Sending Latinos into "all the world." Last week we had time with national pastors focusing on how we can send out Latino workers as missionaries. Along with Paul Lizardo, missionary to Spain from the Dominican Republic, we held a time to encourage Latin Americans to "go into all the world." fulfilling the great commission. In addition to a breakfast meeting with national pastors, our church (Iglesia Bautista Impacta Vida Nueva) also sponsored Paul as a speaker at a special missions dinner.
Canvassing our new church neighborhood: 40 church members showed up last Saturday to share tracts and invitations to the neighbors around our church. Praise the Lord. We look forward to starting up soon an evangelical outreach to our neighbors through English-as-a-second language classes in our new church rental facilities.
Judgement House this week: 8 churches uniting to share the drama Casa del Juicio. Pray for this evangelical outreach. “Judgement House is a walk-through drama that presents the truth of people's choices versus the consequences of those decisions both in this life and the next.” It takes place on the campus of the Institute of which Kevin is the director and where Tia teaches. We are half-way through the evenings of presentations, and so far over 50 individuals have made decisions for Christ. It's exciting to listen to the different national pastors and layman share the gospel.
Sunday, Feb 3, we enjoyed a quick visit with our Ohio church Pastor Craig Miller, Byron Shearer, and Jon McGinnis. A sweet evening of catching up after their week-long pastoral training in northern Costa Rica.
Pastoral training modules in 2019: our first of the 2019 IBAC pastoral and leadership modules (Institutos Bíblicos de las Américas y el Caribe/Bible Institutes of the Americas and the Caribbean). This 4th module out of 15 starts up next week. Please pray for the speakers and students as they will be in training five afternoons and evenings. Just in last year alone, in the two locations, we trained over 140 in our modules (average attendance of over 50 in each of the 3 Costa Rican modules, and 90 in the Bolivian training).
And lastly for today, we rejoice in the completion of the second chaplaincy training. This one included a visit from a government official: he was able to share with the students as well as witness what the training entails.
Costa Rican pastor Carlos Cunningham and Kevin taught through lessons on homiletics and servant-leadership to the 16 approved-by-the-government chaplains-in-training. Remember, we are the first non-Catholics to ever have been given this privilege to train evangelical chaplains (as our government is a Catholic government). Other volunteers (totaling over 30) also attend, eager to learn and be trained.
The translation of the chaplaincy program is now underway as well. We have been working with Dr. Karen Swanson of Wheaton College, to translate her 18-credit chaplaincy course into Spanish. We praise the Lord for the funds provided for translation by Grace Baptist Church, Cedarville, OH. We are excited because this translated material could be used in other countries as well.