April 2008

MINISTRY HIGHLIGHTS:
Remember the meeting for the youth pastors that I was planning?? It finally happened. I´m really glad to let you guys know about that. I spread out the word and about 15 youth minsters from all over the country came up for the meeting, it was great. IN the meeting we talked about unity, we talked about what would it take for us as youth pastors to reach our whole country. At the beginning of the meeting, they did not know why they were there or what was the meeting about but when this meeting ended, you could just see the joy in their faces,. They are exite to work together and they liked the program we had for them. We are planning to meet up again soon to plan an activity for one of the youth pastors that needs our help. We wanna be able to colaborate with the work of every youth pastor of the country. They liked the ideaand now they are just ready for their first challenge, which is coming soon.
As a result of playing football every week, my new good friend Jimmy just got baptized, and I can already see a lot of changes in his life. Our youth group is clear about our goals, they all know that each one of them plays a very important role in reaching out to others. Every week we see new faces in the football field because the simple fact that the youth group takes the time to invite non believers to come play with us. God is blessing us through sports… We are taking a lot of avantages of it.
We have a new bowling place in santiago, so for the first time we took part of the youth group to play a game they never experienced before. It was really fun, check it out:

We just got the books to start our acountability groups with girls and guys. We are very happy because we have been waiting for a month or so to get them and now they will finally arrive in two weeks.

We were celebrating our church 24th birthday last month and we got the oportunity of prasing and worshiping with our dauther churches. Check this out:

PROJECTS WORKING ON:
Translating new songs to Spanish for the worship band.
Preparing a retreat to one of the churches at the mountains.
Planning a retreat to Batey 9 (church in the south part of the country, 6 hours away).

PRAYER REQUEST:
1. My mom´s health. She is having doctors appointments now.
2. My gramma is sick.

MINISTRY CHALLENGES:
This year we have been teaching that God has to be in the first place of our life. If he is in the first place, then we won´t have to worry about following a bunch of sets of rules like the Pharisees. As this year goes by I want everyone in the group to live their live according to what God wants not by what the world says.


FAMILLY NEWS:
1. My mom has a doc appointment about her surgery from a few years ago.

HOW IS GOD WORKING IN YOU?
I´m clear about where I am at and where I am going. I just praise God that has put things so clear in my heart. Like always, just trying to do his will, he has been blessing my ministry and I´m just thankful. In the last few weeks I have been talking to my good friends from college, God put this in my heart. We are trying to bring our knowledge together for the kingdom, to bring all our gifts and ideas to the plate for the sake of the Youth in the Dominican Republic. Maybe next year we are going to be able organize a weekend youth retreat that is going to change many lives. I know we have all the tools to make this right and I think the time has come… Please pray for this, because this is going to be big and is going to take the work of many people to make it happen, so keep it in your prayers, peace.

In Christ,
I.G.