What A Party!

We’re coming off of last week pretty tired, but the joy of the Lord is our strength. We had a successful birthday party outreach (thank you for praying!). Here are some of the highlights:

There were 53 people at our party and everyone appeared to have a great time.

Rebecca was blessed and felt special.

We had the help of some potential team members for the church plant and were blessed at watching everyone’s gifts work together.
We met some new neighbors…in fact, while not everyone we invited showed up we had some people come that we didn’t even know.

I had to go up to two families and introduce myself because I hadn’t seen them before. Fabiola had invited Adelso & Faustina (Tina) when she saw them walk by with their two young children the day before the party. They live on our block and surprised us by coming. They were super appreciative to the invitation and stayed late. Fabiola went and visited them this week and enjoyed a great time at their house for some coffee. The other group was Patricia, her daughter Ashanti, her niece and mother. Fabiola and Rebecca had met them about 2 or 3 days before the party at the park. A few days ago they went over to her house to play to continue to build relationship with them.

Last minute sound system donation. We were set up to use our little boom box, but a neighbor pulled out a serious sound system and really helped transform the ambiance of the party. He even set up a microphone and helped DJ the party. We played Spanish children’s music, then we transitioned into Children’s praise music in Spanish and ended with a great Spanish Praise and Worship set.

A new friend and her daughter made up awesome party favor bags for the children that blessed our guests and us!
Finances provided for the event! We went in to this party believing that God was leading us, but were still amazed at how God took care of the details—including the cost of the party! Hug from Soila. Soila is leaving the gang culture and someone that has been meeting with us semi-regularly. (She and her boyfriend can’t come to our evening meetings because she is fearful that one of her ex-boyfriend gang members will try to shoot her current boyfriend Miguel.) She is trying to get her life back in line. Fabiola was blessed to see how their relationship has been growing in trust and endearment as demonstrated through a great hug at the end of the party.
Teresa and her family couldn’t make it that evening to the party, but they called the next day and asked if they could stop by. So Teresa, her grown daughter and two of her grandchildren (Rebecca’s age) came by and spent a great time with us. It is exciting how several of our new friends have presented us to meet other family members. Our level of penetration into the community continues to expand through these relationships.

Other Updates

We continue to meet regularly during the week with a variety of people. Here are a few stories from those meetings and relationships:

One of our goals is that everyone will be active and involved. Participation and ownership are important as we help people come to know Jesus more and serve one another in their gifting and talents. How exciting it is that Primo and Vere (pictured below) in wanting to include their family more had us move the prayer and study time we had at our house to their house. We now meet with two of Primo’s sisters Dora and Blanca and some of their children (Aurora, Araceli, Anthony) and their mother Nacha. Vere helps direct the flow of our time, sharing the verses she and Primo have been memorizing, challenging others to memorize it too, asking questions about the Bible and making song requests—even leading to songs to some extent. Both Dora and Blanca have taken ownership (without our asking) of making and preparing food for all of us. There is something very special and powerful about our times together.

Prayer for this family: There still are serious prayer needs for this family however. Pray that both Dora and Blanca’s husbands will get involved, that Giovanni (Dora’s oldest son, in high school) would participate and actually talk with his mother (he rarely does). Also lift up Primo and Vere as they continue to struggle with finances and have ups and downs in their relationship as they work out their new found relationship with Jesus. While we’re all meeting together only Primo and Vere have made confessions of faith and real steps to follow God, so while the others are beginning to experience and understand and move in that direction we can’t wait until it is their turn to have their names written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Zaira who meets with us on Wednesday evenings asked to come over and pray for us. She and Fabiola meet one-on-one during the week and after that meeting she felt directed by the Lord to come and pray for us. What a blessing to have somebody you’ve been ministering to come and minister to you! Since that time she has continued to do things on her own imitative such as bring donuts to a meeting to share with the group and reach out to Carlos and offer him prayer and words of consolation as he shared the news of his brother getting killed in Guatemala last week.
Please pray for Zaira’s boyfriend, Francisco, who I meet with on a weekly basis. He has slipped back into a drug habit and is walking around in a lot of shame and feeling worthless unable to move forward. Pray for wisdom as I meet with him and victory over this chain in his life.

