Baptism

On Friday we had our churches second baptism outing. We rented the same pool as last year and baptized 6 more youth! Because its summer some of the youth were away and could not make it so it could have been around 10. Hopefully before summer ends we will be able to baptize those who could not make it. We rented two jeepny's (just imagine a jeep with an extended back with two benches in it) and packed them full of people. It was a lot of fun and around 40 people came out!

The past few weeks had been very challenging for me. It started becoming clear that the church was becoming too much for Rodel to handle lately. We are not just serving youth anymore but have two service and have all ages. When we started it was manageable but we have really grown and had to accept the reality. It started really bringing us all apart because I was constantly frustrated and was not being led. So last week Joshua, my team leader and the advisor for all the pastors decided that he needed to step in. So joshua has taken the full leadership for one year, or until Rodel is more capable of handling the responsibility. This will give him the time to get to bible school and be better trained. Also joshua will be spending more time working with him and mentoring him. It was a wise move by joshua and I have already seen and felt the difference. Joshua is a strong leader and this will really help our church!

We do have one big problem that is only getting bigger. At the end of June the rent of our church will run out. The building will also not renew our contract which means we even have to find a new place. Its very very difficult to find a space big enough for us, and if we did it would be very expensive. Our church struggles because we serve the poor in the most expensive place in the city. Our tithes, which are really just the pastors and Rodels mother, just cover the most basic expenses of the church and utilities, us paying rent is literally impossible. We could maybe afford to rent a small office, but a place for our Sunday gather is almost out of the question. I am thankful that I dont have to think in realities of man, but can call on a God who has endless budget. When we were getting the building we are now in last year, it was a complete miracle, and I expect the same to happen again. To put our situation in perspective, our church gets around 150$ a month from tithes. Which is enough for utilities and to give a small budget to the ministries, and then its gone. To get enough space for our church we would need 1000$ just to pay rent, not to mention all the other expenses. My personal monthly support is down, and so you can imagine my worries. We really want to get a big place so that we can actually do sunday school, have a day care and be able to do other ministries for our community, but we are no where near capable. This is something that really needs to be prayed for, because we have invested a lot into this community and we really want to see real change here!

Join us in prayer, because as you can see we really need it! I am very confident that God will provide, He did once and i am sure He will again.

As always thank you all for your love and support!

Brett