Monday, January 30, 2006
[9:16 AM]
Weekly Update
Galatians 6:2 Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
Hello Everybody,
We have a friend, Ruben Alarcon, who is contemplating taking the pastorate of a church in the panhandle of Texas. He will be filling the pulpit during the month of February for a "trial" period. He wrote, "I've known this church since 1999 and I asked the Lord if He ever called me to be a preacher, that I wanted this particular church. For six years I have been praying and God has answered my prayer. However, now that the time has come I'm a little nervous about it." Please join us in prayer with him.
On an extremely happy note, we had our very first baptismal service of our mission here in Jerez. We had 6 people that finally decided that they needed to be baptized after many months of our frustration. Three of them were unable to come due to illness or work issues, but we had one other young lady that decided to get baptized after watching the others. We ended up with four people following the Lord in this first step of obedience. We had the service at our house after God made it impossible to set up the portable baptistry at the mission building. This was frustrating at first, but Praise the Lord, it obviously was God's perfect plan, as we had 56 people come for the service. We would have never had room for all of them in our little mission/church building.
One of the people baptized was Juan Carlos. You remember that we asked you to pray for him to be able to travel with us last December. That didn't work out because of God's perfect plan, again. He was here to get the process started for our daughter, Alison, to go to the university here. She's not guaranteed acceptance yet, but the paperwork part of it is moving right along. It's great to see Juan Carlos' enthusiasm. He feels like God is calling him towards medical mission work and yesterday (the day after his baptism) he was at a toy store sharing his faith with one of the employees there, but he lamented to us, "But I didn't have a tract to leave her!" He's planning on returning this week with a tract to follow up. Please pray for God's guidance and provision for him.
Tomorrow Steve and some of the boys, along with Brother Jim and a local pastor, Aninias, will be heading North to the desert area of Zacatecas. There are believers there in small works and in some ranchos that they'll be checking in with. They're planning on taking some wind-up, self-powered, tape-players and cassettes with Bible lessons on them. Many of the people there cannot read so this is a great tool for them to be able to hear the Bible being taught.
We are still in the beginning, planning stages of starting a radio station. God is bringing more people into our ministry that have shared this vision with us. There might be the needed equipment for a complete FM radio station that is just waiting for a place to be put. We will have to, of course, get permission from the government and we're not quite sure yet what all that will entail. Please pray for wisdom and guidance and for God's perfect timing in this matter. As we shared in the above paragraphs, God's ways sometimes seem like set-backs when in all actuality they are part of His perfect design. Pray that we'll remember this as we start trying to get the paperwork for this new endeavor filed. Can you imagine, the Gospel being spread to hundreds of thousands of people continuously 24/7? It has to have an impact!
The Benedicts
Co-Laborers in Christ,
Mexico Division
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Thursday, January 19, 2006
[12:05 PM]
Weekly Update
Habakkuk 3:19 The LORD God is my strength, and He will make my feet like hinds feet, and He will make me to walk upon mine high places.
Good Morning Everyone,
It was a very slow week this last week. Saturday night we showed a movie instead of having our normal discipleship class. We're going to try to do this more often to encourage promptness in the people here. We started out the movie with about eleven people and stragglers kept coming in until we finished the movie with about twenty-five or so.
Please put Brother Jose on your prayer list. He's been pretty sick over the past couple of weeks. He seems to be getting better but then relapses. The cold weather here doesn't help. Last night it was down in the teens. That might not sound too cold, but the houses here don't have furnaces. You can imagine how cold they get. Because they're made out of cement, it takes quite a while for the sun to heat them up during the day. As we write this, it's 52 degrees in our house at noon. Needless to say, the cold season refers to both temperature and health.
Last week we were able to provide some blankets to a lady in town who's been very sick. Thanks to those of you who donated blankets towards this cause.
Please really pray for our friend Juan Carlos. He is really struggling with the Creation account as it is written in the Bible. We have been loaning him Creation/Science videos and he's really enjoying them. He says that they are really making him think. He's a very analytical person and accepting things by faith, that are contrary to lies that he has been taught all of his life, is going to take some time. The good thing is once he sees the truth, and accepts it, it'll take dynamite to change his mind.
Bible Institute starts Saturday at 11:00 a.m. If you think about us on Saturday, it's because God is reminding you to pray for us. We're very excited and expecting a good turn out.
Thank you, in advance, for all the prayers.
The Benedicts
Co-Laborers in Christ,
Mexico Division
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Tuesday, January 10, 2006
[6:57 AM]
Weekly Update
Hebrews 10:11 And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins:
Good Morning Everyone,
There's a story that goes along with the above verse. Last Saturday we were out "knocking doors" when we came to one particular home. The lady came to the door a little bit put out because she was busy. We gave her an invitation and Brother Jose informed her that we were just out to try to teach people how to understand their Bible. She gave us just a minute and Brother Jose opened up his Bible and read that verse to her. She became very agitated and said, “That cannot be right." A few minutes later, she and Jose discovered that his parents used to be her neighbors in a rancho. She quickly became much friendlier and opened up a little bit more. She told us that her son was one of "those Christian people" and she had made the decision a few months ago not to have anything more to do with him. Brother Jose quickly pointed out that God must really be trying to talk to her and that it was no accident that we knocked on her door. Please pray for this unnamed lady, that we will have more opportunities to share the Gospel with her. We left her a John/Romans and some tracks and we know that God promises that His Word will not return void.
Yesterday we went to Fresnillo to check in with our pastor friends there. We packed some tracks and John/Romans in the van before we took off just in case anybody needed some. When we got to Brother Oziel's, he told us that he had just ran out a month ago and they didn’t know when they'd be able to get more material. They go out every week as a church some place in town and saturate the neighborhood. It's so much fun to see the excitement on peoples faces over being able to hand out scripture and to be the answer to their prayers.
Upcoming projects:
January 21st, will be the start of our Bible institute. We're not quite sure what to expect or who to expect, but we are anticipating a pretty good crowd. Please pray for the folks as they prepare for these classes.
February 6-9th, Brother Oziel will be hosting an annual Pastor's conference at his church in Fresnillo. There will be people from all over Mexico and the United States in attendance.
We are expecting a group of people in February to help us with Gospel saturation in a town we'll call "T"(you couldn't pronounce it, we can't spell it, and we still sprain our tongues when we try to say it). We want knock on every door in this town of approximately 3,000 people to give them each a John/Romans and a tract. Please pray that God will prepare the hearts both of the distributors and of the inhabitants of the town.
Please pray with us for these upcoming events. Thank you for your diligence.
The Benedicts
Co-Laborers in Christ,
Mexico Division
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