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Prayer Update
for 2006, May 16
Dear praying friends,
I have received
various emails from different Spanish speaking pastors and laymen around the
world about our website in Spanish that I thought I would share a few with
you. As some of you may know, we maintain a free religious library in pdf
format on our website. Right now I have about 660 MBs in 609 pdf files in
English. That is not counting my own personal writings which is growing
significantly. Some are full books of more than 1000 pages (for
example Barnes commentary on the Whole Bible in
the English library coming in at 5294 pages), others are short
articles and sermons, and most are of good length (100+ pages). In Spanish
we have only 12 MBs in 16 files in the library, and in my personal writings
I have posted about 53 tracts by me, 7 by David Pérez (one of our members),
40 book length works by me, 16 good references books
by other authors, and 40 sermons recorded live from our services (since
August last year). As small
as this Spanish library is, it is all free, and this is very rare to find
anything of any value on the internet, much less free.
Besides our
church work, our evangelism efforts, and various other things we are
laboring to do for the Lord, we also are trying to build this Spanish
library (English library also). In English I have 300 files ready and
waiting to be posted (I enter them into the library by author and by topic
which takes some time, and depending on the work, sometimes I enter each
chapter in a separate topic, such as
in a work on Systematic Theology). I also have around 4500 total pdf files I
have found and downloaded into my personal library that I am slowly
reviewing, editing, and posting if they seem to be of good value for
reference or study.
http://www.davidcox.com.mx/library/library.htm -
This is the beginning page for the English library. Look for the Alphabetic
list of Authors and click on a letter to see a sampling of what we have.
We are trying
to post good reference material for preachers to prepare sermons from, and
also beneficial to laymen in their spiritual lives. This email is one of the
better ones I have recently received
about our website in Spanish.
Nicaragua is
basically in the hands of gangs and crooks at this point, and from what we
hear here, it is a very difficult country to live in.
Even though he is inviting me to visit them, I do not think we will take him
up on his offer. Besides that, finances are just not in our horizon for this
expanded type of ministry, and I am more a homebody, wanting to either be in
my church every Sunday preaching, or listening to one of our men preach. I
don't miss even when we have to go to Texas to do business. We leave early
Monday and return before Saturday visitation as a rule. I don't accept many
invitations to preach away, because I feel our ministry is here, not out
there "running around". I have tried to persuade Roberto to go visit him and
I would pay his way somehow (if he goes on a bus :), but he only laughs at
me. He has a very bad opinion of the civil unrest of Nicaragua that has
really turned him off to going. But please pray for Cesar in
Nicaragua. I feel as though this is the kind of minister that we
could really help through our website.
One of my future desires or projects is to
buy a Camcorder that would automatically record to a DVD, and that I could
reproduce without editing on my computer (they are inexpensive under $1000
dollars) and to beef up my computer to the point where I could edit
(lightly) video (another $1000 dollars). My desire is to make classroom type
religious classes like somebody would receive in a Bible College, and again
either post it on the internet for free or sell them for the cost of the DVD
and shipping. Right now I am doing what I can with a Zen Nano Plus recorder
(1 GB memory) that records voice messages which for me is a sermon. It is
only the size of a pack of gum, but I get a lot of mileage out of it.
I have received
other emails from pastors, and our website is being visited by people in
Spain, all over South America, and many parts of the world I would have
never dreamed that there are
latinos, like from Netherlands, Brazil, European Union, Belgium, Japan,
Germany, Ukraine, Greece, England, Bosnia-Herzegovina, China, Turkey,
Switzerland. (Those are some of the
non-Spanish speaking countries that have visited us this month
alone.) It is of great encouragement to me that many people are
finding my personal studies, and are putting them to use for the Lord.
I would clarify
that our policy both in our own church and on the internet is that I charge
nothing for our material, and if people want to help out with the costs,
they may do so (we have a tin can beside the tract rack), but that if they
do not have the funds, then they should take what they want and can use
anyway and not to
worry about it. I "sell" nothing. I have printed up some larger books
I have found in the internet that are 200+ pages, and we suggest $1.20 (which
is what it cost us to print them), but likewise we leave them out
with a tin can and encourage our people to take advantage of them.
God will repay us in heaven, and for you who support us financially, part of
that heavenly reward is yours. Here's another email.
Dear Servant,
This brother is
apparently wanting a paper copy of our
books so that he can read them at home. I am waiting to get my
printer fixed so that I can mail him copies of my books and tracts.
One of our men
was eating at a taco stand on the street about 5 miles from our section of
town and started to talk to the lady
in the taco stand. She was a Christian that they knew from their former
church. When he invited her to go to our church, she asked what church do
they go to now? He told her our church name,
she said "and your pastor is David Cox, right?" "Yes. Do
you know him?" "No I don't know him but I found his website and
I read a lot of his material and listen to his sermons all the time. I like
what he has a lot and it has been very helpful to me in my Christian life."
