Two Years!!

Brothers and Sisters, grace and peace to you,

As I am sitting here I am thinking, contemplating, reflecting, and praising God for His great abundance of grace in my life! Two years ago this day I got on a plane leaving family, friends, church, security, and comfort to answer the great call God has on my life. When we set out on this journey, you holding and me jumping, I had no idea we would see such magnificent acts of grace such as we have seen. You may not feel the same because you simply sit in front of a computer and read about them while we get the experience, my heart goes out to you for it is amazing. I truly feel as if I have the greatest life in the world!! It is my job to preach the gospel to people who have never heard, and walk along side brothers and sisters leading them into deeper communion with the Father. That’s my life!! Its great! I really wish you could all sit down with Marco and I as we meet on Mondays and walk through the great Text, and watch his eyes get so big when God reveals a truth to him and he says things like “I don’t want the time to end.” Or have a cup of coffee with a group of young men who in the last year have through the Spirit been killing the flesh and nothing is more exciting to them than to gain an understanding of a text. To experience the joy, pure joy, of being entrusted by the Father to preach to his people explaining His love of which they have never had the opportunity to hear. Sometimes I feel like I have been graced with a fairy tale life, grace alone.

Also as I am sitting here I can’t help but think of the changes this journey has brought about, changes that I don’t even know how to express. Two years ago I got here not knowing five words of Spanish, and even the few I did know I couldn’t say right. After being here a month I preached my first sermon in Spanish and now preach on a regular basis and lead Bible studies each week all in Spanish. I arrived here a single man, and as of tomorrow will have been married four months to the most beautiful girl in the world!! Definitely an example of God giving a man the desires of his heart.

I also cannot but help thinking of all of you. There have been so many times that I have entered a place that may not be the safest place in the world and had an incredible opportunity to preach in a way that has not happened in those places, then talking to you all and hearing stories how in those exact moments you were being so faithful in praying. Times when we have had absolutely no money to carry out ministry nor even for food, and simply asking the Father to place that need in your hearts, and we have yet to go without!! Not one time has He failed!! You have heard the voice of our Father and been faithful in responding to that voice and for that I am so grateful!! There are no words to express such gratitude!!

In thinking of all that God has done over the past two years I also cannot but look to the things to come. Next month we will have our first pastor’s conference teaching men to preach expositionally and teaching them the great doctrines of our faith!! Then the week after that conference we will be going back to Veracruz one of many of the places that God has opened our eyes to that the Gospel has not yet gone, and possibly another in the spring. The need is so great here, and every day God’s call for me here is reaffirmed.

With all of this said I also cannot help but think of me. How weak, faithless and frail I am. Paul writes in the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians “By the grace of God I am what I am.” God has been so faithful in continuing His work of sanctification in my life, yet at times I feel as though He has left. He has been so faithful in His provisions for us and yet so many times I doubt. He has never once backed out of a promise and yet I fear. I also see the need to look to the future of the work of the Fathers work in my life. He is a great savior and will not fail. When I am faithless He is faithful!!! We should cling so tightly to that!!

I want to thank all of you for being so faithful in praying for us and when God calls being so faithful in supporting financially our ministry here. The work is not done!! For that we must press on, fighting the good fight, contending for the faith!! I ask that all of you continue to hold the rope while we remain here in the well. I long to come to you soon, but if that is not possible I pray that you too continue in the great fight!!