Dear Pastor, Congregation and Friends,
We seek to glorify God in Spain by making disciples of Christ, by planting healthy, gospel-centered churches and by raising up and training national leadership. By God’s grace we have seen all three of these goals accomplished in one way or another since we arrived in Spain in 2010. All glory be to God! The most recent of these goals that the Lord allowed us to reach has to do with training leaders. January 27 I had the privilege of preaching the ordination service for Paco Prada, one of the first men that was saved in the church in Parla. What a joy it has been to see him go from conversion to the pastorate in the span of ten years. He has never sought the limelight. He has simply served the Lord faithfully and the Parla church recognized his gifts, affirmed his qualifications for the pastorate and appointed him as a pastor. We pray that Paco will be the first of many that will be ordained as pastors or sent out as missionaries from the churches in Parla and Colmenar.
In Colmenar, brother Jeremiah Stormont started a zoom bible study on the book of Job. It was completely his initiative and he has been doing an excellent job with it. He wanted to do it in person, but because of Covid restrictions it isn’t a possibility right now. But that hasn’t stopped him. He is also helping me with the preaching. We started a series through the book of Acts on easter Sunday that will take us about a year to finish. Every week we meet up and go over the next weeks’ passage together and evaluate the sermon from the week before. It has been a sweet time of fellowship and edification!
We are amazed at how God has worked during the pandemic. We never imagined that we would move into a new building and remodel it. We never imagined that we would start live-streaming our services. But all of those things happened during the pandemic and because of the pandemic. I didn’t know the first thing about live-streaming when all of this started, but the Lord used it to break all of us out of our confort zone. And now we have an audio-visual ministry in our church. My son Ian and Eduardo Sedoski are leading it up. We not only live-stream our services, but we also have a nice Youtube channel set up. Our people are faithfully attending our services in-person, but through this ministry we are reaching people we never imagined we would reach with the gospel. Almost every week, I hear from someone that is watching our sermons online. We even have plans to start an evangelistic Youtube channel sometime in the summer, Lord willing.
What we mean by making disciples in our first goal above is teaching unbelievers the gospel (evangelism) and helping those that respond positively to the gospel (conversion) to be fruitful, mature and reproducing disciples of Christ (discipling). One of those disciples that is seeking to make disciples herself is Jessica. She came to faith in Christ in our church when she was just 16. Now she is a university student that is actively involved in sharing the gospel everywhere she goes. With believers like Jessica our efforts are multiplied. I cannot be where she is every week, and I cannot be where Eduardo Sedoski is every week. But together as we seek to make disciples where the Lord has placed us we are reaching many more people than we could ever reach alone. Making disciples is our heartbeat as missionaries and as a church. Thank you for your faithful support and prayers through the years that have made all of these blessings possible. We are co-laborers for Christ!
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