In the end she said that she was involved in several committees and
responsabilities or something like that in her church and could not come to
our church, but she was very happy to have met somebody from our church
because she has greatly liked what she has seen. She said she is going to
try to come visit us in the future. It is
so pleasant to have one of your own members tell you a story like that, and
smile happily while they tell you. Usually pastors have to fight with their
members that are not appreciative of what they have in their own church.
Last year this
time our website was being visited
(english and spanish sides of our website)
about 40 times a month, and they saw 68 pages total each month and
downloaded 89 megabytes of data each
month. This month alone we have already had 1887
visits and they have visited 10,158
pages, and downloaded over 2.6
gigabytes of data (April was 4 gigas, and
March was 5). We pay no search engines to promote us (I just don't
have the money nor much desire to do
so) so that is all by word of mouth. (If
you know of search engines that you can submit a site to for free, please
feel free to submit our site to them for us.) I have sent out
invitations (I started in Aug 2005)
to visit our website to some 300 Spanish pastors that I have found their
emails on the internet, and this is
how we got world wide coverage. (I sent out 500 emails, and about 200 came
back return to sender, and I doubt many of the rest actually were
read by real personal.) This month
our top visited page is our Spanish tract index page with over 4768 hits,
and we are not even mid month yet!
To give you some little tidbits about our
website, this month the most viewed library book is Gesenius -
Hebrew Grammar.pdf (486 pages long, 549 hits this month so far,
last month 1651 hits) followed by Kaiser - Hard Sayings of the
Bible.pdf (1115 pages long, 173 hits this month so far, 487 last
month), and last month Elwell's book on Handbook of Evangelic
Theologicans (617 hits). That is some pretty heavy theological
stuff for a free website.
In Spanish, my book about the Word of
Faith Movement had 410 hits this month so far, and 293 total last
month.. The top Spanish Sermons listened to are my sermon on why
we don't worship Mary (11 times), and my other sermon on
why we don't speak in tongues (25 times). Last month
Mary was listed to 14 times, Why we should congregate
21 times, Disciplining our Children 26 times,
Why we don't speak in Tongues 47 times, and a
Father's day sermon on the Father that pleases God
25 times.
I also post in
my library section books and works by other people that are more or less
sound. (Any religious library is going to have books with comments that one
will not agree with, and every student of Scripture must sort through these
things for himself.) Normally I have to change the format into PDF and
usually make an index and links before I post them
so I still have a little work to do even on other people's writings.
(After all, I am the librarian here!) I have received emails from
several of these Christian brothers that I
have posted their works on my
website, and they have
searched for their own names apparently
and found their own works on my website, and they
always thank me for posting them there. They often let me know of
other new works that they have more
recently put up wanting me to add them
(time is precious for me!).
I am writing
you all of this so that you can see the impact we are having around the
world in just our website ministry.
Your monthly support to us helps keep us
going on these projects and to pay the bills for our home and family.
Brother Roberto is assistant pastor of our church, and between our church
and my family personally, we are paying him a very small salary. His son
David is studying linguistics (Masters level) and has offered to help me
translate things into Spanish (for free).
I am giving him a very small amount of money (40 cents per page when the
going rate is 1 dollar to 2 dollars) to help them with their economic needs
(the church is paying Roberto only $400 a month which is about half of what
he needs to just survive, and his
other son is making about $200 a month,
and they are struggling greatly).
At this point I
think I can afford to pay David Perez
for about 1 or 2 books a month ($100-200 dollars)
to translate from English into Spanish. In May he finishes his
Masters, and he does not start his doctorate until January of 2007. We have
a window of opportunity to get some good literature out by using David while
he is looking for work to help support his family. He has offered to do this
for free, and I do not feel it is justified to get him swamped with work
when they are suffering economically and
not pay him anything for his labor (Mal 3:5; James 5:4).
Besides that I doubt he would be able to translate much if he is working
full time. He needs to find work to produce income for their
expenses. We are interested in getting good material in the hands of Spanish
speaking Christians. I literally have several thousands English books (several
hundred page books, a thousand or more in pdf file formats, and probably
4000 in microfiche from Spiro Zodiates library that I bought) that
are of very good quality for reference, Bible study, and sermon preparation
that are out of copyright, and that we could translate if we had funds to do
so. I would also mention that we (including
Roberto, Carmela, and David) are going out witnessing Saturdays, Thursdays,
and some weeks Mondays and Fridays besides all of the above! Please
pray for us about this matter, that God would provide funds for us to work
unhindered.
