Dear Praying Friends,
Please pray for a new endeavor to reach the Jews in our area. As our church is just blocks from the banking and commercial area, most of the 170,000 Jews of Mexico City live in our area. I have had a burden to write and print a tract especially for Jews as I have a custom of taking a two hour walk to pray passing through their neighborhoods every early Saturday morning. The idea came to me one day to pass out tracts to them as I pass them by on their way to the synagogue.
The tract begins in big Hebrew characters with their traditional greeting, "Peace be on you" to call their attention. The tracts ask to consider nine passages from their Spanish Jewish Bible, the Tenakh -- all which refer to the Messiah's ministry in Galilee, His Incarnation as a child, the time that He would come, His sufferings for our sins, His death on the cross, and His resurrection. I then sum up all that was read without trying to give my Christian interpretation of it, and then quote the writings of the famous Jewish historian Flavio Josephus about the historical Jesus where it relates to the Messianic prophecies. I end by asking if it could be that the Messianic prophecies referred to Jesus and His sufferings for our sins.
The tract is more to provoke thought and cast doubt on their own viewpoint than anything. I let them draw their own conclusions and there is no immediate invitation to accept Christ although it does contain the gospel -- the death, burial, and resurrection of the Messiah.
There is no space for our church name, just my e-mail address and phone number if they want to write or call to leave commentaries or to obtain more information. I figure if they even write or call to criticize or dispute my claims, it is a valuable contact in the closed and even paranoid world of Judaism. I hope to have it printed within a month.
I ask you to pray for a special service this Sunday night. Ruben Castillo, Mexican missionary to the Ivory Coast, will be speaking and showing his slides of the work done there. We delivered to the Ivory Coast's embassy two invitations, one to the staff there and the other for the ambassador, Koffi Charles. Please pray that some of our contacts that we have there will come.
This Tuesday, while knocking doors, I met a young man, a diplomat from the Haitian embassy and started to witness to him, but he had to leave. I invited him the service for Sunday night saying a French-speaking missionary would be there and that we were expecting people from the Ivory Coast's embassy. He was very polite, but could not come as he is busy preparing a presentation for the University of Mexico; but would like to visit some other time. He is a specialist in international law. His name is Grudel and is Catholic. Please pray that we have another opportunity to see him come out or to witness to him in his home.
This Monday, Joseph and I went to pass out tracts in front of the entrance of the Army base for the first time to try to reach some of the enlisted men. We ended up getting a contact the first time as we met Angel Fernandez, a lieutenant who is studying in the Army's engineering school. He has gotten away from the Lord, but wants to come back to Him. On Thursday night, he came to our church service.
Pray for an opportunity my wife has to teach English to a Korean woman named Umbar. She is the wife a Korean businessman working here in Mexico. Pray that through our influence the entire family may be saved.
Also pray for a Christian woman who has come out to church several times lately, but her husband is a Buddhist Mexican and even translates for the English-speaking Buddhist monks in their services. Adriana has five girls, but her husband said that they cannot come to church unless he come first; which he has promised his wife that he would. Pray that he comes soon.
It was joy to hear that Ben and April Newman of the Independent Baptist Church in Chicago are starting deputation to come to Mexico City to help in the work here and teach in the Bible Institute and Academy that we want to start this fall. We are planning as if this is the year to start the school. This year in our Bible Institute, we are preparing three of our five teachers for this fall. Two are university graduates with teaching experience and are taking my Philosophy of Christian Education class this semester to have the right Christian perspective. The other will be our first graduate in our four-year Elementary Education program.
We do not know when God will provide for the building, but we are trusting that He will. In the meantime, we are making all the preparation: training the teachers, projecting the budget, developing the curriculum, and scheduling the classes by faith; convinced that this is the year to begin.
Thank you for your prayers,
Clint Rardin |
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