Fighting for the Treasure Locked up in the Men

As we continue to faithfully pour into the relationships that God has allowed us to have with our neighbors here in South Central Los Angeles we are seeing a need become more and more evident. While socially we have been able to interact and connect with a lot of families most of the families come out to our weekly meetings without the man of the house. It is incredible to see how the women and children are growing in their faith in the Lord and how we as a local body of believers are growing closer with one another, but where are the men? Here are some staggering statistics (from churchformen.com):

·On an average Sunday in the US, six million married women will worship without their husbands. That’s one out of five. The average congregation is 61 percent female and 39 percent male.

·About 90 percent of the boys who are raised in church abandon it during their teens and twenties. Most never return.

·Most churchgoing guys are “lifers” who grew up in church. Men are the hardest group to reach.

Please join us in prayer this month for the men of Los Angeles especially those that are in our immediate sphere of influence. The weekend before Father’s Day, our church, Fuente para las Naciones, will be taking a group of men to World Impact’s “Retiro de Hombres” (Men’s Retreat) where the theme will be ‘Fighting for the victory and treasure that we have in Christ’. This will be a time of great Bible teaching and fellowship with a lot of great adventure and challenge activities, sports and, of course, some great food.

According to many studies, (see Why Religion Matters: The Impact of Religious Practice on Social Stability by Patrick Fagan, Ph.D.) families that worship together not only provide strength to their own family, but to their community – often leaving poverty, addictions and other social problems behind. When we live our life the way God created us to live we see His blessings overflow into all areas of our life.

Please pray with us for these three key areas:
·That the men God has been hand selecting would come out for the Men’s Retreat (June 11-13) and that they would all be drawn closer to God (either accept the Lord or grow in their faith with the Lord).

·For these men specifically as we believe they are on the verge of breakthrough: Primo, Adelso, Carlos, Alejandro, Daniel, Jesus, Urbano, Sergio, Cesar, Florentino, Saul, Jose, Juan Carlos and Giovanni.

·For marriages. That God would continue to give us wisdom on how to council couples, but even more that they would walk in unity, godliness and purity. That couples would communicate with one another and their children in a God-honoring manner.

Fighting for the treasure locked up in the men in South Central Los Angeles,

Chad & Fabiola Wolyn

Stop By and Stay a While

We’ve really come to embrace the art of “stopping in.” At our home we are glad and count it an honor to receive guests formally and informally (pre-planned and scheduled as well as surprise visits). We also love to “pop in” and visit other homes without having to call ahead and just spending quality time and maybe enjoy a small meal or drink. From the American/western mind-set there are times that seem inopportune where the space and time of ‘home’ is sacredly personal, but as we embrace living in our predominantly Hispanic community and seeing our neighborhood, city and the nations won for Christ we realize that those boundaries are not necessary or beneficial. This month we would like to share with you some of our visits and visitors and hope that you will pray with us that they will keep coming and “stay a while,” in other words that they will connect to God and His local church body, Fuente para las Naciones.

Visiting Homes
We have really enjoyed walking around our neighborhood and visiting the children and parents that came out to our VBS last month – there were 146 children and we visited every one of them that live in our neighborhood (which was about 140 of them). Maribel and Jacobo live across from the park diagonally across from us and have five children between 2 and 10 years old. On one of our visits to their home they invited us into their home and over a glass of limonada (fresh lemonade) began to open up about their life and needs (from raising their children, to fighting drug and alcohol addiction, to staying caught up on bills while hours are being continually cut at work). Knowing that we were from the church they asked us for help, but then Jacobo said, “I’m not really interested in getting involved in religion.” We shared that we weren’t visiting them to get them involved in religion, but to offer them what God had planned and intended for their lives from the beginning. Jacobo responded, “Oh, in that case, definitely – that is what we want.” They have invited us back to their home to study the Bible and work through some of these needs with them from God’s perspective on a weekly basis.

Please pray for these times to be fruitful, that both Maribel and Jacobo would be there and that what God wants to do in their lives would be accomplished.

Alegria’s Pupusas
We’ve also gotten to know Alegria from El Salvador during these visits to homes. During a conversation started over food and culture (great topics by the way!) Fabiola invited her over to our house to teach everyone at our Bible study on Wednesday night how to make the famous Salvadorian stuffed tortillas called pupusas. It was a great opportunity for our church to get to know her and her to get to know us.

We are now praying that we can continue to strengthen our relationship with Alegria and her husband and two children. Would you pray with us that they would come out again to study God’s word and fellowship with us again?

