Currently, I am doing a personal study in the book of Mark and the first chapter reminds me of how GREAT our Lord is. It speaks of John the Baptist and His ministry. There are 2 things that are prevalent about John’s Ministry that was preparing the way for Jesus. 1. He was preaching repentance and 2. He was testifying of how Great Jesus is. Speaking of Jesus, John said, “There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose” Mark 1:7. Our God is great and that is the theme of this newsletter: to praise our Lord and express how great He is and what He has done!

PAPERWORK

If you receive our email updates, then you have been informed of the miracle that God preformed in our lives. It was truly something only God could do. (If you are not on our email update list, simply go to the home page and you will see a signup module at the bottom left-hand side of the page.) I will not go into great detail as you can read the full article here.

Since the time we arrived in Spain we have been sent from office to office trying to reconcile the process in order to receive my (Jeffrey) residents papers. During this time, we were in full acknowledgment of the “one month” window of time that the law allows to process the papers. We were so conscious of it that we asked about it at each office we went to. Finally, one of the offices gave us an official stamped document that was suppose to exempt us from the one month time restraint. Finally, after several months, we were able to talk to someone who thought the next step for us was to make an appointment with the local police station in Madrid. We did so and proceeded to go to the appointment. To make a long story short, the lady at the police station looked at our paperwork and said we had exceeded the one month time limited therefore are paperwork would be denied. We showed her the officially stamped document that exempted us from the time limit and to our surprise she denied it too. She said that the document was not valid in her eyes. She began going through the process of denying our paperwork. For reasons that we cannot explain (except only by God’s miraculous power) before completing the denial process she told us that if we come back in the morning that she would talk to her boss to see if he would say anything different. We went back the next morning and within 10 minutes she had approved my papers and I had a residence number. Only the Lord could do this!!!

LANGUAGE

Learning any language is difficult and has been challenging for me. At this moment, I am attending a language school during the week. One of the positive aspects of attending a language school is not only the sound teaching, but the opportunity to talk to others about the Lord. The door was wide opened just a few days ago as I was able to express the love of Jesus to my Spanish teacher, Celia. Normally, she is very organized and sticks to the lesson plans that she has for the day. On this particular day, she began by asking some personal questions about why we are here and about the church. As I explained what we are doing and why we are here, it spurned more questions about the Bible and what we believe. I tried to explain as thoroughly as possible how God sent His only Son to die for our sins and as a result we can trust Him and become a child of God. I explained my own testimony of how I came to know Christ and also fielded the questions that she asked as a result of our conversation. When we were done, she looked at her watch and said, “Wow, that was great practice. We have talked for over an hour. You were able to express yourself very well.” I praise the Lord for the opportunity and it was a milestone in my journey of learning Spanish. It has encouraged me in the language and given me more of a reason to want to learn it better. Pray for Celia. Pray that the Lord will open more doors for us to talk about spiritual things.

We are so grateful for your continued prayers. Please continue to pray for Deanna and Aaron’s paperwork. We don’t have much information on theirs. Please pray for the falling dollar. The Dollar hit an all time low against the Euro just yesterday making it harder financially on the missionaries in Europe.

God Bless!!!!

The Andrews Family