Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Baby Shower

Thank you for all of those who prayed for the baby shower Amy hosted for our Christian neighbor and friend, Andrea. The idea of a baby shower is a new concept here in Argentina. Actually, it's kind-of a modern, fashionable idea - they even use the English name. This month in a popular magazine the feature article was about celebraties having baby showers. However, our purposes were totally different. It was two-fold: 1.) We wanted to show support of Andrea and her husband Alejandro. We have been discipling each of them for almost a year now. They are good friends and instrumental in the church plant in the city center as well as the evangelistic efforts here in our neighborhood. 2.) We wanted to use the opportunity to invite Andrea's unsaved family members and co-workers to our home where we could share the Gospel.

The Lord did bless our efforts and time together. The ladies really enjoyed themselves, Andrea was assured of our love and support, and four unsaved ladies heard the Gospel presented. (Some maybe for the first time.) Please pray for the Holy Spirit to remind them of what they heard and convict their hearts.



Thursday, May 21, 2009

God's Protection

Praising the Lord for God’s protection and provision!

Tuesday morning our van broke down just down the street from our house. When James called our insurance company to ask them to send a tow truck out (a feature of our policy), they replied, “Oops! We didn’t know how to process your credit card, so your policy has expired.” No call. No letter. No warning. No insurance. So, instead of spending the day getting the car fixed, James spent it getting our insurance straightened out. At the end of the day, we had our car insurance reinstated. That was a minor inconvenience to deal with in comparison to what “could have been.” Praise the Lord that we found this out before any major car incident, like an accident. Praise the Lord for His provision ahead of time as well –- We are “car sitting” another missionary’s car until the end of the month, so we have a car to use while ours is in the shop. God is good…ALL the time!

By the way, the diagnosis on the van is a broken timing belt. Lord willing, it should be ready next week.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

New Members Class


Today we completed our first new members class.  These folks came to church an hour and a half early for the past six weeks in order to complete the class.  Praise the Lord for this core group

Please pray for another group interested in membership so we can repeat the class in about three months. 

Friday, May 8, 2009

Easter breakfast


Easter breakfast, originally uploaded by IBI Pilar.

April 2009

James & Amy


James & Amy, originally uploaded by IBI Pilar.

April, 2009 Easter breakfast

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

May Prayer Letter

May 2009

Little by Little

What a joy to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord with an early morning Easter breakfast. It was followed by a special service with 29 present!

Sunday services continue to go well, with new visitors every week.  Most of our visitors are referred to us by the BBN radio station. 

Visits to our Spanish web site have increased since we advertised Sunday services on BBN.  There were 359 unique visits to the site in the month of April!  We recently added two short videos—one showing the church-plant progress and the other is evangelistic.  

On Wednesday nights we are studying family issues, particularly child rearing.  This is a very necessary subject to teach, as the philosophy of the day teaches everything opposite of the biblical model.  Our people are absorbing these new concepts and, Lord willing, will put them into practice in their homes.    

Disciple Making

“Go ye therefore, and teach…” (Mt. 28:19).

More and more we are reminded of the importance of personal discipleship.  We all must meditate on God’s Word if we ever hope to see any real change in our lives. A large part of our role as missionaries is to teach believers God’s Word and how to study it.  

We continue one-on-one discipleship with our Christian neighbors, Alejandro and Andrea.  Amy is also leading a bi-weekly ladies’ discipleship class with three regular attendees. Of course, it is impossible for us to do all the discipleship ourselves, so we are thankful that three of those we discipled last year are taking the initiative to disciple others.  That is precisely the goal—to multiply ourselves! 

The most exciting discipleship class right now is a brand new believer James is meeting with weekly.  Our friend, Dr. Martinez-Ferro, witnessed to his work associate, Pablo, many times. He finally put his trust in Christ.  Since Pablo lives here in Pilar, Dr. Martinez-Ferro sent him to us, and Pablo has been coming to church ever since!  James is doing a six-week study for new believers with him.  He has a ton of questions, and it is a joy to see his spiritual growth!  Our prayer is that Pablo’s wife and four children will come to know Christ as well.   

The Search Continues

The search continues for a larger facility.  The original building we thought we were going rent back in December is still available, but with a different realtor. We went back to look at it and found this new realtor is actually ready to do business! So far, the owners have agreed that we can make the necessary changes to open the space. Please pray for the Lord to work out the details if this is His will.

“Our responsibility can never cease so long as we have a life to live for Christ and a whole world still waiting for the Gospel.”