September 2011
Dear praying friends,
Hardly able to believe we are halfway through September, we again write to you so we can share our blessings and burdens from El Salvador.
Our family is doing well, and each of the kids is growing so rapidly. Rosa is finishing up another school year (it ends in November) and has done exceptionally well. Caleb loves his baby brother, is learning Spanish, and is being a challenge as most two-year-olds are! Joshua amazes us by how much he eats. At 4.5 months old, he began eating cereal and hasn’t slowed down since. The Salvadorans are amazed at the size of our kids, and they are especially amazed at our 18.5 pound 5 month old!
Since we last wrote, we have had a baptism celebration, a youth activity, and the conclusion of our first Bible Institute course. Our youth group has been growing lately, and we thank God for the salvation of two young men, named Kevin and Rigoberto, aged 16. Since getting saved, they have been coming to church faithfully and are being discipled one-on-one by men in the church. Please pray for their continued spiritual growth.
We have a prayer request that we would like to share with you this month, knowing that you will uphold our family and ministry in prayer. We are concerned for some relatives of a church family. Many of you are aware of the high levels of crime that exist in El Salvador. One serious problem that the people deal with is extortion by gang members. One of the young men that was saved recently is the target of this extortion, and his family is naturally quite worried. His family was told that if they do not give the gang members a certain amount of money by a certain time, there would be grave consequences. As we write this news to you, we are very unsure of how this will all turn out. But in the midst of this struggle, we see the spiritual growth of Wilfredo, who is faithful to our church. He is relying on God to pull his family through this difficult time and is not panicking. Please keep the family of Wilfredo in your prayers as they experience a very scary, uncertain time. Pray for us as we minister to them and try to help them through this.
Our daughter Rosa overheard us talking about this situation, and was quite scared. We reminded her that God protects us and that He is in control of every situation, even situations like this one. Although we don’t understand, He does, and will complete His will. Our kids have been so young and have not understood some of the dangers and struggles of living here. But now, Rosa understands and is seeing more of what is going on. Please pray for us as we try to teach her to not be scared, but to trust in God and be careful.
As always, we want to thank you for your faithful support and prayers for us and our ministry. Without your part, we would not be here. Thank you for everything.
In Christ,
The Cernas
We were able to baptize two men this past Sunday. At first, Mauricio scoffed when Steve talked to him about security of salvation (a big issue here in El Salvador). But with time and much conversation, Mauricio saw that Steve could use the Bible to answer all of his questions. He realized that he had much to learn and began studying the discipleship lessons with Steve. Now he is extremely faithful to all our services and has been baptized. 
A Happy Pastor with happy and wet Mauricio.
Here is Eric, the other young man that was baptized. Since asking Jesus to save him, he has been coming to every service, every teen activity, and is planning to attend the all-night Prayer Service that the men are having at the church.
