A Great Gift
We all know that this is the time of year that we celebrate the Greatest Gift of all, that is Jesus, God’s gift to man. We also recently received a tremendous gift. As you know, the Grace Baptist Church is building their own building. Some gracious people and churches have given to help. The people of the church are selling some of their own personal possessions, or taking on work to help build the building. However, we were down to $200.00 US in the building fund.

I told Brother Oscar we would trust the Lord, that He is building his church. A politician in the church said that it would really be good if they could be in the building holding services by the end of this year, even though the government has given them a year. The reason is that many elected offices will change parties. So, Maranatha Baptist Church in Yorktown, VA, (who is one of our supporting churches and home church to Bro. Doug and Roberta Weed), just sent a very generous gift of $30,000.00 to help get this building up. Praise the Lord!

I wish you could have seen the excitement in my office when we, (Bro. Oscar, Bro. Weed and myself), heard this news. This money will help them get the roof on the first floor and possibly even get the walls up on the second floor. Please continue to pray that the Lord will provide to totally complete the building. In the meanwhile, praise the Lord for His goodness to this dear church full of precious Mexicans, whose faith just soared in growth.

And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him
Matt. 2:11

The Open Bible Baptist Church
We also praise the Lord that He is doing a work in this church as well. Over the past few Sundays we have averaged over fifty and , this past Sunday evening we had 22. The children's SS Class, that was down nearly to nothing when we returned from furlough is overflowing. We now have a young youth director and that class also is growing. What’s more exciting than the numerical growth is watching them grow spiritually.

One of my first soul-winners was talking to a man at work that goes to another church about how they reach people. The man told him that they reach people by “life style evangelism.” Angel asked him how many he had won to Christ with this type and the Man replied, “none.” The man now wants Angel to train him in soul-winning. We are training 14 soul-winners at present and, two Saturdays ago had 11 people out door to door witnessing.

The church also voted this month to send a Christmas offering to each of our Mexican missionary families. We surprised them with 1500 pesos, ($150.00). They also voted to raise 2 families support to $50/month. Praise the Lord. Jesus said in Matt. 16:18, “I will build my church.” That’s what we’re trusting Him to do.

Language Institute Underway
Greetings in the name of the Lord Jesus. As you know, apart from church planting we have the language institute. The school is underway for the Fall semester and going well. The Whitakers are called of God to take the Gospel to the Canary Islands. That island is owned by Spain, therefore they will be preaching and teaching in Spanish. Be much in prayer for this family as they face the difficulty of learning another language and mastering it well enough to preach, teach and even council in Spanish. Pray for Angelica Contreras, their teacher, as she works diligently to transfer her knowledge of the language to them. This is a real ministry for her as many servants of the Lord are winning Latin people to the Lord and working with them in various parts of the world. She also is very active in her local church and during the Summer helps other churches with VBS.

Also, we have a new teacher for the missionary children. Andrea Leslie, from Fairhaven Baptist Church, is doing a great job helping these kids, who also go thru culture shock. She is also actively involved in the church here, witnessing and starting bible Studies. Be much in prayer for her as her mother has been diagnosed with cancer.

Urgent Prayer
As you know the Mexican government gave the Grace Baptist Church of Aguas. A piece of property 800 Sq. meters. What I never told you is that the same day they gave the Catholic church in that neighborhood 3000 Sq. meters of land, which really didn’t bother us, knowing that the country is Catholic. However, recently the priest in that area has been threatening Bro. Oscar to take his land from him. The priest sent word that Oscar had only 3 months to be in his building or they would take his property. They also had the neighbors throwing rocks at the members, stealing from the property and even call his house and threaten him and his family. Bro. Oscar has since talked to a government official that told him that the gov. registered his church, that they gave him the property and that their rule of one year to be in the building still stands. Still, pray much for his safety and that of his family and church.

Please be in prayer with us as Bro. Oscar begins construction. He did a cost analysis on getting the first floor ready to move into. He believes he can do it for about 28,000 dollars US. We have about 13,000 left so we will still need about 15,000 dollars US. We are confident that the Lord can and will provide this.

Should the Lord lay it on your heart to help, send it to
FBWWM
ATTN: “Iglesia Bautista Gracia.”
P.O. BOX 341356
Memphis, TN 38184

Thank you for your prayers!

