Saturday, May 03, 2008

March-April 2008

“And he brought him to Jesus.” John 1:42a -- Andrew invited Simon Peter; Philip invited Nathanael; Jesus invited Zacchaeus; the Samaritan woman invited her neighbors; Cornelius invited his family; Consuelo invited Hector; Fredy invited Lamberto, Xóchitl invited Vicenta; Diana invited Mili; Shadai invited Samantha and Fernanda; Samantha and Fernanda invited their parents, Rosina and José; Hugo and Imelda invited Sergio and Miriam; Sergio and Miriam invited their neighbors…and they brought them to Jesus.

More than five years ago, when Consuelo, a special education teacher, invited Hector, a classmate in the state university master’s degree program, to visit the Tepic church, only God knew that at Kirt’s invitation at the end of his message Hector would place his faith in Jesus’ provision for the payment of his sins. None of us imagined that Hector would consistently and faithfully agree to be discipled, and mature into an OANSA leader and Sunday school co-teacher for the junior high students. Consuelo never imagined that some five years after her invitation, she would be marrying her friend, Hector, in the Tepic church. They are an exemplary couple, excellent teachers, and they have taken advantage of every opportunity to serve in the church.


The believers in the newest Huichol village, La Bendición, also have invited their friends and family members to come to Christ. Pastor José López baptized four of them during the Easter week Huichol reunion in their village.


Fredy, is one of the junior high boys in my OANSA/AWANA group. I invited him and José Luis, my leadership helper, to Burger King to celebrate the completion of his memory work this year. Fredy has invited his 17-year-old brother, Lamberto, to church many times, but Lamberto has rejected the invitation every time. Last month, Lamberto was injured at his job in a cement block-making factory, and his left leg had to be amputated just below the knee. Several of us from the Tepic church visited
him during his long stay in the hospital, and Lamberto finally accepted Pastor Nacho’s invitation to come to Christ. Please pray for Lamberto as he continues to recuperate that he will accept God’s direction in his life.

Vicenta and Chuyita accepted the invitation to come to Christ at the Friday morning ladies’ Bible study at Xóchitl’s house. Mili, Diana’s friend, accepted the invitation at the Thursday evening ladies’ Bible study at María Ester’s house. Rosina accepted the invitation at the new bi-weekly Friday evening ladies’ Bible study at the church. Please pray for these baby sisters as all of them face great harassment from the enemy for having accepted the invitation.

Hugo and Imelda have been concerned for their relatives, Sergio and Miriam, professing believers who live in Ruiz, a town about 40 minutes from Tepic. Since there is no biblical church for them to attend in Ruiz, they have not matured in their faith. Several members of the Tepic church have formed evangelistic teams to go to their house bi-weekly on Friday evenings to hold Bible studies. Sergio and Miriam have invited their neighbors to “come and hear,” and last Friday, four accepted Christ. We are praying that this little mission will someday become the church at Ruiz.

Our OANSA club continues to be a stimulus for invitations to Jesus, too. Eighty-nine kids came to the “Kid’s Day” celebration last week. And speaking of invitations, the cubbies group invited little Anders Kirt who was visiting me with his dad and mom, Jeremy and Jessica, to have a chance at their piñata. Please pray with me that some day before long, he, too, will invite Jesus into his heart. See a digital slide show of the OANSA Kid’s Day here.





The past two months in Tepic have been filled with lots of accepted invitations. Like the invitations that transformed Simon Peter’s, and Nathanael’s, and Zacchaeus’ lives forever, please pray that coming to Jesus will produce a parallel effect in the lives of the new believers in Tepic, and pray that together, we will continue to bring more friends and family to Him.


Quick Reference Version of March-April Prayer Requests:
• Huichol NT - MegaVoice Mp3 players continuing distribution to Huichol villages
• Huichol Old Testament translation project – book of Exodus; next workshop May 12-23
• Lamberto, Mili, Vicenta, Chuyita, Rosina, José, Raquel – new believers in the Tepic church
• Sergio and Miriam, 4 new believers – mission at Ruiz
• OANSA/AWANA clubs - Tepic and Zapote de Picachos
• Upcoming auction of property adjacent to Tepic church – still no news

1 Comments:

At 5:40 PM, Blogger Joe said...

I’m writing this to inform you about a project I am working on something that will help missionaries like you raise awareness and support. I am in the planning and design stages of launching a missionary news website (GodWitness News) and I would like you to be part of it. The purpose of the website will be to increase awareness about what missionaries are doing around the world. It will be missionary related news, by missionaries. The design I’m working on will be similar to the Yahoo News or to the BBC News websites.

I’m a professional Internet marketer, SEO expert and web designer. I have been thinking for some time that there must be a way I can use my skills to further God’s kingdom. After doing some analysis, I discovered that although there are many missionary blogs and websites, there are not many that have been optimized correctly to get a lot of readership traffic. You are probably aware of this, but a couple of the most important ways to get a lot of traffic is by having a high Google (Google, because it gets the most search traffic) PageRank and by having new content – A LOT of new content.

That is were you come in, with the content. Before I launch the news website, I would like to get 100 (eventually, I hope to have even more than this number, but this would be a good start) missionaries around the world to agree to be “news journalists.” If you are interested, I would like you to be one of the 100. If successful, there would be thousands of hits a day on the website. You would benefit by having many thousands of people around the world read about how God is using you, the work you are doing, and the people you are working with. Hopefully, some of the people visiting the website would support you with prayers and/or finances. Maybe some of them would want to volunteer to help with some of the projects you are working on. You could also benefit from having increased traffic to your website (each article you write could have a link to your website).


If you choose to participate, I would like you to agree to provide at least 12 articles in a year’s time. If you don’t want to write that many, you don’t have to feel obligated to do so though. The topic choice would pretty much be up to you. You could write about events in the country, challenges you are facing, tips for new missionaries, how God provided for your needs, and more. The articles don’t even have to be all that long. If you want to write more detailed articles, that’s fine, but if you want to write short ones(minimum should probably about 300 words), that’s fine too. You can also submit videos and photos. I just ask that everything submitted is good quality (you know, dot the i’s and cross the t’s, spelled checked, etc.) and original. It’s fine if it’s been published in print before, but if the content is already on the internet, the news websites PageRank will be reduced if the content has a copy somewhere out there on the web (yeah, the search bots are picky like that). Search engines don’t care about copies of videos and photos, so no worries there. The reason I say a year is because that is the time period through which I will evaluate how well the idea is accepted and whether I should continue the project. Call it beta testing if you want But that is about the necessary time needed to make the website a success.


If you are interested, please contact me by sending an e-mail to joe@josephkolb.info. Please let me know your name, the country you are working in, your missions name, your website, your contact information, your website, and any questions you have. Please provide as much of that information as possible as it will be hard to keep track of everyone if I have so many participants. Sometime after I get your e-mail and once I get the site going, I will send you a user name and password for your publisher account. I may also send updates or more detailed article criteria (good titles, photo sizes, etc.). I will also send a statement of faith that will have to be agreed to. Pretty much Jesus is the only way, the truth and the light and no one comes to the Father but through him.

I think that’s about it for now. Oh, yeah one more thing, I would like participants to add a link from their website (if they have one) or blog to the news website. In-links is another way that Google uses to establish PageRank.

Thanks in advance!

God Bless You!!

Joe<><
joe@josephkolb.info

 

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