Team Expansion: Venezuela

Growing in Venezuela

We praise God that we continue to see Him work with power in Venezuela! The Sunday attendance for the eight Team Expansion church plants has grown: in January 754; in February 891 and then in March 937!

Many are coming to the Lord: we were blessed to see 42 baptisms in the quarter with 17 of those in March!

Three of the baptisms were the first fruit in the Cua church plant as you can see in the following photo.

Please pray for Dani and Neomar, a young couple; and Dani’s brother Carlos. We’re doing new believer class for them on Wednesday nights and there are now six unsaved people attending.

It’s neat that we don’t have a building because we end up doing baptisms in great places!

Caracas on NPR

“National Public Radio” did a series of reports last week on South American
cities. The one on Caracas is interesting -- it's about 8 minutes long, and
tells only part of a much larger story. Even though it’s brief, the report
is helpful in providing some good context for the situation in Venezuela. To
listen to the story, go to this web page:

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1787749

and click on the link that says “Morning Edition audio” toward the top of
the page. (You need to have RealPlayer installed.)

Riots Calm

This just in from our team of workers in Caracas...

"Thank you for your prayers these last few days. We are happy to announce that things have begun to calm down. Earlier today I was able to drive around the usual places, with no road blocks. There didn't seem to be any protest going on except for at a few focal points. The national guard and local police have helped clean the streets from the debree. Also I have not heard about anyone we know getting hurt in any way. There is a march scheduled for saturday, so pray that it will be a quite march and it will not get out of hand, which will probably take a miracle. pray that it wont affect our service sunday, we already had a real low attendance last week because of a march. ...

Thanks for your prayers, and keep them coming.

Love, John, Zandra and Julia Dye

Prayer Requests

Pray for the growth and health of the Guatire Christian Church as they seek a new pastor.

Praise God for 254 in attendance for the Hoy con Cristo congregations 12 th aniversay.

Pray that God will enable the Mission Team to establish 12 churches by 2010.

Pray that our camp ministry will continue to see fruit.

Pray that God would raise up: Diego Polanco, Jerry Marin, Celedonio, and Richard Silva as pastors.

The time is now...

1. Less than 5% of the population of Caracas (4-5 million people) are evangelical Christians. There are fewer than 20 Christian Church missionaries in the city. Obviously, the need in Venezuela is great.
2. The people are responsive to the message of Jesus.
3. Outstanding missionaries already serving on the Venezuelan team.
4. Projections say the largest population group in the U.S. by the year 2020 will be Hispanic. This affects us all, especially our children.
5. Proximity with the U.S. enhances the availability of short-term mission teams and visits from supporters.
(Source: Team Expansion missionaries' Steve & Teresa Murphy's web page.)

2003 Field Report

Venezuela Field Report – December 2003
By Eric Barry

Dear Friends:

It’s time for the year-end recap. We’re going to take the goals as they appeared in the January 2003 newsletter. We’ll print the goal in bold, and then in italics we’ll report on progress (or failure) toward achieving that goal.

1. To see the church grow from 159 to 250 in Sunday morning attendance and to help Hoy Con Cristo stage two Sunday morning services.

The church grew from 159 to 201 in average attendance. So we failed to hit the goal, on the other hand the church did grow 26%! We also were able to go to two Sunday morning services.

2. To baptize 40 people into Christ.
Thanks to the Lord – we baptized 45 into Christ!

3. To see the offerings increase from 4,000,000 Bolivares a month to 6,000,000.

Here again we achieved the goal as the last five months offerings were as follows: 6.141.476 – Aug.;
4.588.041 Bs. – Sept.;
5.568.641 Bs. – October;
11.556.330 Bs. – Nov.;
6.097.710 Bs. – Dec.
We praise God for the generosity of the Venezuelan churches. Although the Church does not yet have it’s own building, it’s giving over 10 % a year to missions. (Note: $1 equals 2,700 Bs.)

4. To train the following:
• Diego – as the pastor of the church.
• Marlon and Franklin preacher training.
• Janett Lisi – cell leader.

All these folks were trained and are serving in those areas!

5. To see the Tuesday Night Leadership training meeting grow from 30 to 45 by June.

In April, May and June we taught our Old Testament Seminar and the meeting grew to that size!

....
We thank you so much for your support and prayers – 2003 was a glorious year for us in so many ways! Next month we’ll be sharing goals for 2004 – may God continue to bless!

With love in Christ,
Eric & Chris Barry