Winter Ministry Update

The last couple of months have been both difficult and joyous in different ways. I’ll share the difficult news first. The church plant that we’ve been pouring our work, our hearts, and our lives into for the past two years has permanently closed its doors. There were many factors that figured into this decision, but the foremost is that the national pastor that we were partnered with to plant this church is also the Mexican director of another ministry focused on orphans, at-risk youth and community development. This ministry was continuing to grow rapidly and after some reevaluation, he realized that he could not continue to do both in a manner that would be healthy. He chose to dedicate his time completely to that other ministry. This left us in a position of having a small congregation of seekers and new believers, but no mature leaders outside of ourselves. With only one year remaining until our scheduled home assignment, we decided that the best way we could serve our congregation was to help integrate these families into other healthy churches and continue to minister to help them grow in their walk with Christ. The church was simply not in a position to become self-sustaining in a number of areas within that time period and our greatest desire was to see these families grow and prosper in a church family, and not experience a slow, painful death because we were too prideful to let go of a dream.

So for now, while we’re continuing to maintain relationships and shepherd some of these families. Meanwhile we’re also looking for additional opportunities to be involved in other ministries. I serve on the board for the Family and Marriage Counseling Center (Centro para la Capacitación de Matrimonios y Familias), and have been volunteering there as they transition to new offices. I’ve also been volunteering to help out a new church plant that had its inaugural service the week after our church closed its doors. We were able to donate some of our equipment and furniture to this new church plant. We’re also visiting another church that was planted several years ago by colleagues of ours to see if is a good fit for us to make a contribution during our remaining months. One of the positives that has arisen out of this is that we’ll be able to spend more time focusing on Juntos en Esperanza, our ministry to families with special needs children. We will finally get the Bible study started that we had to put on hold due to Malachi’s surgery in the fall. We will be spending time training leadership and passing on those responsibilities with the goal of having the organization equipped to carry on without us within the next 12 months. This is a ministry that continues to grow and the families that we work with there are far more open to spiritual conversations than most as we continue to love and minister to their families. Many still cling to their cultural Catholic traditions, but we foresee this being a year of much fruit as we continue to share the Bible with these families. We recently held our second Juntos en Esperanza winter gala, which is a magical evening for these families to have an event just for them to feel loved and valued and enjoy time together. A pastor friend of ours shared a gospel message of the hope we find in Jesus Christ. We had about 300 people attend, which is about double the amount from last year. These large events serve to expand our sphere of influence and integrate new families into our monthly group meetings and the Bible study that will be growing out of that. Photos of the event can be found on our Facebook page.  We appreciate your continued prayers during this time of both transition and ongoing ministry. Even though things haven’t necessarily followed our anticipated plan, we know that God is in control, and that the investment we’re making in ministry is not time lost. We’ve seen salvations, baptisms, growth and change in the hearts and lives of the people we’ve been ministering to, and this part of the story continues on, even when other chapters come to a close. Grace and Peace John and Melissa, Evangeline, Ellis and Malachi