Friends from Preschool
The other night we invited one of Rebecca’s new friends from preschool, Giselle, her parents, Marta, Rigo and baby sister over for dinner. After four hours nobody wanted to leave because we were all having such a great time getting to know one another and the kids were having a blast playing with one another. We were surprised to hear that in nine years of living in the United States they have never been invited over to somebody else’s house to eat and spend quality time together. Both Marta and Rigo are very open to learning more about Jesus.

We are excited and blessed that Giselle (pictured above playing with Rebecca), has been such a great friend for Rebecca and now ask that you pray with us that this family may come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

A visit from ‘afar’
We were so blessed by Abiding Place Christian Fellowship (pictured above) ‘stopping in’ on us and praying for and with us; doing service projects, helping us get away and rest up a little, minister with us and so much more. There are too many highlights to share, but one definitely was the movie night we asked you to pray about last month. Our core church group all came out to our house and enjoyed the experience together on the big screen along with plenty of delicious, buttery popcorn – we will definitely have to do something like that again as we saw deeper community being grown within the larger group, an opportunity for people to invite friends of family to participate and really left us all thinking about the powerful message of faith and following Christ presented in the movie.

Chavela’s Art Class
During one of our weekly Bible studies located at somebody else’s house one of the host’s adult daughters came over. During a brief conversation we discovered that she was talented and interested in various types of artwork. Fabiola asked if she would be willing to come and teach the women’s group the following week how to do one of the art projects (metal relief). She agreed and again there was a great opportunity for us to continue building relationships both within the group and with new people that we are meeting.

Please pray for Chavela, the lady that came out to teach us (pictured above at top of picture in white), her two boys and her also had joined us for our Easter potluck after the service – we are now praying that she will come and “stay a while.”

Please Pray With Us For:

·Men’s Retreat - June 11-13

·Sports Club at South Park – June 15-17

·WOW Jam Outreach at South Park – June 21

·Maribel & Jacobo, Alegria, Chavela, Marta & Rigo and their families (all mentioned above).

·Our team: Chad, Fabiola and Norma. Tiffany, who has been a part of our team since starting the church planting phase in January, had to return to Chicago and so will no longer be a part of the ministry here in South Central Los Angeles. She will be missed in many ways as a team member and a friend/sister in Christ. We trust God and look to Him to provide the missing pieces and the strength to continue strong in what He has us to do with a smaller team.



Thanks for ‘stopping by’ and reading and praying with us.

We appreciate you and send our love,
Chad, Fabiola, Rebecca and Justice Wolyn

Working Together - United in Purpose

We are here in Los Angeles not only to make disciples, raise up leaders and plant churches, but to see God’s Kingdom advance in every direction and dimension leading to a church-plant movement.

Part of keeping us healthy spiritually, emotionally and relationally and on track with this purpose is a monthly meeting with other area pastors to fellowship, encourage and resource one another.

The purpose of The Urban Pastors Association (UPA) is to glorify God by expanding and advancing God’s Kingdom among the urban poor through the making of disciples and church planting. We come from churches of all different sizes and shapes, but we all hold to this purpose. The first Saturday morning of every month we get to see and experience God’s commanded blessing (Psalm 133) and a renewed sense of hope and strength through this band of brothers and sisters working for Jesus in unity.

We recognize that though God has big plans for our church Fuente para las Naciones it is still just a piece of the big global picture of what God is doing. As we mentioned in our last post, we got to see that first hand at a conference geared for pastors throughout Mexico at Fabiola’s home church in Puebla, Mexico. This was a huge time of being refreshed and further equipped for the task before us. There was such a generous outpouring of love and prayer. It is amazing being united in purpose and vision internationally as well as locally.

Thank you for your faithful prayers as we continue to work together to see that, as many as possible, people might know our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,

Chad and Fabiola Wolyn

Wasn't That Fun!

Updates
Thank you for your prayers! Here is a look back at highlights of the last month (it’s so fun to serve the Lord!):

Kid’s Club (VBS)
The week leading up to Easter we had a marvelous time sharing the Easter story with children and their parents at our Vacation Bible School (VBS) at the park. For the last two weeks we have been diligently working at visiting every family in their homes and building more relationship off of our time together at the park. Not only were many families blessed, but we were able to build and deepen some other strategic relationships in the neighborhood. Please continue to lift up these families in prayer!

Kid’s Club 2010

5 days of Bible stories, crafts, games, songs & a whole lot of fun!

146 children participated in our VBS

3 high school youth groups came to help

275 hot dogs served at our mid-week family BBQ

700 candy-filled eggs were eagerly found

The kid’s cycled through stations where they learned a Bible story, did a craft that reinforced that story, played games and enjoyed a snack. They had memory verses and sang lots of fun action songs. As the children we’re busy having fun and being loved we connected with the parents. (Fabiola, pictured below in white, was able to sit and get to know more parents every day.)

