February 2016 Prayer Letter

Joshua, showing off his school supplies, excited and apprehensive for his first day of Kínder-5.

  February 2016

Dear Praying Friends,

As always, we are thankful for the opportunity to begin a new year of ministry. The Lord has showered us with many blessings both in our family and at our church. We are excited about the things that God has in store for us the rest of the year.



Last year, we asked you to pray for the men of our Bible institute. The original plan was for our first graduation to be in January. However, we decided to push the graduation to April so that we could include another one of our faithful men. This means that four men will be graduating from the institute in April, instead of three in January. We also asked you to pray that the Lord would replenish the institute with more men, as those that graduate move on to other things. By God’s grace, He has given us five men (other than those that are graduating) who are enrolled, and excited to learn more about God’s Word.

In April, we are planning to start an outreach ministry that will be completely run by the graduates of the institute. The idea is that this will be a precursor or training ground to start other churches. Please pray that God would continue to use these men in a powerful way. As the church grows, and these men gain experience, it is our vision to start at least another church in our city, and several churches throughout the country on a yearly basis. Ever since we started (eight years ago) it has been our prayer and desire to grow a church that can run itself without our help. This plan has been slow to develop, since we started from scratch (those that are graduating had no prior ministry experience before we met them). Now, several men in our church are not only able to preach and reach others to Christ, but disciple them as well. In other words, it is exciting to see the church finally coming out of its childhood.

The Lord has also blessed us in the area of personal evangelism. Since the beginning of the year we have evangelized several times in different city parks. The willingness of the people to at least listen to the message of the Gospel has been humbling. Just this week we were at the central park of the city for two hours, and Steve was able to share the gospel personally 18 times. More and more members of the church are realizing that sharing the Gospel with individuals is not an impossibly difficult task. Please pray that we could see more fruit, and that more of our members would take the Lord’s Great Commission more seriously. 

Our family is doing well. Joshua just recovered from the mosquito-borne illness called Zika Virus. While he was miserable for a few days, we are thankful that he is a sturdy, healthy boy and bounced back quickly.  Caleb and Rosa have been healthy and all of the kids are doing well in school, learning lots of Spanish and understanding the culture better. They started the new school year with excitement. We are thankful that Joshua is doing very well; much better than we anticipated. His teacher says he seems to understand everything and he has made some little friends. Thank you for praying for our children and for us.