At this point
we are personally getting maxed out
financially, because it is getting up to
around 50% of our meager income of
$2500/month that is going into the church expenses and our tithes and
offerings to the church. We are happy to serve our Lord, but we are wanting
to do so more than what we are doing
now, and we are finding it difficult to do
so. In faith we feel God will
provide. We want to push as much as possible to invest in the church
at this point so that it will grow and draw in more members which will
hopefully take on the financial burden of all of this.
We believe that each church and ministry should be self-supporting
internally, and not so much from "missions" funds from other churches.
We charge
nothing from anybody for these works once we have them translated over into
Spanish, and only ask that people give free will donations if they wish to
help us. The truth is that most Spanish speaking preachers that search the
internet for these sources do not have funds to buy books, which easily cost
in the $50 to $300 ranges if you can find them. Many of these men are
laboring with monthly incomes of only $300-$500 as it is, some less. We feel
this ministry is of benefit to many, especially those who are good solid
pastors that are looking for good fundamental type resources. Those who are
liberal and Pentecostal seldom study good Bible sources for their sermons.
We feel that God will repay us in heaven. We are not a business that is
looking to make a buck off of our poorer brethren.
As far as
our own church folk go, most are very poor, and when it comes to buying a
good Christian book in a Christian bookstore or putting food on the table,
well, that means our free literature is all the Christian books they have
ever read in most cases. As a pastor, to me, it is worth the expenses we
have to pay to see them reading books on the Holy Spirit (like Lin's book,
click here if you want to read it http://www.davidcox.com.mx/library/Lin%20-%20How%20the%20Holy%20Spirit%20Works%20(b).pdf),
E.M. Bounds Power in Prayer, or Pilgrim's Progress.
We
would ask that you consider us in this website and translation ministry, and
pray for us and our economic needs.
I would
also ask that you pray for me as I try to work on new books for preachers
and laymen. Pray that God gives me abundant time, energy, clarity
of mind, and strength. I am finishing up one on Homiletics
and have already posted one on Hermeneutics both of which I wrote. I have a short
Bible encyclopedia in the works, a book on Bible geography, one on
Problem passages, another on NT & OT Introduction, and some others rumbling
around that I want to write as time permits. Once I get these out of the
way, Bible commentaries on individuals books of the Bible are next up. Pray
that I can make good use of my time this summer (when I don't have to teach
our kids home school). I am also trying to get a Greek class for preachers
started again.
At this point,
I feel like I am in the most productive years of my life, from the
standpoint of having years of experience and study under my belt,
understanding Spanish culture, the ministry, and speaking Spanish fluently.
That being the case, I want to dedicate as much time and energy into the
Lord's work as I can before the Lord calls me home. If God permits me to
live another 20 years, I would like to produce a mountain of religious
books, tracts, sermons, and articles that would be of great benefit for
Spanish speaking preachers and laymen for years to come. Part of this is that
God would grant me energy, will, ability, and opportunity. The other part is
that God would bring in men who would preach and teach for me in my church
so that I can be freed of time and energy to work
on these projects. Right now David Perez is taking Thursday prayer
meetings, and Roberto and David each are
preaching once a month for me on Sundays.
We have another man, Carlos, which was
fired from his job as a school bus driver (he was assaulted on the street
and has permanent sight damage in one eye from that), that is available now
but we don't have funds to pay him. He is working with our youth and some
with our younger children.
What not is available is funds to pay these
men to quit looking for secular work and dedicate themselves totally to the
ministry. That problem is our problem, not your (churches in the US)
problem. But we would ask that you pray for our people
that God would give them well paying jobs and will to sacrificially give to
support our labor for the Lord. Also pray that God would send us more church
members with a vision for what we are doing, and ability to help.
Right now we are barely paying Roberto a minimum wage, and we are trying to
get enough to pay the rent that we will be forced into paying if we leave
our free building in July. Please pray that the Christian owner
of where we are now would extend his letting us use his building until the
first part of next year.
We seem to be growing at the rate of about
one good Christian family per month. We have about 3-5 "good" conversions
each month that the people let us come and have discipleship classes with
them although for various reasons they don't come to our church services.
Our discipleship is to get them into our church faithfully each week, active
and participating, and also tithing. Besides that we have around another
10-20 conversions each month that are doubtful as to their sincerity,
because they simply make a profession of faith with one of our workers, but
they never show up nor allow us to have any more input into their spiritual
lives. We are returning to visit these, and giving them (freely) choice
sermons that I feel would greatly help them if they would only listen to
them. Pray for them also.
We want to do so much more for our Lord.
Please pray for us that God would open the doors for us to minister and to
keep ministering, and grow in our ministry. Also as a footnote, please pray
about our situation with transfering money from our US bank account to down
here in Mexico. We were getting cash advances off our credit card and that
has now become impossible for some unexplanable reason. It just does not
work even though I have a line of credit to use. The Mexican banks are
blocking the foreign credit card cash advances it appears. Go figure!?!?
In Christ,
David Cox
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