Please pray as we start a new plan to reach the soldiers on the military base near our church. Because the military base is off limits to us we have not had much success in reaching the enlisted men. We have had only three enlisted men come to church, one was a first sergeant and father of one of our teenagers, the other two were soldiers from our old church who came to visit us.
We do have several military families in our church, but they all are active or retired officers. Even visiting the officers at base housing is limited as we can only visit our people or contacts as door knocking is prohibited. Mexico has a strict separation of church and state policy as a reaction against the Catholic church's abuse of power in Mexico's past. Our officers are even prohibited to wear their uniforms in church services. No religious activities can take place on base, not even Catholic, and there is no chaplain corps; although I know a Christian brigadier general who has a cell group in his apartment against army regulations.
Our new efforts will be to pass at least an hour on Monday afternoon passing out tracts to the enlisted men walking out of the base at the end of work and witnessing to them when given the opportunity. Please pray for God's blessing on this new effort.
This new effort is just a part of a "full court press" initiated this year to get the gospel out to the community. Another is Monday night visitation -- just Rhonda and I visiting contacts, visitors, and people we have been praying for. It has been great to be together once a week without the kids (of course babysitted by Christians we trust), visiting and witnessing and occasionally getting a bite to eat together.
Saturday has always been the day when the kids take turns going with Daddy all day long visiting and then eating the customary ice cream sandwich at the military housing's little shopping mall.
Another initiative is Saturday morning church soul winning time in addition to the one already established on Tuesdays. In just three weeks it has yielded three new contacts whom we can work with. On this new sweep of a neighborhood we have knocked doors at before on Tuesday's; we want to be more thorough, returning to every house where no one was home before.
One other opportunity of outreach is a visit of a Mexican missionary that our old church supported. Ruben Castillo has returned on his furlough from the Ivory Coast and will be with our church on the night of February 26. We are inviting the families that work in the Ivory Coast's embassy and with whom I have contact. We want to get printed and give an "official" invitation to the staff of the embassy. Please pray that God uses the prospect of meeting a man who cares about their country and speaks French to bring them to hear the gospel.
I am praying that the ambassador attends. He knows of our work as the embassy's financial director visits our church and tithes to it regularly and as I was once invited to "bless" the new embassy they had constructed. Please pray that souls be saved as a result of this effort.
We thank God we were able to pick up three kids for church this Sunday who had come to vacation Bible school. They were our best kids that summer and have a lot of potential and we finally persuaded their parents to let them go to church with us. Pray for the salvation of their parents, Isabel and Gerardo, a lieutenant in the Mexican army.
We also thank God that we had the fifth Sunday of rising attendance's since January 1. A woman and a girl, Ana and Cynthia, were baptized in the morning. Both were accepted as members in the evening in the church's business meeting along with a man, Santiago, and Ana's teenage son, Alberto; previously baptized by us.
Although we had several families gone traveling because of a three-day weekend given to the military, we still had nine over our last year's average attendance's. We are in no "push" at this time of year, except for pushing to see souls saved and see Christians mature spiritually. Please pray earnestly that in this year there will be real spiritual growth among our people.
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