Prayer Update for March 9, 2006

Dear praying friends,

 

We have been very busy the last two-three months, and I want to update you on how God is working in and blessing our ministry. We continue to go out door to door about 3-4 hours every Thursday and again 3-4 hours every Saturday. Yesterday we had 10 go out which was a typical Saturday. Some Saturdays we have more. I continue to preach each Sunday twice and Thursday nights. We have about 20 people on some Thursdays. On Sundays we have two services, one 11AM to 1PM, and the other 6-7PM, and average between 30 and 40 in the Sunday AM. We have no Sunday School. After the announcements and song service the children have their service/Sunday School in another room.

 

Roberto Perez Family

We have had the Roberto Pérez family attending with us since April of last year. Roberto started off in the Southern Baptist Seminary but didn't finish the entire course of studies, because some Navigator missionaries pulled him away to work with them. He worked with them for a while, and eventually left them because they do not support or believe in local churches except to get money from them in the US (the American missionaries didn't even attend Sunday services anywhere except when visiting in the states to ask them for money, and Roberto and his family actually lived in the American missionary's house and observed this). He saw these problems and left them because of their view of the local church and how they do things in other areas.

 

From there he began going from church to church helping in the evangelism and discipling of people. I am not sure how many but he went through several churches that in each case didn't really want somebody doing evangelism and discipleship. These churches down here are really dead as far as real evangelism goes. He then went to a Baptist Hyles-Anderson "Super church" (6000 attendance) near us and was with them for while until he saw the hypocrisy of winning "tens of thousands" of souls to the Lord each month, and yet they only really come on the Sundays when they give away food packages (bought with US money from churches). That church pays their members to go door to door, and they get a bonus for every "soul saved". In other words if they convince somebody into praying the Lord's prayer, the "soulwinner" gets an extra so many dollars. This church gets money from US churches hand over fist. The pastor lives in a mansion, and lives the life of Riley! I am amazed at what I hear coming from over there.

 

When the Perez family came to us they were looking for somebody who was serious about going out evangelizing, disciplining the converts, and some place for them to grow spiritually. We go out every week and they immediately started up with us. Shortly after that they asked me if I would go out with them another day of the week and we added Monday visitation to the Saturday visitation. Roberto asked my permission if they could start a discipleship Bible study and I gave him keys to the church to hold it there instead of in somebody's house. The entire year they have been extremely faithful in all the services, and these two visitation times. They have worked hard and have proven themselves very faithful.  Roberto supports his family (David and Jonathan are grown adults still single and living at home) by driving a taxi. When he started having problems with his papers on the taxi we helped them by paying off some of his expenses in order in order to keep his income coming in. His taxi is now in his garage and he cannot take it out without risk of losing it. He has a federal judge's order to drive around as a taxi and work, but the federal government has police operations in effect until after the elections (July) and even the court order will not save him if they stop him (we are told on the news), so his taxi sits at home useless.

 

His basic problem with the taxi is that he bought a taxi license plate, paid the amount they ask (thousands of dollars), and got his paperwork for it. But the day he showed up to receive the actual plates (they do this in groups of several thousand or so) the corrupt official sold the actual plates to other taxi drivers without any official papers, and Roberto has the official papers and no plates. The government office got double money out of the deal and is no longer in office. He has the old private use plates still. The whole thing goes to a federal judge to solve, and he decides that it is out of his jurisdiction because it was a federal elected official that did it (counting around 100,000+ taxi drivers shafted like this, getting around $3000 dollar per "stolen" plate). The elected official disappears, but his party is still in power so they will not fix it since all that money supposedly went into political campaign donations to get them elected. Hot potato do nothing kind of thing. Hopefully an opposition party will enter office in July and do something about the mess, but that is being extremely, extremely hopeful. What normally or probably will happen is that they will declare disqualified both groups (those with the official papers and holograms, and the other group with the plates), and charge everybody again. What we hear is that they are collecting around 5,000 taxis per month because of paper problems, stacking the volkswagen taxis on top of each other. I gave Roberto money to paint his volkswagen a solid color so he can drive it like a personal vehcile.

 

Our church is growing more stable so back in February I offered to put him on full time as an assistant giving him the 25% designated for pastor and 25% designated for building fund. Our offerings are averaging around $150 a week, so that is about $300 dollars a month for him which is enough to get by on almost. His two sons have about the same income. Roberto agreed, and we presented it to the church, and they accepted him and the situation for a trial period of 6 months. We are hoping that during the weekdays he will be able to visit contacts and get more people into the church on a regular basis.

