August 2017 Velasquez Family Update

Dear Pastor, Congregation and Friends,

Madrid is a city of 3.2 million people, which doubles in size when you add in the people living in the surrounding metropolitan area. Madrid is the capital city of Spain and is centrally located on the map. We believe that Madrid is key to reaching the entire country with the gospel. For these reasons and more we have started exploring the city and meeting with like-minded individuals and churches that have a burden for church-planting in Madrid in order to get a better idea of what the needs and opportunities are for church-planting in this great city. Our desire is to lay some groundwork for future church-planting endeavors in Madrid and beyond.

Although research is important for church-planting, training men is even more important. We are currently training two men from the Parla Baptist Church and one from the Biblical Baptist Church of Colmenar Viejo for the work of the ministry. Our desire is to help these men to grow spiritually by learning and practicing the spiritual disciplines, such as Bible intake (reading, memorizing, meditating), prayer, worship, evangelism, etc… We also want to give them the best possible formal theological training to equip them for the various challenges of full-time ministry. And as they learn the theory we want to give them the practical training they need in the context of their local church. Already these men are discipling others, teaching Sunday school lessons, leading small groups and preaching biblical messages. So far we have only focused on training men that are members of the churches we have helped start. However, the Lord is starting to open up doors for us to help train men from other like-minded churches in Madrid. That is why the end of September we are going to meet with the men wanting to train with us and their pastors to share our vision for a Madrid Theological Training Center. We are excited about the opportunity to train more men for the work of the ministry. We know that healthy, Christ-exalting, Bible-teaching, gospel-proclaiming churches will not be planted unless men with a vision for these kind of churches are trained and sent out to plant them. 

As more churches are planted for the glory of God we will see more lives changed by the power of the gospel like Agustin. We first heard about Agustin during our mid-week ‘Come and See’ bible study in Colmenar Viejo. Isabel, a faithful member, asked for us to pray for her niece’s husband (Agustin), who was going to be operated in his brain. They were told that he only had a five percent chance of survival. So we prayed. By the grace of God, Agustin survived the surgery. Before his surgery Flavius and I had the opportunity to share the gospel with him, wondering whether we would ever see him again. The surgery has left him with some speech and memory problems, but he is now faithfully attending church services every week. He has made a profession of faith and will soon be starting discipleship lessons with us. Praise the Lord! Thank you once again for your prayers and faithful support. God bless.