Newsletter November 2020

 

Dear friends,

We are delighted to share with you yet another newsletter from our mission in San Pedro, Coahuila, Mexico. Greetings to all of you who have been part of our Ministry and keep us in prayer.

This newsletter brings some of the activities and projects that have been significantly life changing experiences and growth promoting for the people we work with. Over 300 people have been baptized, between San Pedro church and the other sister churches between the months of April through November.

This year our soccer outreach project has been affected greatly by the pandemic. The government closed all schools and group activities for several months, so even our street outreach teams were affected by this. The soccer schools are now re- opened and have been running again since august in the cities of San Pedro (Coahuila), Torreon (Coahuila), Monclova (Coahuila), Nazas (Durango), and in Tegucigalpa in Honduras.  Many Children and youth (boys and girls)  from ages 6 to 19 are being reached through soccer, fighting issues like depression, anxiety, violence, drug addiction, joining cartel gangs, amongst others.

The rehab center has also grown and this year we had a pregnant young girl come to us for help with her drug addiction. She is not only wining the battle against her addiction, but she has also accepted Christ as her Lord and Saviour and just had her baby.  We have two separate houses for men and women, with 32 women and 50 men and still growing.

Because of the tremendous growth of the work, we have had to travel more between the different churches in the different towns, to provide oversight, counseling, training, and spiritual direction for the Pastors and leaders of our sister churches and the churches we oversight. These two months we have been constantly visiting the Pastors and churches in different towns, teaching, counseling, expanding vision and spiritual ministry. We are currently training over 70 leaders.

 This pandemic has brought anxiety, depression, grief and many mental health challenges over many ministers, leaders and pastors, so we have been also doing a lot of pastoral care.

Because of the pandemic the churches were closed by the government, but since December 2019 we prayed and prepared for this moment and came up with alternatives to continue working and sharing the gospel. One of these alternatives were home groups, which even with the re-oppening of churches we decided to continue because of the succes we have had. We have 17 home groups a week, with 5 to 10 people per group. It has been incredible to see how many new people are coming to church through home groups, and that God helped us prepare for this moment and what seemed like a challenge only gave us new ways to reach people and continue working.

In September 34 men and women graduated from the ¨Celebrating recovery¨ program given in the factories in San Pedro. This month we have around 30 people attending this course. And 50 to 60 people attending the 6:30 morning devotional from Monday to Friday. We are also taking food and groceries every week to 32 families who have been struggling economically. Because of the pandemic, many bussines closed, and many lost their jobs. This has given us the opportunity to pray for them and share with these families.

Our Church in the village of Carolina has also grown; we have around 15 adults and 37 children. It actually brings me back to when Marcela and I first came to San Pedro and started going door by door inviting people to Church, we had only two adults and many, many children. But those Children then became our worship team and Sunday school teachers.We want to thank you for having us in your prayers and for contributing to the Work our whole team does Here and Mexico. May God bless you and guide you always.