Gifts for our Church
As we approach the Christmas season we’d like to offer some practical ways you could help this ministry as we continue to share the Good News and pour our lives into future leaders.

We’d like to have Bibles on hand for group study times as well as some to hand out to people that are beginning to study the Word with us and don’t have a copy of the Word. We are also working on memorizing Scripture with various people and would like to reward them with a nicer study type Bible once they get to 10 verses memorized.

We’d also like to have some Praise and Worship CDs in Spanish that we can use to learn more songs to sing in our groups, bless others with and move towards raising up some worshipers in our midst.

If you would like to bless us and our community please consider sending us:
Praise & Worship CDs in Spanish
(Any title or musician. Especially Marcos Witt, Jesús Adrián Romero, Danilo Montero, or songs in English that have been translated into Spanish)
Spanish Bibles (Old & New Testament)
Any of these three versions:
Reina Valera 1960 or
La Biblia de las Américas or
NVI (Nueva Version Internacional)

Please send any CDs or Bibles to: Chad & Fabiola Wolyn/ 2001 S. Vermont Ave. / Los Angeles, CA 90007
Thanks you!

Prayer

Please pray for these upcoming events:
Thanksgiving Dinner. We plan on having about 12-15 of our new friends over for a time to give thanks as a community and enjoy food and fellowship. We will provide the majority of the food, but are asking that people come over for the day to help make different dishes and contribute in some way to the final meal. Pray that it would be a refreshing and powerful time for everyone where Christ is the center.

Christmas at THE OAKS. December 5 we will be taking a group of people to World Impact’s Christian Camp and Conference Center, THE OAKS. This will be a time for all of us to have a lot of fun and celebrate the true meaning of Christmas together outside of the stresses and distractions of the city. (There will be crafts, sports, hayride, great food, and then I’ll be sharing a message about the significance of Christmas in our lives today). Pray that we’d be able to take the right group of people and that great fruit would come from this. (More information coming on this later.)

Pray that people would receive the word in their hearts (good soil), have a desire for Him and not get distracted and caught up in the things of the world (seek Him first, and trust Him). Also that they would have the desire to serve the Lord and work for His Kingdom.

Pray for our family’s health (physical, emotional, spiritual) and our continued intimacy with our Father.

Glad we’re all in this together!
Chad, Fabiola, Rebecca and Justice

A Fire Is Burning

“Prayer is the mighty engine that is to move the missionary work” (A.B. Simpson, founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance) Thank you for helping move this ministry forward through your prayers.

As we move closer to launching a church in our neighborhood we are blessed to be continually meeting new people and growing in the depth of these relationships. We currently have a weekly meeting in our home where we are praying, studying the Bible and growing in relationship while we help equip and empower one couple that just gave their lives to Christ and another who has a lot of interest in Jesus, but haven’t yet surrendered all to Him. We have a Children’s program and teacher as well since we’ve been averaging five children. We hope to see a couple more of these fellowship and study times start up in the next two months in other people’s homes…maybe even started by those that come to our Monday group. One of our foundational values as a forming church is summed up in this quote by M. Stachura, “The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity.” The recent fire in the Angeles NF sent ash over the Rocky Mountains and beyond and was visible from the heavens (space). We desire to burn and stir up others to burn even hotter and longer than this forest fire…so much so that we cannot be contained and the ash (fruit) would reach the farthest reaches of the Earth, touching every people group. Pray with us that this church would have such an impact and reach—touching lives both here in Los Angeles and throughout the World.

Specifically, to continue to build and grow relationships, we are planning a party to celebrate Rebecca’s fourth birthday. We are inviting many of the neighborhood children and their families. Please pray that not only will it be a special time for our daughter, but that we might see people come closer to God through this ‘outreach’.

Please also pray with us for:
· Team members for the launch of the church.
· To get into homes (on their ‘turf’) to deepen relationships that we have beyond the surface level.
· Protection, unity and rest for our family.