We had children separated into age groups. It was exciting to see that as the youngest group heard the gospel presented every day their parents were sitting with them hearing the same Good News!

Easter Sunday
The whole week of Kid’s Club was to designed to bless the community, build more relationships and lead up to our first ever Sunday service. We had a nice group of people gathered at our house. Everyone that normally attends during the week came along with a few others that we hadn’t yet met.Pictured above, Fabiola teaches the older children during our first Sunday worship service out behind our house. We had some volunteers from World Impact help us with our nursery class.

Two primary goals in having us meet together was first to bring all our different groups (cell groups that meet during the week) together since they have never met one another. The second goal was to give everyone in the church a chance to get involved and serve in some way. As I (Chad) shared the Easter message I emphasized this point and we were ecstatic to see how from the moment the message was over every detail imaginable was taken care of. We had a huge potluck out at the park, Easter egg hunt, games and fun fellowship. Every detail from the BBQ to chairs and tables being set up, clean up, game organization, everything was taken up by the people. We were also blessed to see that they did mingle and get to know one another naturally without us organizing anything to facilitate this. The food was great, but the fellowship and richness of being together as a newly formed body of believers was much greater. Continue to pray for us as we grow.Above, some of the Fuente para las Naciones children show off the eggs they found. Below, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus together with the classic pot luck!

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” – Henry Ford

Mexico
Thank you for praying for us while we were at the pastor’s conference in Mexico. We were able to meet a lot of great men and women of God some whom we are sure we’ll be working with more in the future as our churches expand and send people out to continue evangelizing, discipling and planting more churches throughout the nations. We were stirred up in our faith and in many ways had a spiritual retreat that prepared us to come back to Los Angeles refreshed and ready to work all the more passionatly and focused on what God is doing here. Even though we were very busy visiting people the whole time the change of pace and enviornment was very healthy for us and has allowed us to rekindle some of the heart for the city that God has given us.

We stayed with Fabiola’s sister and got to see her mom and dad every day, which was great for all of us. Rebecca and Justice got to know their cousins, aunts and uncles better too, which was great – and knowing they were having fun with family allowed us to do some of the things at the conference without thinking about how they were doing.

We were appreciated and showered with blessings. The women’s group rallied the congregation to shower us with gifts, which they called ‘Christmas in March’, to show their love and support of our family. The generosity, hospitality, sincerety and passion for the Lord that the pastors, leaders and people of God have for Jesus and His Kingdom are contagious and humbling.

On our last day we were honored in front of the entire congregation of over 3,000 people where we were sent out from Mexico (Fabiola’s home church) to plant the church Fuente - Los Angeles with their love and prayers. This formal act demonstrates how much prayer, love and support is really coming from Mexico and part of the reason we are seeing fruit here in this hardened city of Angeles.

Please Pray With Us
·Pray that we would build trust and show love as we seek to build relationships with our neighbors, especially as we continue to visit every child that came to VBS – that’s a lot of homes! Pray that hearts would be open and ready to receive the Good News!

·Some friends from Abiding Place Christian Fellowship will be coming to support us in various ways this coming week (March 19-23). Please cover this time in prayer as we prayer walk the community, do some outreach and evangelism as well as a variety of other projects.

·Big Screen Family Movie Night (Facing the Giants/Desafio a los Gigantes) Tuesday, March 20 – After teaching about how being a disciple means making disciples and sharing about our relationship with Jesus with others, this will be the first event for our church where we’ve encouraged people to invite friends, relatives and neighbors. Up to this point we’ve focused on meeting people at the park or passing out fliers. This is special because it will allow us to meet people that are connected already to our existing relationships. Pray that converting our home into a movie theater will go well and many new people will come out.

·Men’s Retreat - June 11-13— The majority of our church is made up of women and children. We ask that you would pray with us that we could take a good group of guys up to the World Impact camp, THE OAKS, for this year’s Men’s Retreat. Pray specifically for Primo, Adelso, Carlos, Alejandro, Daniel, Jesus, Urbano and Florentino. Some of these men are faithfully attending our cell groups, but others we know only socially because their wives come out faithfully. Please pray for some breakthrough in the lives of these men…many who are struggling to make ends meet and some who have other addictions or problems they are dealing with right now.

·Please continue to cover our family in your prayers. Pray against sickness. Pray that we would be good parents and Rebecca and Justice would be good children. Also lift up our unity and the balance in our work load – we want to honor God in all that we do and all that we don’t do. We know there is an abundance of wisdom that God will continue to pour down on us so that we can be more than victorious.

