Making Space

Updates

As the church that we have planted continues to need more space we have been praying and looking for a suitable location to meet during the week and for our Sunday service, but have not been able to find anything that is realistically within our reach as a church.  So, after much prayer, we have decided to move our family out of the house allowing for the church to use our current home more freely and completely.  This will allow the church to continue to grow and give the emerging leaders the opportunity to take on more responsibility and ownership while the church continues to prepare for that next level of growth. 

We are in the middle of painting and cleaning and packing and hopefully by the end of this month we will be moved – and maybe by the next time we write we’ll even be somewhat settled in…we won’t be too far away from the “new” church building and all of our contact information (phones, addresses) remain the same. 

Thanksgiving

This coming Sunday our church will be serving a large meal to the homeless and other people in need who live in our community at the park in front of our house. 

Next week we will gather our church together for a huge Hispanic flavored Thanksgiving meal. 

We are always looking for ways to make more space – in our stomachs – for this wonderful food as everyone brings the most unique and special flavors.  Have you ever had a turkey prepared in a Guatemalan mole sauce? (pictured above)…We’re becoming famous for that one…!

We will also be distributing food boxes and groceries for those families that are the most in need.  Thank you for the many gifts and donations that have help make these special events possible.

Praise Reports & Answered Prayers

We thank God that through some generous help we were able to replace both of the canopies that we use for our worship service on Sundays (see the nice new canopies in the pictures below).  This happened just in time as the weather changes.  Next week we will be using the outdoor space for our annual Thanksgiving service.  We also had a great one year anniversary service where we looked back and reflected on how far we’ve come since starting to meet every Sunday just one year ago.  Looking at the picture montage we put together and talking about where we have come from stirred the church up to look ahead and launch into a deeper commitment to connect with God and to reach the hurt and broken for Jesus.  

We were blessed by the testimony and music of Lasana (pictured above top) – an African drummer and singer with a great story of how God used an evangelist in his predominately Muslim home country of Liberia to share the Gospel to him while he had been abandoned by his parents because he was blind and “useless”.  Our people resonated with the core message – while they are from different countries and have their sight, they understood the pain of rejection and deep need for the hope of Christ in our lives.  His music really allowed us to rejoice in the Lord. 

Our children had a special birthday party with their friends.  Of the numerous parties we have attended very few of them have any focus – and at times no focus – on the birthday boy or girl.  We went against the cultural grain this time and had a party where the children and children’s activities were the focus.  Parents and kids alike enjoyed themselves and commented on the differences.  

Christmas Giving Opportunities    

-English Bibles for our youth 

-Craft Supplies for our children’s ministry

-Sunday school curriculum

-Instruments (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, keyboard)

-Microwave

Let us know if you would like to give a special gift or send any of the items listed above to help in a practical way as we continue to reach out to the lost and hurting, train-up leaders and plant churches.  We so thank you for making this a team effort – it wouldn’t be possible otherwise

Please Pray with Us…..

üEvangelism & Outreach (Monthly)

The youth group from our church has been going out to share their faith and pray with people in the community.  We are trying to encourage the parents to come along and help more too.

üChristmas at the OAKS  (December 1)

This is our yearly trip up to the OAKS camp for a special day of bonding, activities, crafts and food. 

üSan Diego Missions Trip (December 14-17)

Kevin, one of our youth, had an idea to have us take a missions trip to San Diego.  He is one of the youth that has really caught the vision to reach other people…and even other cities for Jesus. 

üChristmas celebrations

We will be having several church-wide events during the month of December to help us promote the Reason of the Season – Jesus— to our community. 

üFor our move

Moving can be stressful, yet doesn’t have to be.  We are praying for a lot of details to fall into place and the transition of our old house to become a more useful space for the church activities. 

Thank you again for being with us.  We might at times feel alone, but know that there is a mighty cloud of witnesses cheering us on, praying for us and making sure all our needs are being met.  Our life focus on bringing people to Christ is not wasted, nor are we alone.  Thank you for your friendship and loving support.

Happy Thanksgiving! 

Chad & Fabiola

Our Children Know The Great Physician

We are continually amazed at what God is doing here in South Central Los Angeles as we train-up leaders and plant churches. The Good News is getting into people’s hearts and drastically changing them.  We have seen an increase in decisions to follow Jesus, baptisms, new visits and more stepping up into leadership and service these last couple months.  We would like to highlight some of what is happening in the children’s ministry this month.

Sara, one of our youth that we are training in the children’s ministry, was recently teaching about Paul on the island of Malta.  She taught them that at first the natives of the island thought Paul had done something wrong and the snake bite was a deadly punishment.  Later the children heard that the natives began to worship him as a god because he did not die.  The children reacted infuriated that these people were worshipping someone that was not truly God.   The passion they have for the truth was evident.  A strong and ever deepening root in the Word of God has been planted in them over the last two to three years and given them this courage to want to defend their faith and belief in the living God. 

