New Church Building

Building Update

Here is the "before signing" picture

Here is the "after signing" picture

After several months of looking, praying, making offers, having offers rejected, revising contracts, and the emotional roller coaster of it all, the Lord finally allowed us to sign a rental contract on a new church building today!

Now the work of taking down walls, painting, cleaning, and moving can begin! We are so excited to be at this point. We can finally:

• print an address on our tracts
• hold large public meetings
• have children's church in the same building as the adults
• have a class for children on Wednesday nights
• invite more people to church
• and ultimately, see growth!!

Please pray that GOD will give the increase! Thank you for your faithful prayers all along the way of this journey.

Special Speaker

Tonight we had a special speaker for our Wednesday evening service, Dr. Brian Carruthers. (I thought "Greenwood" was difficult to pronounce in Spanish, but try saying all those r's in his last name!) Dr. Carruthers is Dean of the School of Education at our alma mater, Bob Jones University. He, along with his wife and two of his daughters, is in Buenos Aires to teach a seminary class at a sister church. He gave a very timely and necessary devotional, while James translated.

One burden that we were able to share with Dr. Carruthers is the need for single missionary teachers. We have continual requests for English as a Second Language classes, and cannot keep up with the demand. We would love for an education major to commit to one year to live here and teach ESL as an evangelistic tool as well as help Amy out with homeschooling the kids. If you or someone you know would be interested in this type of position, please contact us.

El Puente de Dios

June Prayer Letter

The Long Journey

For more than six months, we have been praying and searching for a larger church building with classroom space.  As we hit one roadblock after another, we fell back on God’s provision and timing, especially when those things were completely out of our control.  It seems we are going to be able to rent a building on a main avenue with a meeting place for 60 adults and classroom space for a nursery and children’s church.  Please keep praying, and we’ll keep you updated!

 

A New Addition

Thank you for all those who prayed for the baby shower Amy hosted for our Christian neighbor and friend, Andrea.  The purpose of the shower was two fold: 1.) We wanted to show support of Andrea and her husband Alejandro. 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 coworkers 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 for the first time). Please pray for the Holy Spirit to remind them of what they heard and to convict their hearts.

One week after the shower, the Lord blessed this dear couple with a healthy baby girl, Constanza Belén - the first baby born in our new church!  (Now we just need a nursery to put her in when she’s old enough to come to church!)   

Click here to see pictures of the shower and the new arrival.

 

More Love in our Home

One of the highlights of being missionaries is hosting guests, especially enthusiastic Americans.  We, as a family, love to share our burden for Argentina as well as our love for the people to whom God has called us to minister.  We are privileged to host Andrea Love, the daughter of pastor friend Mark Love, for eight weeks.  She first came to Buenos Aires last year on a Maranatha Baptist Bible College mission team.  During her time with us, Andrea will assist in almost every aspect of the church-planting ministry, helping with ESL classes and homeschool, teaching piano, leading a Bible study in English, and learning Spanish.

 

Prayer Requests

·    Current Support – 95%

·    A larger meeting place with classroom space

·    Permanent pastor for the work in the city center

·    Wisdom and God’s power as we reach our neighborhood for Christ

Praises

·    All who heard the Gospel at the baby shower

·    Safe and healthy arrival of Constanza

·    Discipleship classes

·    God’s continual, miraculous provision

Upcoming Events

·    Tentative – sign contract on new building and start remodeling

·    June 21 – Father’s Day

·    June 24 – Summer intern, Andrea Love, arrives

 

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.

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.

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. 

Easter breakfast

Easter breakfast, originally uploaded by IBI Pilar.

April 2009

James & Amy

James & Amy, originally uploaded by IBI Pilar.

April, 2009 Easter breakfast

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.”