Advancing in Missions
We recently had the privilege of having a new Mexican missionary, Jose Luis Fuentes, and his family who are going to Venezuela. He was truly a blessing to our church. He has a tremendous testimony. He was a gang member, on drugs and spent five years in prison. Upon being released from prison he went to Colima, Mexico where an American missionary led him to Christ. He became an effective witness and later was called to preach. He and his wife have since graduated from a Bible Institute and are on deputation to be missionaries.

We took advantage of him being in the Aguas area and put the whole month as Missions emphasis. We were able to have him preach twice. The other Sundays I preached on missions. We upped our faith promise giving to over 2,000.00 pesos/month. We were able to take on this new family. I also got him into other churches in the area. We took him door to door with the young men I am training so that they could learn from him. He commented to me on two occasions as to how willing and eager these guys are to learn. Now the ladies are saying they want to learn so soon Teresa will be starting a class for them on how to witness.

Ladies’ Meeting
This month we also had a Ladies’ Meeting. We invited ladies from the Paquette’s church as well. They had a great time. The theme was ‘watermelon’ and everything was decorated with that theme. Jessica and another missionary daughter made a cake and cookies that looked like watermelon. Teresa taught them a craft, making a peacock from a “watermelon.” Ladies from our church brought crafts that looked like, (you guessed it), “watermelon.” Teresa was able to share the Gospel using the colors from the ‘watermelon.’ The missionary’s wife, Adriana Fuentes brought a devotional. The Ladies played games and had a great time of fellowship. Some ladies came to this who would not go to a church service. That is what it’s all about, the Christian ladies having a good time and the lost seeing that and hearing the Gospel.

Note: I preached two weeks on “Separation of the Church from the World” and men and ladies are beginning to dress up.

Training Soul-Winners

The Lord has given me five men, (one not pictured), to train in soul-winning. The great thing is that these men are eager to learn. They pray for patience, they go out with me every week and, sometimes more than once. At least one of them is going with me every night except Friday and all of them go on Saturday. Angel, (in the Blue shirt), has won two people to the Lord by himself. He is so excited!

Fernando, (in the coat), has come very close to winning someone. He witnesses with confidence. This past week we saw 5 people saved. A couple of weeks ago we saw a Dad, mom, son and daughter, (21 & 22) get saved. The mom said, “The covering has come off my eyes.” In other words she now saw the truth. This past week, I went to see a young man that had received Christ and he wasn’t home but I won his mother and brother. Pray for these soulwinners.

Thank you for your prayers!

Praying for an Open Door
“Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving; withal praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ…” Col. 4:2,3a. My pastor and preacher friend visited us in Aguascalientes a couple of years ago and, after seeing the vast sea of houses with more being built, they decided to pray for the Lord of the harvest to send one hundred missionaries to Aguascalientes, Mexico. So you will understand better the need for more laborers, apart from the metropolitan city there are 1,856 villages, ranging from 2,000 to 8,000 people in each one, scattered all over the state of Aguas. That means that if 100 missionaries arrived tomorrow, each one would have to reach eighteen and a half villages. That doesn’t touch the city of nearly a million people. Please pray with us for Open Doors to be able to reach more of these precious people. Pray for laborers to go and work in this vast field of souls. “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.” Matthew 9:38. Pray also as we train the nationals to work and to harvest souls. To God be the glory for what He does.


Bound for Mexico
We have just finished a short furlough, about six months. This Wednesday we are heading for Mexico. The Lord was good in that He took good care of us while we traveled. We covered several thousand miles and were in several churches. God also blessed and used us in these churches to minister to the people, to stir them in the area of world evangelism, to share with them what the Lord is doing in Aguascalientes. We were able to raise the extra needed support. The Lord is good!

Pray for us as we travel many miles to get back to Aguascalientes. The border crossing some-times can be difficult so we are praying that it will go smooth. Of course, we are looking forward to seeing our people and getting back into the work there. The construction is going well. I talked with Pastor Oscar this morning and he was going to start pouring the concrete into the columns around the walls.

The next step will be preparing to put the roof on the first floor. Pray that this will go up very quickly. It appears that they will be able to be in the building way before the year deadline. He was also encouraging about the report of the second work and the good attendance they had Sunday.