The children also noticed how this passage demonstrates God’s power to do miracles and heal.  Unfortunately, in the period of two weeks, one child’s grandmother died and then her uncle who lived with the family was run over and killed.  Then a friend of another child just died.  The children are being confronted with death at a whole new level.  Yet amidst sharing about these experiences of loosing loved ones came from within the children this desire to ask God for more faith to believe and see miracles. So our class began to pray for a man (an uncle of one of the children) who has an unknown disease in his leg that has caused him to be hospitalized. What an emotional and faith filled time as these children spoke to the great Physician and Healer!

Children are amazing!  They have a seemingly limitless capacity to hear God and call for a touch from their Maker in their lives.  This is our goal…introduce people to Jesus, not just talk about Him and tell stories.  Children and adults alike need to personally know and experience God.  These children’s hearts are full of compassion for their parents and their classmates. While the children are going through hard times – real and bigger-than-life battles – they still come to church and encourage one another.  They also are ‘bringing’ their parents out to church and spurring them on to greater levels of faith and faithfulness.  One of our youth has been going home after Bible studies and opening the Bible and sharing with his non-Christian extended family the amazing truth he is learning and experiencing.

This month we will gather our church together for a huge Hispanic flavored Thanksgiving meal and then go out and share with our community. Our church will be giving hot meals to the homeless and food boxes for those families that are the most in need.  Thank you for partnering with us with your love and encouragement, financial support and prayers!

With thankfulness in our hearts for who you are and what God is doing together through us,

Chad & Fabiola

Stray Dogs

Like many third world countries, stray dogs abound in our neighborhood. It’s not unheard of for a gang of twelve dogs to be tromping around the streets and meandering through the park. Sometimes they are aggressive, but generally they aren’t.  Many of them walk around pregnant and scrawny–scrounging for whatever food they can find.  

Sadly, there are even more stray people here wandering around without purpose. People that have been abandoned and are spiritually sick. They are roaming in and out, just looking to get what they can – to make it through another day.  This is a comparison we don’t particularly like to make, but it is very accurate.  It’s oppressive here.  There is a lot to do.

Pictured above are some stray dogs in our community.  

Top a group at South Park, below a dog makes a home amongst the trash on a street near our home.

Updates

Growth and Expansion

We are by no means done with the work God has given us in this community, but we are committing this next year to pray for further expansion into other neighborhoods – whether that be a growth of our current church plant or a completely new church plant. 

While We Were Away

It was so good to be back to church on Sunday.  We missed two Sundays – something we have never done since we started meeting every Sunday morning about a year ago.  The first week we were gone we were on a much needed vacation.  We came back refreshed and with new drive, passion and vision.  The following week we were on a World Impact missionary staff retreat.  This was also good for us to continue to get training and pour ourselves into the bigger picture of what God is doing amongst the urban poor throughout Los Angeles and the nation. 

While we were gone things continued without a hitch.  In fact, there were several visitors and some powerful testimonies that we got to hear.  We would like to share one testimony that was particularly amazing on several levels.

Camilla’s Testimony

Camilla is a young grandmother who after walking past our church time and time again finally decided to join us.  She has been coming out for a few months now and while we were away came to church with a heavy heart.  She ended up sitting next to Jasmin, a lady who just gave her life to Jesus, and they began talking.  Camilla shared her heartache that while at the doctor’s office with her pregnant daughter they received the horrible news that her baby had spina bifida and was given a 10% chance to live.  Jasmin encouraged Camilla to seek God in prayer.  Camilla shared with the whole church this week that she went home still weighed down in her heart, but hopeful and encouraged by the talk and words of Jasmin.  She opened her Bible and read and read and cried out to God in prayer.  They returned to the doctor this week and the doctor announced that the baby no longer has spina bifida and that the baby now has a 90% chance to live.  The whole church lit up with rejoicing!  (We need to leave more often!)

Please Pray with Us…..

üDogs eating at the table

    Fabiola had a dream this month where there were ravenous, vicious dogs coming to eat at a large banqueting table prepared for a feast.  She felt that the table represented all the amazing things that God is doing in and through our church.  The dogs are the presence of evil.  Later, Norma, one of the ladies who works with us, saw a vicious dog-like animal jump up on her during a team prayer time.  We would ask that you pray for our spiritual protection against the attacks of the enemy.  We are confident God wants to do great and amazing things – and rejoice in what He has already accomplished, but also know that there is evil lurking all around. 

ü  Music Training Workshop  Saturday, October 20

   We want more and more people to be excited about worshipping God and equipped to play instruments in our praise and worship time.  This will be our third time doing a half-day workshop like this.  Pray that students and teachers alike would be inspired, equipped and push deeper into God.

üGuest musician Lasana Kanneh  Sunday, October 21

     While our church worships primarily in Spanish we all have a lot of connections in the workplace, neighborhood and schools that are English-only speakers.  Our church is inviting some of these people to worship with us this coming weekend as we have African, reggae, gospel musician Lasana come from the Portland/Vancouver area to minister to our church.  We will then take him down to MacArthur Park – a large park near downtown LA to minister there at an outreach.

ü Birthday Party  Saturday, October 27

Justice just turned 5 (October 4) and Rebecca will be turning 7 (November 5), so we are inviting all the church and some other friends from school and the community to join in celebrating both of these birthdays.  This will be Justice’s first birthday party ever!