Enjoying His Presence & Loving to Serve His People,
Chad & Fabiola

Reaching As Many Families As Possible

As we lay the foundations of this new church we have been called to plant, God has been bringing us a lot of families. Part of our vision is to minister as a whole family and so it is exciting for us to see that God has made reaching families a cornerstone part of the strategy of planting Fuente para las Naciones. Every Sunday we have a team of volunteers come out from various churches and help us put on a children’s ministry aimed at both reaching the kids and integrating the whole family in the process. The children explore and experience the love of Jesus Christ and the richness of the community of believers through quality time with our team, a time of games and recreational activities, interactive messages, praise songs, small groups and arts & crafts. As the children are having fun learning about Jesus we meet with the parents. The goal of our time with the parents is to empower and equip them to raise godly children. In our meetings we share the gospel, include them in the activities with the children and have a special small group time for them to share their life and apply what is going on. This time has been one of the most fruitful times for us to invite people out to our church services. The week leading up to Easter we will be blessed with the partnership of some high school youth groups from three different cities to help us put on a vacation Bible school (VBS) type program for children in our neighborhood at the park in front of our house. We are preparing for a huge turnout. We believe this will not only give us more opportunity to get to know people in our community, but will build up momentum to our celebration service Easter Sunday. Please be praying that both the VBS outreach and the Easter Sunday service go as God has planned and many people commit their lives to Him. Please also pray that we may responsibly take care of everyone that we meet and help them walk into a healthy and mature relationship with Christ. With all these exciting opportunities to be out and about in the community and reach families we are confronted with the challenge of childcare and children’s ministry during our regular meeting times. Since our team is so small we do not yet have enough people to help lead the children, babies and adults simultaneously. We currently need help with our Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning and Sunday morning children's programs. We know that God has some great and creative solutions so please pray with us that we would discover what they are and continue to grow into what God has called us to become here in South Central Los Angeles.

Celebrating our Risen King with many families!
Chad & Fabiola

Concentric Circles

Updates
Lately as we faithfully focus on feeding the “one” – the “one” being each person as the important and unique individual that they are, made special and loved immensely by God – we have seen the concentric circles forming, radiating out from this one’s sphere of influence, drawing others to come and eat as well.

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” (Mat. 4:4)

“So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11)

Continually Increased Ownership
We’ve had some amazing study times with Blanca, Dora, Nacha, Primo and Bere lately. We asked them to read through the gospel of Mark during the week. With us mostly looking on they spent over an hour just sharing with one another all the exciting things they read, re-reading entire sections, so that everyone could hear how amazing it all really is. Fabiola was with the five children and I just helped answer any questions that came up and sat in awe of the hunger and excitement of the whole study.

As we’re away in Mexico (see below) they have been given charge of the group – which is our ultimate goal anyway. We have modeled how to lead a Bible study and now two of them will take turns hosting and leading. Our teammate Norma will be there if they need some guidance, but they are really excited about the opportunity to grow more as they lead one another in studying God’s word.

The Circle Continues to Expand
The women that meet with Fabiola every Tuesday have been calling a lot to invite us over to meet more of their family and friends or get advice about something. We’ve been able to take two youth to World Impact’s teen youth program so far and sense more are interested. Also, about a week ago we went to meet Marisol’s brother-in-law who has a lot of struggles, severe depression being one of them. As we were sharing the Good News with him, Marisol realized she needed to get right with God. Fabiola and Marisol prayed right there – a prayer of repentance and gratitude for salvation in front of this family member. This week at the women’s meeting she said to the group, “I don’t care what my family says to me about my beliefs because they aren’t the ones that are going to save me or give me peace. God has done that for me.” Please pray for Marisol that she might continue to walk and mature in that peace. Pray with us also for her large family, that they all might come to know Jesus and Lord and Savior.

Jesús and Emily

Above: Emily

After meeting Jesús and his adorable daughter Emily playing soccer together at the park, we struck up a new friendship and were invited to Emily’s 4th birthday party. Although we tried to do the culturally correct thing and show up late we were only 45 minutes late and ended up being the first ones to show up. (Side note: 1 hour late is very normal; it didn’t really get going until we left about 3 ½ hours later!) Being the only ones there however provided us a wonderful opportunity to get to know Jesús, his wife, Betty and her mom, Maria, better. Since then we have had Emily over to play with Rebecca and this week we went over to their house for a delicious “caldo de camarón” (shrimp soup) and a chance to get to go deeper in our relationship. They seem very curious about God and church and asked some good questions. Please pray with us for Jesús, Betty, Maria and Emily that God would really move on their heart’s and prepare them to come to Him.

