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.

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.

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

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.

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