Wednesday, May 24, 2006
[3:54 PM]
Weekly Update
1John 4:11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
Greetings Everyone,
We want to start out by asking you to pray for this weekend. We're going to have a special service here at our house on Saturday. Kind of a Sunday School picnic type of thing. We're going to cook hotdogs on the grill, games for the kids, and just a good time of fellowship.
We have lots of odd projects going on right now. We are designing a new portable baptistry. Hopefully we'll have one completed to share on Sunday with another church. This morning we were making hymnals for another church. They have grown enough that they are short and need more. Praise the Lord, that's a great problem to have.
Yesterday we were able to go to Fresnillo to firm up some Bible study committments. This follow-up is the least rewarding part of this endeavor. We had around one-hundred and fifty names of people who claimed they were interested but, of course, that number dwindled greatly when push comes to shove. We made it through about half of our list and, praise the Lord, we have nine new in-home Bible studies to start next Tuesday. Please be in prayer with us over this new opportunity.
As we write this, Alison is in an interview with the University in Zacatecas. This is where they decide if she'll be able to take the entrance exam or not. She should find out some time Friday what their decision is.
The Lord is definitely in control of every little detail of our lives, whether we realize it or not. Yesterday the boys were giving Joshua a way to go because he had spent most of the day riding the three-wheeler around. He rode enough that he needed to go to the gas station and fill the tank. While he was there, a van with a Baptist Church sign painted on the side came sputtering in. (Meanwhile...at a motel, the women who were part of this group were praying earnestly that the men would find somebody who spoke some English so they could get the van fixed.)
Joshua asked the three men if they needed some help, and was able to take them to a garage where they were able to get the van in right away. Between Josh, Sam, and a couple of the neighbor boys, they were able to get the parts needed, talk to the mechanic, and get the van fixed. We found out that they were on their way to visit the children's home here in our area. We loaned two of the men our van so they could go get the ladies and go to the orphanage to let them know that they were there, and what was going on. They came back, we had dinner with them, and later they came over to the house, where we sat around, sang together, and just had a great time of fellowship.
If Joshua hadn't been needing to run all over the place, he wouldn't have needed to put gas in the three-wheeler. If he hadn't needed gas in the three-wheeler he wouldn't have gone to the gas station. If he hadn't gone to the gas station, he would never have met this missions group that needed help. See, even the everyday, simple little details of our lives work towards the purpose that God has in His great plan. God's timing in putting them together is amazing! Five minutes difference either way and they would have missed each other and we would have missed a blessing. We serve a cool God!
The Benedicts
Co-laborers in Christ
Mexico Division
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Monday, May 15, 2006
[7:47 AM]
Weekly Update
Good Morning,
It's already been such a good week that we couldn't wait to share. God has really been working and on the other side, so has Satan!
Let's start out young. Jacob, our skateboarding kid, was down at the park with his friend Drew having a good time and they met a couple of kids. They hit it off immediately and spent the afternoon together skateboarding and teaching each other tricks. God opened up the door and he and Drew were able to share their faith. Jesus and Efren are now Christians. They've been invited to come to church but weren't able to come yesterday.
Saturday evenings Josh, Sam and Alison have been working with a church in Zacatecas to get a youth group started. They have a lot of fun and it's growing. They started out with about six kids and recently had a high attendance of nineteen. Last Saturday night they had two girls accept Christ, and praise the Lord, they had to courage to go through with baptism on Sunday morning! Which brings us to the next story...
We packed our fifteen passenger van with twenty-two people yesterday morning and skipped church - not really. We went over to Zacatecas for the baptismal service. You see, we had a couple of ladies here in our mission that wanted to be baptised also. We went and joined them for their morning worship time. After the service, they joined a group of five people who followed the Lord in believers baptism.
Now we need to step back in time, just a little bit, to last Thursday. We went to do our Bible studies down South. It was hot, we had no air conditioning, we were all broke and didn't want to go, but we know that is the recipe for a successful day. We went anyway and had the privelege of seeing a lady name Lupe accept the Lord. From there we went to a town about forty-five minutes away where we have two men that we've been working with who are starting to take over the Bible studies there. We would like to share their names, but persecution there is bad and they've already had some problems from information shared over the internet. We had the Bible study in the house of a lady who had been to one Bible study before. This was their first time leading the study and they did an outstanding job! In fact, God used them that night to lead the new lady to the Lord.
When God is working through us, Satan is working against us. You can't have victories without a battle and Satan and his forces are a formidible enemy, but greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world! "We are troubled on every side, yet not distresssed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;" II Corinthians 4:8-9.
Please continue to pray for us that we will be able to live up to this verse and keep on keeping on.
God bless you all!
The Benedicts
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Wednesday, May 10, 2006
[10:52 AM]
Weekly Update
Romans 14:19 Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace and things wherewith one may edify another.
Hello Everyone,
Well, another week has come and gone already. It's been a very good week. We were able to get right back to work, and have been very busy.
Our Bible studies in the southern part of the state went extremely well this past week. In one area where it seems God is getting ready to start a full-fledged church, a couple of the men volunteered to teach the Bible study this week. We'll be there to "over-see" and to assist, but plan on staying out of it as much as possible.