 

Margarita and Anthony

An elderly family Margarita and Anthony joined our church about 6 weeks ago, and it has been hectic since then. Margarita was a Pentecostal "pastor" in charge of a mission church for an Assemblies of God church. That is a long story but slowly God moved in her heart to convince her that tongues was wrong because many times from what she saw the same people who spoke in tongues later became demon possessed. Margarita and Anthony visited us and I have about 30 tracts and 20 books out at any one time, and around 40 sermons on cds. She picked up the tongues ones and went into seventh heaven. She told me that God convinced her that tongues was wrong from a personal testimony point of view, but my literature convinced her from a Scriptural exposition point of view. She has now become very vocal with all her old friends on this matter. She is consuming all our material and sermons with gusto. I guess it takes another "preacher" to appreciate all the work I am putting into our church. She says she didn't really preach much when she had charge of her church, and from what she explained to me they tell different ones in their group to prepare a message and visit people etcetera, and the actual "pastor" just collects his pay check.

 

Her sister is in an Assemblies of God church in Pachuca about 2 hours from here. She started in with her. It ended up that that church had financial problems and their pastor gets "tithes" from businesses in the form of merchandise, and he is demanding that all the members go door to door selling these items. While they burden the church with this selling, the same pastor and his assistant grabbed all the cash the church had for a two week vacation for "their pastors" in Acapulco. Half the church decided to leave rather than sell door to door.

 

Having heard all of Margarita's praises for our church, they asked her if we could send somebody to help them start a new church. I suggested Roberto. He went there yesterday (Sunday Feb 12th) and had their first service. It went extremely well. Margarita's sister is talking to her friends about the problems of tongues. I am still dealing with Margarita about women preachers though! See my tract on the subject: http://www.davidcox.com.mx/tracts/cox-womenpreachers.htm. This seems to be a very sore point with her, and she has stopped coming over it (although she doesn't want to preach in our services, just correct other men as she sees fit). Roberto and his wife had a very nice time out in Pachuca with them, and they were not contentious with him, but followed what he wanted to do as far as the service. I expect that we will have to deal with them about Pentecostal issues, but they seem willing enough according to Roberto. The last 2 weeks he has preached on baptism in the Holy Spirit, and this coming Sunday 12th March he is beginning on speaking in tongues. These same issues I have dealt with in our church through preaching, tracts, booklets, and sermons on CDs, so we have a good supply of material to use. Our church is supporting him as being on staff with us, paying him a salary. Our own offerings fluctuate, so I have to help him through these rough first months. But I don't think he will last long with us. It is working out for him with a few looking to drop away and the rest of group liking his preaching. I wanted to get him on a salary so that he can dedicate his time to Bible study and sermon preparation, and later on visitation out there like he does here for us. It looks like there is yet another small group of people further out there that also have needs and no preacher nor church. (That entire area is saturated with Benny Hinn churches - Health and Wealth Gospel churches). I am producing about a dozen tracts on Charismatic issues, and already have about 4-5 books on several of these issues. So Roberto and Carmela will probably work with the second group out there on Sunday nights or try to get them to come in with the other group. Pray for them. He is a good faithful worker, but when it comes to being a pastor, he is still on weak kneed on the subject. He has yet to deal with hard headed stubborn people very well. Arguing is worthless, and one has to be gentle and yet firm, and stick to Scripture, and relentless even if it means losing the people or shutting down the entire church. He is learning all this I think.

 

We meet every Monday to talk preacher talk. I am helping him get through some problems, rough issues, and doubts in tongues. I laughed at him because when he was with the Navigators he chose not to deal with the tongues issue. Nice. Be a pastor and you have no choice. He is paying for it now because they broke out in tongues in an after service prayer meeting for a sick man in that group. Most all of them come from that background, and you just have to bite the bullet and deal with it. We continually have new people come and then lose them because we don't have rock music, tongues, or any of that Charismatic type stuff.

 

At this point I am not sure just what will happen, but it appears that these people are willing to give him all their tithes and offerings, so he may have enough income from them, and we may stop his financial support if they are giving him more than enough to do the work. We hate to lose him, but at the same time, it is great to have a new work spring up overnight. He is thinking and submitting to me as "his pastor", but I am wanting him to become independent out there and make his own decisions. I am not like Mission Boards or other missionaries that think in terms of control and authority. I believe in the Baptist principle of each local church being independent from external sources. I want our church to support him until they (the Pachuca mission) are giving a good salary to him for 4-6 months stable like. I wish I could take credit for all this but I really had nothing to do with it, Margarita just about dropped a ready made church in our laps, and Roberto came to us already preaching and teaching (mainly home Bible studies Navigator style). I am still trying to go through a homiletics course and then a hermeneutics course with Roberto (and the pastor of our former work in the Cerro de Judio from 1992-1995). I feel like I can help him some on that count.

 

OUR ACTIVITIES

Recently I have been producing about 2-3 tracts per week for our tract rack. It is a lot of extra work but I am starting to translate them over into English for you my supporters. See our tract page here http://www.davidcox.com.mx/tracts/index.htm. At present I have about 6 English tracts and around 50 Spanish tracts (http://www.davidcox.com.mx/folletos/index.htm). I probably have another 40 or more in the works coming in Spanish. Every week I write 2-3, and note 2-3 new topics for future tracts, so it is a never ending job. I want to translate all of them over into English.

