September, 2004

New Verbo Church

It was a time for fireworks here in Guatemala on July 4th, but not because were celebrating the US Independence Day holiday.  Our big celebration had to do with the official inauguration of the newest VERBO church in Villa Lobos.  For the last several years Sandy and I have been a part of the church planting team for this project and it has required almost 100% of our ministry time.

Our Sunday attendance is averaging around 70 adults and 15 children.  The building is small with a capacity for about 140 people on the second floor which we use for the main meetings.  The first floor has the bathrooms, caretakers quarters and three other areas for Sunday School classes and other small group activities.

We anticipate that in less than a year our Sunday meetings will be packed out and so we are already considering options that will allow for continued growth. More about that later...

Short-term Outreach with a Long-term Impact

Ministry team from First Baptist Church, Fullerton

The last week of July, we were blessed by the ministry of a 15 member team from the First Baptist Church of Fullerton, CA.  I grew up in that church and Sandy and I were married there, so it was very significant for us to be able to involve them directly in our ministry.  They conducted a five day childrens outreach at our new church with an attendance of over 200 kids each afternoon.  It was the perfect way to promote the new Villa Lobos church in the surrounding neighborhood with great bible stories, tremendous praise and worship music, marvelous crafts and terrific games.  And since several of the team members spoke Spanish it was easy to involve adults and young people from our church, helping to create local ownership of the project.  That was one of the important results of this awesome outreach, along with the 55 children who made professions of faith in Jesus Christ as their only Lord and Saviour.

If that wasn't blessing enough, we also had the privilege of having Melissa with us as part of the team.  Many thanks to those who responded to Melissa's fund raising letter and helped to make it possible for her to come.  God is so good!

Some of the men on the team also helped pour the concrete slab for a basketball/volleyball court in the neighboring community of Lomas (less than 5 min. by car from our Villa Lobos church).  It was an interesting experience as all the concrete was mixed manually without any machines, a real cross-cultural learning opportunity.

Mixing concrete for the sport court

Since the team was here for 10 days, there was time for the concrete to cure and to officially inaugurate the court.  The community leaders did it up big with speeches, a ribbon cutting ceremony and Pastor Kirk (senior pastor at First Baptist) shooting the first basket.  They even had reporters from one of the television stations doing interviews and filming all the festivities.  Its was a tremendously special time for everyone.

Now, the big question is, "What should our long term plans be for the area of Villa Lobos and Lomas?"  The community of Lomas is offering us some of the remaining land next to the sports area for the construction of a church building.  This would allow us to accomplish two things:  to more easily extend our witness to Lomas and at the same time provide an option for growth that our Villa Lobos building doesn't allow.  However, before we can proceed in Lomas, the community leaders must obtain legal control of the land through the municipal government and, normally, the paperwork and decision making process for such things requires 2-3 years.  Pray that the Lord does a miracle so the community of Lomas has their legal status approved in record time.

   For the Kingdon,

   Dr. Mike Kadera