“ and you will call his name, Jesus!” Matthew 1:27
With all of our hearts we send you a loving Christmas
greeting full of the confidence that many people in Colombia and Canada will
see the manger and call on Jesus as their Saviour and their Lord!
We have spent the last two months visiting churches in
Canada. We are sorry that the time wasn’t sufficient to visit all the churches
and all the people who support us, but thanks be to God that we were able to
visit almost all of those in BC. We reconnected with the believers and with the
churches, which has been a great blessing—now we can pray better for you. How
much we appreciate having brothers and sisters and churches supporting our
ministry. Thank you to everyone who received us with so much love. Our “tank”
has been filled with the grace to be able to serve faithfully in the year to
come.
We end this year surprised by the blessings of God.
Above all, the blessing of celebrating our first 25 years of
marriage and ministry! Where has all this time gone? It seems like it was only
yesterday that we began our family and our first church, El Redil. We never get
tired of thanking the Lord for His great blessing to us, especially because, in
His love, He has surrounded us with faithful and inspiring servants of God.
Our children, now entering adult life, are doing well. Tania
is the traveler. She has discovered that she learns from, and really enjoys,
traveling. This last year she has spent more than 8 months away from home
working as a photographer, learning Portugese, and becoming familiar with
various countries in South America. We admire her work ethic and ability to
save so that she can make these dreams a reality. Daniel, about to graduate as
a Sound Engineer (Acoustic), is growing a lot as a person, more responsible and
serious, serving in the church and happy in his relationship with his first
girlfriend, Sara. God bless our children. We live, happy for them, and thankful
to God for our marriage and our family.
The new church, El Redil South, continues to grow (more than
200 now!), as do the pastores in training, Jairo and Jennifer. Thanks be to
God! The El Redil churches (6 in total) are more and more committed to the work
of planting churches (three projects) and to missions. In a few days we will send,
for the first time, a group of 13 people into the Amazon Rainforest (Brazilian
territory) to serve among the Ticuna
Indians. Along with the humanitarian work we look after (the street children in
El Pacífico, the centre for pregnant teens), we continue with our other responsibilities such as
teaching in the Seminary, writing and mobilizing our churches in evangelism.
This year in particular we give thanks to God for the new home of El Redil
South. This is the first time an evangelical Christian church has had a
permanent home in a commercial center in Medellín. This gives us new
opportunities such as, for example, to continue with the “Living English” (Vive
el Inglés) program through which we serve the community and create means to
present the Gospel to new friends.
This Christmas please remember us in your prayers.
1.
With the departure of the Webbs, we are now the
only Fellowship International missionaries in Colombia. Pray that God will give
us strength and the resources so that His work will continue, so that the
Colombian churches will keep planting more churches and begin to send
crosscultural missionaries. Please pray that God will provide for our support.
Over the last two years we have carried a deficit of 10%. May God be glorified,
as He has been until now, through the provision of abundant resources for the
continuing of His work in Colombia.
2.
For the English program, “Living English,” now
expanded to include inviting Canadian couples who want to come for one or two
months to Medellín to make friends through teaching basic English. This new
initiative is based on the fact that teaching English (or helping others
practice their English) has been shown to be an effective means of preparing
the ground before evangelization and planting a new church. Pray too that the
Lord will provide the funds to distribute bilingual New Testaments.
3.
Pray for our great challenge of moving the El
Redil churches toward missionary work. This year we have begun a bimonthly
prayer bulletin and a week of missions training for all our leaders. May our
Lord raise up a generation of servants called to carry the Word cross
culturally.
4.
Pray for the three new church-planting projects:
Poblado (Populated), Oriente (East, La Ceja) and Los Colores (The Colours).
5.
Thank you for praying for our family. Pray that
God will guard us in the midst of the stresses and demands of our busy schedule.
Pray that our children will grow closer and closer to Jesus every day so that
they will love Him and serve Him with all their hearts.
Many thanks for being our partners in the work of God.
God bless you richly this Christmas, Diego and
Claudia.