 

We record most of our services, and I post the sermons (in Spanish) on my website, and make CDs of the sermons for our people to take and listen to at home or share with others. That ministry is going well also. Our website is getting a lot of hits and positive feedback. We have about 39 sermons posted and another 6-8 waiting for editing before I post them. Some of you may know, but I like to preach and teach, and most of our Sunday AM preaching (not including preliminaries) go for 60-80 minutes of pure preaching/teaching. 80 minutes is the maximum that will fit on a single CD, so I have to edit them if I go over that (which I hate to do). I use the overhead projector to keep attention focused during all of that time, and I also post my sermon notes and overhead transparency outlines. That is also becoming a frequently visited thing. We do an indepth study every Sunday AM. Sunday PM we have no song service, just preaching, and it usually is under or just at 60 minutes. Wednesdays are lighter with usually 20-30 minutes of preaching, or sometimes I just read from a chapter (or 2-3 chapters) and make off hand comments about some verses without really "preaching". (We pray for a full 30 minutes after that, men in one group, and women in another.)

 

OUR CHURCH

Last year we started the year with around 8-10 faithful people. Some Sundays we went up to 15-20 or more in attendance. We ended the year (December) with about 20-25 faithful people coming. But since the start of this year the Lord has been blessing us greatly, and we have had 40 with Roberto and Carmela out at the mission and not in our services. We also are missing about 3 families besides that, and a new family that started coming wasn't here. So God is blessing us greatly.

 

COUNSELING

It is ending up that as new people come into our group they bring a lot of problems with them. I am having to do counseling with couples and parents about every week now, sometimes two or three sessions with different people in a week. Please pray that some of this will ease up. We are starting two Bible studies with new people. One is a married woman that her husband won't let her come to church. I am giving away sermon CDs to various people that we have continuing contact (like this woman) and that seems to be going very well.

 

OUR BUILDING PROBLEM

Our building is being loaned to us rent free, and we voted to give 25% of our offerings to that brother (in another church) in rent. When I tried to give him the rent, he said that he did not want it, but he does want us out of his building at the end of this year's contract (July). That gave us a low blow, and I was very depressed with the thought of looking for something else (it is very difficult around where we presently have the church). But after praying about it all, the Lord made it apparent to me that it is not a problem. At present we are at full capacity of chairs and we had about 8 empty seats Sunday. At our present growth rate which seems to be a family every month, we will not fit in this building by the end of the year anyway. So I talked with some of the men about forming a building committee to find options for us to go to when we leave where we are, whether that is in July or later in the year or sooner. I think I can talk the owner into extending our use of his building a few months beyond that July deadline if that is needed.

 

We really need to buy property and build, and there are several properites within a stone's throw of the church, but we are in a big city, and prices that we have already asked about are around $100,000 dollars to $150,000 dollars for a big piece of land that would make an excellent church (150 feet by about 250 feet). But that amount seems way beyond our means, and bank loans are just extremely difficult to come by no matter who you are. The banks don't have the money, and their interest rates are extremely high (25%-30% annual). We are going to investigate this, and see if it is possible for us to find a smaller piece of land and work from there. We will lose our benefit of an extremely good location where we presently are (there are 4 pieces of land around us but they are expensive).

 

Some of our people have suggested that I return to the US to "raise money for a building", but I am generally against that. Roberto was the only one that I would leave our church with, and he is out of the picture now as far as preaching for us. I want to encourage him to develop that work into a regular church. People do not understand that it is not very easy to raise money among churches in the states. The money just does not seem to be there (at least for missions and in my case in particular). We have tried to raise 5,000 dollars for a new vehicle and only got a couple of hundred dollars donated total. It would be nice if some churches in the states would come in to support this building project and help us at least with buying the property. We would still have probably an equal amount in building expenses to actually build a building. At present our small group only has about $2000 dollars in the building fund, but we are working on that. We would ask your prayers that God would send us some people that would sacrifice and work to see this building project undertaken. It would be great if 5-10 churches in the US would come in to help us with $10,000 or $15,000 dollars each, but I would really rather you pray that God would raise that money from the Mexico side of the border through the tithes and offerings of our people. We need our people to sacrifice and work hard for a building so that they will appreciate it and protect it, although we will use whatever God lays on people's hearts to donate. Pray for our building situation.

 

I think that we most probably will move into a rented warehouse somewhere nearby this year as a step towards a more permanent solution. Our offerings in our church continue to rise, and I think Roberto will probably be self supporting out there by the end of the year also. We are praying towards these goals anyway. Please pray with us.

 

Well just wanted to tell you these things, and let you all know we are having a ball with it all down here in Mexico! Please keep praying for us!

 

In Christ,

David Cox

dcox at davidcox.com.mx