimony our people were greatly challenged to reach the Muslim community in their midst. For the last Sunday of the conference we had my grandfather, Wayne Witherell (He has been a missionary in five different countries) share about what God has done through his life and ministry. We learned that it’s important to start well but even more important to end well. During the last two Sundays in October we had 49 and 48 in attendance.

Well, I want to share some exciting news! We found out in October that Favianna is expecting our third child. As I am writing this letter I realize that it’s time to update our letterhead since the family has grown considerably since it was designed. The baby will be born sometime during the end of May. Please pray for Favianna and for the baby that the pregnancy will go smoothly. I thank God for the family that He has given me. I pray that my children would grow up to love God more than anything. I’m excited about what is in store for their lives. Thank you once again for your faithful prayers and support. Merry Christmas!

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!

One of the great joys of being a father is being able to see your kids grow in the Lord and begin to serve Him with their life.  This furlough, Aaron has been able to serve the Lord by singing in various churches that we have been in.  It is neat to see his willingness to sing in different churches even through nervousness and insecurities.  

Here is a video of Aaron and Deanna singing in one of the churches.   

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. 

Many people have been asking about our adoption progress so I decided that I would give an update.  

We are still waiting.  It has been 1 year and 4 months since we started the process.  When we started, the agency told us that it normally takes 12 to 18 months.  When we returned to the USA 4 weeks ago, we had to renew our home study.  The home study is good for 1 year and has to be renewed each year.  

Many of you have no idea how an adoption works (just as I had no idea before we started this) so let me explain the process and maybe it will help you understand a little more of what is going on.  

When you start the process of adopting, you have to fill out lots of paperwork explaining exactly what you want.  You can be as general or as specific as you want.  You really have to make some tough decisions as far as to exactly what you want.  We decided that we would like to adopt a child, boy or girl, age ranging from infant to one year old.  We have also submitted a family book explaining things about our family, home, etc. with pictures and information.  This information is taken and given to perspective mothers who are pregnant and don't want to keep the baby.  These mothers look through several families who desire to adopt and then they choose which family they would like to give their baby to.  So basically, we are waiting to be matched with a birth mother.  In our case, we will most likely be able to be matched with a mother who is pregnant and once the baby is born, we will be able to take the baby home from the hospital.  However, it is also possible that the baby will have already been born.  

So as of now, we are still in the "waiting game."  Some days it seems like it will never happen.  However, so many people who have adopted before have told us that they felt the same way and then one day, all of the sudden, they got "THE CALL" and the next thing they knew, they were home with their newly adopted baby.  

So for now, we wait.  We ask for your prayers in this matter.  We are really praying that the adoption would go through before we leave the USA in November.  However, we know that the Lord's timing is perfect.  

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.

Dear Praying friends, family, and churches:

FURLOUGH IS HERE!

We have arrived in the States and have started visiting churches. We are currently at Beacon Baptist Church, the church where I was saved, baptized and called into full-time ministry. We were able to give an update about our ministry and we have been able to spend a few extra days here while Aaron attends their VBS. The people are so kind and loving and we are so glad to be here.

We will be traveling much during our time here. We will be as far south as South Florida, as far north as Maine and as far west as California. We are looking forward to visiting every church that has scheduled with us and being able to give an update on what God is doing in Spain.

MINISTRY

The Lord continues to work in Spain and continues to amaze us each day. We are almost done with our “Bible in every home” project. We have been able to put Bibles in over 35,000 homes in our city. Just as a reminder, the “Bible in Every Home Project” is a project where our goal is to get a John and Romans into every home in our city. We have made up a packet that consists of a John and Romans, a gospel tract, and an invitation to our church. Pray that God will continue to penetrate the hearts and lives of the people in Spain as they receive the Word of God!

On June 12th, we had a special service and we called it “Friend Day.” We encouraged all of our people to invite at least one friend or family member. We planned many special things for the service including special music, several video testimonies and some video interviews that we recorded the week before of the people in our city. David, my brother-in-law, preached a message titled “How good is good enough” based on the premise that if we use the standard that all good people will go to Heaven, that idea presents us with many problems. It was a great day as many visitors came out and we had a high day of 50 people. Our people were very excited and each one had an integral part in making that day a success.

It is exciting to see our people growing in Christ. At the heart of our ministry is the aspect of reproduction. Our goal is to disciple and train others to do the work of the ministry and for them to continue to reproduce themselves and teach others to do the same. We have seen our people grow through one on one discipleship and we are preparing them to be able to disciple others. We have implemented this on a small scale as I was able to train Eduardo, one of the men in our church, to take over the media while I am gone. He does a great job and it doesnʼt even feel like I am gone. However, we didnʼt stop there. Eduardo has also trained another man in our church named, Juan, how to do the media. So on a small scale, we have seen 2 Timothy 2:2 put into action and we are so amazed at what God is doing in our church.

We sincerely thank you for your prayers and support and look forward to seeing many of you soon!

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