Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Report: January Seminary Has Begun

Greetings from Venezuela!  Seminary got off to a great start yesterday.  30 students are taking the class: Preaching for a Response I, which I am teaching during the day this week and 15 are taking Self-Confrontation I, which is being taught by a Venezuelan pastor and Seminary Graduate: Dr. Alberto Mendoza. I believe we had 6 new students yesterday.
I preached Sunday in the church pastored by Jesus Rivero, a student in the Seminary. Jesus “overheard” the Gospel in 2002 when we were doing an evangelistic crusade on a soccer field near his house.  He was later called to preach and began a congregation in his home. He has since planted 3 congregations and one of them has 300 people in attendance. I preached in the congregation in his home and it reminded me of the experience the early Methodists had in the US.  The house was full, the porch was full and people were on the street outside listening to the service.  We experienced the joy of the presence of the Holy Spirit as Jesus healed some broken lives, relationships and memories.
The Campus of the Seminary looks great. A mission team from Jesus’ church finished 3 more showers and toilet stalls in the men’s dorm, repaired some roof damage caused by a fallen tree and did a lot of painting and clean up.  While we have a tremendous need to finish replacing the remaining chain-link fence with a security wall, we are making progress.
Please accept my thanks for your prayers and encouragement and giving for this work.  At last report we were only about $5,000 away from being able to make our full mortgage payment on January 31 and avoid the almost $10,000 interest payment that will accrue if we do not pay on time. Thanks for your help so far and if you can help some more, or for the first time, we would so appreciate it.
Simply make your check to Venezuela Now, Inc.  PO Box 1655, Duluth, GA 30096 or simply click on this link to give on-line via PayPal:
http://blogspot.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5a6f34035205036edd3c2d610&id=72c040623c&e=832924ce0d

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