Prayer Update January 23, 2007

Dear Praying Friends,

We would like to update you on some things with us in Mexico. First of all we have moved our church into a commercial shopping center (in a basement) and that has gone more or less well. We had to plaster and paint a lot, but it is looking very acceptable now. We still have not started using the movie theaters that are available to us to rent, but as of now we still fit in the place where we are. As pastors involved in this know, you lose people every time you move your church, and this has not been an exception to that rule. The reasons seldom have to do with new locale, but people take advantage of the move to stop coming even though the move has nothing really to do with it. We are still visiting and trying to get our three families that have stopped coming to come, but in spite of their promises to come, they are not coming. Please pray for them. As far as I know they are simply not going to any church. Last Sunday we had over 40 people even with those three families missing. We are trying to build our church up again over the next few weeks.

On the brighter side, we had one saved Saturday in visitation, and 5 saved in church. That surprisingly enough came on a Sunday when the sermon was on "Contending with Poverty", which had nothing to do with salvation. One of our newer families has a baby, and the mother took the baby into the children's Sunday School room and heard Tule giving the gospel to the kids, and she accepted the Lord. Two other kids in the class also accepted the Lord. This lady's two teenage sons asked me if I would talk with them about their salvation. After church on Sunday night I led them to the Lord.

We also have had some new families start coming and probably will join us with time. We have had a bunch of good contacts that we are hoping will pan out as far as new members. I would ask prayer for these contacts, and for our church building situation. Where we are right now is in a basement and there are 5 steps down to get in or out, but one family has an elderly grandmother that has a walker that doesn't want to come because of that. She is unsaved, and we are hoping that she will accept the Lord. But it is a problem. They are Laura and Josué. Pray for them.

Also another one of our elderly ladies insists that she cannot come because of gastritis and she has to eat **punctually** at 10AM and 12 noon. My sermons on Sunday morning are long, because we have a group that only comes to one service a week (and they come in sometimes the last 15 minutes anyway, no matter what hour you start). As many Mexican churches do, we go from 11AM until 1PM. We also have a good song service and a lot of praises and prayer requests (those who don't come on Thursdays want to mention a lot of their prayer requests and thanksgivings). Most Mexicans eat their midday meals around 1PM to 3PM, so it is not so long from most people's point of view. 
 

We continue to go out every week, and we get new contacts every month. We are trying to fix up some bulletin boards to promote our Sunday School series. We are going through a Bible Doctrines course in Sunday School that I am writing as we go along. Pray for that. We have had several start coming to Sunday School which usually show up midway through the worship service, so I am excited about that.

I wanted to make some comments about our new president of Mexico. Things went much better than expected and the candidate that lost has calmed down his vocalization and discontent. Calderon has made a big splash against the drug lords in the few weeks he has been in office and that has been good. Overall, he has tried to show that he will get things done. We would ask prayers for our country, Mexico, because there is great unemployment, and much underemployment. There is million person rally Jan 31 in protest of rising prices (Manuel Obrador is trying to be in the front of that, but other participants are muscling him out). Many in our church are wrestling with lack of provision and work, and many barely make ends meet. Please pray for them.

I would especially ask your prayers for me. As our church grows, the demands on my time get to be more and more. We find ourselves spending a day or two each week in visiting with one of our families or dealing with some problem, or helping them in some way. The ministry is about people, and I do not believe any pastor is a good pastor if he doesn't spend time with his people, getting to know them and building a friendship with them so that he has validity to speak to their spiritual needs on Sunday. That takes time. Many times it is just helping them with non-spiritual problems in life, or attending a birthday party or such. I spend another day working at the church fixing up the facilities, installing lights, plastering, painting, etc. We have a church secretary, Carlos, who also helps me with some of that stuff, but even so it is time consuming. Add to that one afternoon with a Bible study for a family that just accepted the Lord and are not yet regular in their attendance, and Saturday visitation which is basically from 10AM to 4PM, and then home school for our two children, well, I am stressed out usually. We are trying to find new ways to handle our time and responsibilities and ministry, and I would appreciate your prayers for this. We are praying that God would call or send to us a Mexican who can preach some and alleviate some of the burden on me. I immensely enjoy what I am doing as a missionary and pastor, but at times I would like some help and relief occasionally.
 

Please note that I keep copies of these prayer updates on my website at this page. http://www.davidcox.com.mx/usa/our_prayer_letters/prayerletters.htm
I just checked it and on my website nothing has been posted since March 2006, even though in Microsoft Frontpage on my computer I have through November 2006. I am trying to fix this.
 

Please also note that I will start posting my prayer updates on the esnips.com website. My folder at esnips.com is http://www.esnips.com/web/CoxPrayerUpdates. I will also have some photos and documents that you can print to make prayer cards and missions promotional material. Please check there in a month or so.
 

Note that this page is off of my website (in case my site is down for some reason) and it will have my most recent prayer letter, and my prayer letter archives. I get around 500 to 1000 emails per day, and sometimes as many as 2000 in a day. If you are like me, you probably lose some emails from real people in the junk filters. This page has on the right side an RSS feed. If you don't know what that is, it is a automatic way to check for news. You need an RSS feed reader, or an email client like Thunderbird which has it included. Set up the Thunderbird RSS account for that page, and every time there is a new file or new post, you will receive a simple email with the link to the page. In Thunderbird, you will be able to read it in you email reader (it shows up in the top part under blogs and news). I am going to try this because I think a lot of my prayer letters are getting deleted without anybody seeing them. You do not need to register with esnips to read or download these things.
 

In Christ,
David and Tule Cox
 

IMPORTANT PRAYER REQUESTS
1. Provision and jobs for our church members.
2. Evangelism of our are, and getting converts into our church.
3. Pray for our country, Mexico, as political unrest is high because of the economic conditions here.