God answered our prayers that my paperwork would go through in time for our church's fourth anniversary. It was the first time I had preacher in more than two months. In the invitation two people stood up to receive "the most precious pearl" (salvation in Jesus Christ) and enter into the kingdom of heaven by faith. One was Jorge, a man that Sam Eastep witnessed to and invited the day before. The other was Lourdes, the wife of Gabriel, the soldier that started attending church through our efforts to reach the military last May. God has blessed him greatly since he has returned to Him. Gabriel is the son of a Baptist preacher that died in 1999. Gabriel and his brother got away from the Lord and joined the army.
Since Gabriel has come back to God, he has started growing, bringing his family to church, tithing, and coming out to men's prayer meeting. God has blessed him with a new work that gives him weekends off and higher pay escorting the Secretary of the Defense. We has moved out of a two-room dwelling in a poor area and has moved into onbase housing and has a nice apartment. This will now give us an access onto the base to reach others living there.
Another saved was Gaspar's wife's cousin, a twelve-year old girl named Alma who was saved in Junior Church. We did not expect or push for a big attendance as our situation still keeps us from mass invitations, but encouraged our people to invite their friends and acquaintances. Our prayers as a church were that the unsaved would come out, for the power of God, and for souls saved. God answered all three. He also answered my personal prayer for attendance plus one. In fact, we had the best anniversary attendance in two years.
This week we are signing a contract with the owner of our meeting place and sending the contract along with documentation of the "umbrella" church to the office of religious affairs so that we can be legally recognized and can advertise our church with a sign and our name on our tracts. Please pray that we receive a response before the government goes on vacation on December 19. We have been renting the space were we meet for 500 dollars a month on a temporary basis with it understood that we use it only on Thursdays and Sundays. The owner was going to raise it to 850 as it now is going to be exclusively ours for all week, allowing us to discount from the rent whatever improvements we made on the area: stuccoing and painting one wall, putting in more lights, painting the ceiling, putting in nice curtains and flooring that looks like wood. Our negotiations ended with us still only paying 500, but us promising to make the improvements.
In the meantime, we are going to have an outreach emphasis to the Jews. Since our tracts I wrote to the Jews does not have our church name (just a phone number and my e-mail address), we will take advantage of the situation and get the gospel tract into the homes of Jews. It is a great time of the year to do it as the tracts have several Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah's birth.
Our contract for our meeting place is for three months because we still are planning to sign a contract soon for the property we are looking at. Even if we would sign the contract today, we would only pay half and give the businesses there a maximum of three months to move and then pay the other half. With the fall of the peso to the dollar, the price in dollars has gone from 285,000 t0 260,000. That is 100,000 less than for the other buliding we were looking at last year. The widow in our church who wants to give a great amount towards the property is still looking at her investments with her son to see how much she can give. Please pray the we hear from her soon.
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