We are getting ready to start doing home Bible studies in Fresnillo within the next couple of weeks. We are working with a couple of the local churches there to try to get some "new blood" in them. The beginning weeks are always very stressful, so please pray with us for this area.
Alison ran into a snag in getting accepted into the school in Zacatecas. They needed some more paperwork which seemed like it was going to take a while to accomplish. She and Juan Carlos were both a little stressed out about it, but we prayed, and that same evening the majority of the necessary paperwork was en route. We were looking for letters from pastors and such for validation, but instead the City of Jerez is going to go to bat for us. Praise the Lord for allowing us to see Him perform miracles. Please continue to pray for God's intervention and direction concerning her schooling.
In other news, Jose (our preacher) feels like God may be calling him to start another work in another area of town. While it seems stressful, we have felt that God is leading that way also. Please pray for wisdom and God's leadership in this matter. Steve has been doing some of the teaching and Juan Carlos seems prepared to step up to the plate also.
We are still looking for people to "Adopt An Area" to pray for. We've had some of you respond, and we are very thankful to you, but we need more. This will take less than five minutes a day for those of you who are contemplating getting involved in this, but it will make a HUGE difference in the ministry here, not to mention also in your life and the lives of those you are praying for. We've seen the power of prayer.
The Benedicts
Co-Laborers in Christ
Mexico Division
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Wednesday, May 03, 2006
[10:54 AM]
Weekly Update
Good Morning Everyone,
Well we're back, once again in Mexico. And we have our daughter, Alison, with us...Praise the Lord! Satan tried his best to keep her from getting here. The day before she was supposed to leave Florida to join us in Texas, she was involved in an accident. The Suburban needed a whole new rear-end, at a cost of $650, before she could take-off. That meant pushing our schedule back a day.
As always, our travel was not without incident either. The air-conditioner, which had just been repaired, blew a seal just outside Laredo, Texas. The temperature was only one-hundred. The next day, we took off for home. God was very good to us and gave us an overcast sky with much cooler temperatures.
About three hours past the border, we noticed that the trailer was sitting a little bit different. After inspecting things, we found that the trailer hitch was coming loose from the frame. No problem, we had the Suburban so we just swapped the trailer over to that. Off we went again, driving through the mountains. We stopped a couple of hours later for gas and saw a bunch of smoke coming off one of the back wheels. The brakes were hot. The mechanic looked at it and said, "Don't worry, new rear-end, new brakes, and mountains... it's just adjusting itself." So off we went again. About thirty minutes up the road we pulled over again because it felt like the brake was dragging or something. We checked the wheel and it was nice and cool, the mechanic had been right. Then Alison, from the other side of the truck, said, "Hey, how come this wheel only has three lug nuts?" Two of the studs had sheared off and the remaining three lug nuts had about five turns and came off in my hand. Amber and Juan Carlos made a trip back to the town where the mechanic was, picked up new studs and lug nuts, brought them back, and after about a two hour delay we were back on the road once again.
Romans 8:28 really comes into play here. You think, "How can bad things be good?" Let us share this with you. The differential on the Suburban really needed to be replaced, but we were going to wait and get it done here. Because of the accident, it was taken care of. We don't know but that it wouldn't have made it to Mexico. If the trailer hitch hadn't started coming loose, we wouldn't have had the trailer on the Suburban. If the trailer hadn't been on the Suburban, the brakes wouldn't have been smoking. If the brakes hadn't been smoking, we wouldn't have stopped to double check the dragging feeling. And, if we hadn't of stopped there, within just a couple of miles I believe, the wheel would have completely torn loose with us, in the middle of no-where. Because it was pulling the trailer, who knows how bad it could have gotten.
All-in-all, we had a wonderful visit in the states. It was great to be able to bring Juan Carlos with us and be able to share him with some of you. We took him all the way up to Michigan where we picked up an FM radio transmitter and he went all the way to Florida where he drove with Alison to Texas. It was an experience for him to be able to see God's hand at work through everything and also his first visit to the United States.
Things here are going very well. Just before we left Mexico, we saw our first conversions in the Southern part of the state here. We knew the ladies in the study were very close to making a decision but we hadn't planned on going to the study, instead Jim and Laura would be doing that for us. We would be spending that time packing for our travels. Jim and I had made a trip to the desert and had just gotten back when Jim came down with a stomach virus. He was unable to make that two-and-a-half hour trip for the Thursday studies, so we went. We were so thankful that we did. We had the opportunity to see three sweet ladies receive Christ as their Saviour that night. The report is that they are still growing and enjoying the studies, we just can't wait to get back there tomorrow.
Please continue to pray for us. Our finances have been stretched to the limits. Today there is follow-up from Gospel saturation in an area in Fresnillo and tomorrow we have our studies down south. We now have a radio transmitter and are just waiting to see how God is going to use it. We had a really good Sunday service at our little mission here. We picked up folks for services and had a young man come for the first time. He is the son of one of the ladies who attends. She was praising God that he had come all the way to church and home again.
We are so thankful for all of you who support us in so many ways.
Keep Praying!
The Benedicts
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