Ministry News
We praise God for what He is doing in the church here. Last week, we had our highest attendance ever. The women started a new women’s Bible study, and we now have live music in our church!
As our church grows and more people come for counseling, we are starting to shift our focus with fewer community activities and more church activities. We are no longer giving cooking and crafting classes and English classes are going to be ending next month. We would love to keep them going since these ministries were helpful in starting the church, but we need more help to do so as we now have a lot more work to do in the church. If anyone is interested in serving here in Mexico, please contact us. 🙂
Counseling has been getting busier. This past month, we have had several more people come with problems including adultery, alcohol addiction, and anxiety. We praise God that within the past month, we’ve had 5 people put their faith in Christ. I will have the opportunity to share the gospel with a few more next week. The past few weeks, we had 2 new families come to church who are in counseling.
This year started off with some problems in the church. We’ve had people with marriage problems, a son who told his parents that he is gay, and one lady in our church lost her father. We also had to remove a Sunday school teacher who is living in rebellion against her parents.
We need to prepare people for ministry. Luis, who preached for the first time last year, is now preaching about once a month. We are having several of the men in the church take turns sharing a very short devotional on Sunday mornings. They have been doing a good job. Later this year, we want to teach a Bible interpretation and teaching class again. We will be returning to the U.S. for a U.S. assignment (furlough) in July of 2018, and the people need to be able to continue the ministry while we are gone.
Luis and Horacio, who is getting ready to retire from the military, are both interested in studying online at a seminary! Developing church leadership is one of the hardest parts of planting a church, so this would be a big step for the church. Horacio still doesn’t know for sure if he would stay here. He could decide to move back to where he is from in Northern Mexico as well.
Family News
Both Susan and Bryan’s parents came down for a visit. Susan’s parents came in January and Bryan’s came in February. The kids had a great time with both sets of grandparents.
School is going well. Josh is going to take the ACT for college in June.
Susan will be having outpatient surgery in a few weeks for varicose veins.
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