Above: Rebecca get’s her face painted by a clown at Emily’s birthday party as Jesús looks on.

Answered Prayer
We now have set up a rotation of teachers for our Children’s classes that take place while we are meeting with the families on our Wednesday night cell group service. We have two ladies that are teaching at the World Impact school and a couple others stepping in from outside churches that we’ve been building relationships with. Thank you for praying with us about this need.

Upcoming Events/Prayer Request

Mexico
We will be in Mexico from March 15–29. We will be part of a Pastor’s Conference at Fabiola’s home church in Puebla, Mexico and visiting several other cites and churches to raise awareness of our mission’s work and ask for prayer as we continually look for more ways and potential future links to expand the Kingdom of God by reaching all nations. Our last trip to Mexico helped us really ramp up our prayer support and break through some spiritual barriers and we are believing for more of that this time as well. During these two weeks Fabiola and the kids will also have a good time between all of this activity to spend time with her mom, dad, sisters and the extended family. This family time may be the most important part of the trip as it is critical re-charging time for Fabiola who gives so much of herself to the church planting efforts relationally, emotionally and spiritually.

Holy Week & Easter
Did you know that a survey that was conducted in 2005 showed that only 48% of people surveyed knew that Easter was connected with the resurrection of Christ! (Source: Sydney Morning Herald, 3/25/05)

We will be putting on a Kid’s Club (Vacation Bible School style) during Spring Break— Monday thru Friday (3/29 – 4/2) at our park, South Park. We have three different high school groups helping us make this happen. We anticipate over 100 kids and hope that we can connect with families throughout this week. On Wednesday we will have a large BBQ for the children and their families which will be followed by our evening Bible Study time for those who are interested.

Easter Sunday we will gather all of the people we have been meeting with weekly in various homes together for the first time, have a great service celebrating the resurrection and of course lots of great food and fun activities for the whole family. Please pray for all of the details to come together and not get in the way of the joyous purpose of us getting together in the first place.

Thank you for your continued prayers and encouragement.

He is risen indeed!
The Wolyn Family
Chad, Fabiola, Rebecca and Justice

The Vision of Fuente para las Naciones

Last month we introduced our team to you, this month we’d like to tell you more about the church we are planting. Our name, Fuente para las Naciones, or in English “Fountain for the Nations” brings with it some symbolism that helps explain our vision. Water - Starting with the essential, purpose and presence (for without the water the fountain would be just a heap of material that ‘looks good’) the water is God’s presence flowing through us.

Fountain - We, the church, are the fountain, the receptacles, jars of clay that have been given the honor and opportunity to be filled by God. Fuente can also be translated as “Source” and so in that sense God is the Fuente. We are not anything worth giving to the nations, but it is Christ in us that we give and that releases power to heal and save lives.

Nations - The nations are every people, tribe, language and nation—every ethnic group on the earth. This is our mission field, our hope is to see the Earth (people) filled, refreshed and freed by the Living Water of Jesus. We are a congregation that is filled with God and pours out so that all might experience the goodness and richness of God’s glory and power.

Like the bridegroom in Song of Solomon 6:2-3 we are able to come into the garden with the whole flock and still delight in the Lord and pick the lilies—not being distracted by the flock (the ministry, the many needs), but allowing the flock to eat of the richest grass around straight from where the Source of water and nourishment is located. We minister out of intimacy with God.

Fuente para las Naciones is a Christian community of believers united in our love for God by God’s love for us that is fulfilling God’s call to a hopeless, hurting world. Out of the riches we experience in God’s presence we will bring the ministry of reconciliation, a true fountain of hope, truth, love and justice, to the world–restoring God’s original purpose of His Kingdom’s reign and rule.

Our church, both locally and globally will be part of God’s arm in extending mercy, justice, truth and love to people near and far. The mission of Fuente para las Naciones is to gather together in the inner room and meet God and then leave proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ extending the Kingdom of God through the training of people, families and leaders first in our city and then to the ends of the earth.

Our Purpose is to worship and honor God and delight in Him, help one another grow sharing our gifts and talents in love, and minister to the world in word and deed to make Jesus known. We want to see the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole person throughout the whole world. We don’t want to be a church with a missions program, but a global church with a missions purpose.

As Anatole Frace said, “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” So far we have three established cell groups (25+ people). Please pray that we can add many more and gather everyone together in a corporate celebration service. We are believing for 120 people in the first year and want to raise up 12 strong leaders in three years.

Blessed that you are praying with us for great things!

Chad & Fabiola Wolyn