ü  Our “Building”

After almost two years of meeting on our driveway our canopy has given way to the sun, wind and rain. We started Fuente para las Naciones church almost three years ago now.  We started meeting in our living room as a Bible study.  After a year of meeting as a small group in various homes we added a once-a-month Sunday meeting and grew other areas such as our children and youth ministries.  Now we are almost at the end of a year of meeting continuously every Wednesday and Sunday.  We know the church is the people – not the building, but while we pray for more people to meet and grow in Jesus we need an adequate space to come together. 

Our current meeting place (walls come down on Sundays)
has a bit of a sun roof that we've been covering with
extra tarps after a recent storm.  

Please pray for a new building space and for funding to make needed repairs on what we are currently using.  If God prompts you to give financially towards this need please contact us through one of the ways listed at the end of this letter. 

God has given us the city!  It’s happening life by life.  First Jasmin came in strong giving everything to Jesus and now Camilla has seen God’s amazing power and demonstration of love.  There are many strays – spiritually bankrupt people – wandering and hurt, but thanks to your prayers and financial support we get to see the poor say “I am rich” and the weak say, “I am strong.”  Thank you for standing strong along side of us – together we can do a lot.

Full of Christ’s life-giving love,

Chad & Fabiola

Restored by God's Love

You may remember six months ago, in April, when we asked for prayer for Fabiola’s birthday outreach we were planning.  Well, as a result of that event there is a weekly women’s meeting that one of Fabiola’s disciples is leading and hosting in her home. 

Restoration is taking place!  Broken lives are being made whole. God is revealing Himself face-to-face to the women in this group.  Week by week the women are getting closer to one another and to God.  Each week God’s love is more obvious and His voice much clearer to these ladies.  The women are going through a book study addressing their identity in Christ.  Like a rain that just dampens at first, but then in a span of time drenches, God has been persistent in His demonstration of love to these women helping them get to a place where they can comprehend and receive His love.

There are a variety of people in the group, both Christians and non-Christians.  Yet Christ is being made known.  Susana (name changed), one of the non-Christians, had never believed that there really was anything evil and thought that the devil was just a fairy tale character meant to scare us into being good.  Yet suddenly as the group was talking a light came on and Susana saw for the first time that Satan is very real and that he wants to destroy her.  The exciting part is that in that moment she came to grips with the very real, personal and loving God that wants to rescue, save and be close to her.  God has been gently calling her to Himself through this group of women.   

As the group presses in to the biblical truths of how God sees us there has been a growing enthusiasm and desire to learn more about God and the many truth’s found in the Bible.  One of the ladies shared, “I have always known that there were other women out there that were prettier than me, but now I have experienced the power in knowing that God thinks that I am beautiful.  I am not less.  I do not feel inferior to those other women.”     

“I feel God calling me. Not by force, as I have always feared, but by His love and out of His desire to take care of and watch over me.”  The power of the Truth is not just restoring these women, but they are testifying and sharing these things with others.  Please lift this women’s group and the rest of the women in our church and community up in prayer this month.  Pray with us that God’s truth would ignite their hearts ablaze and cause a wildfire to positively destroy everything – the lies, hurts and burdens – that so many are carrying and have grown accustomed to live with.  We believe that the ‘forgotten’ and ‘unloved’ will find freedom in the Truth and rise-up and live out the great calling that God is drawing them into. 

Our faith is growing and so is the church that we are planting!  Thank you for partnering with us as we continue to minister here in the city.  God is taking the hand of these young women and giving them a place to walk out and share His holy love and presence.

In Christ’s amazing and abounding love,

Chad & Fabiola

Daily Victories

There is no shortcut.  Except Jesus.  It still seems long though…the process of being molded and shaped in His image.  We come with rough edges and character deficient of everything that God is, but through His grace we have victory.  Victory lies in overcoming obstacles every day.  Little by little, but not in our own strength.  Here in South Central Los Angeles, we are still caught off guard at times by the tremendous obstacles that people must overcome.  When we see success it is because they have fallen into Christ’s arms, received His embrace and become one of His children.  It’s the only way.  It’s what we are all about.  We want to introduce more people to Jesus!

 

Updates

 

Family Camp

Family Camp this year was fantastic!  There was a great balance of fun, team building and competition with worship, prayer and time in the Word.  We had great fellowship as a church, families had time to rest as families and we had four baptisms too!

 

We broke our church into three groups and each group was responsible to plan and teach a session for the children.  The theme this year was “Transparency”.  We taught on how sin has become a wall between us and God and between us and others.  We talked about the many masks we wear, the blaming and the hiding that takes place.  Several people had breakthroughs as we talked about how Jesus has allowed us to break down those walls and old ways of living and thinking.  As we address these issues people are able to see clearly that God doesn’t just want us “saved”, but also constantly growing in His likeness. 

 

 

 

 

We played a game that illustrated the need to know, hear and obey God’s voice to get to our final destination.  Kids and adults alike were impacted and talking about the new revelations and understanding God was giving them.  

 

The various teams organized different lessons for the children.  One team wrote a puppet show.  They even sewed one of their own puppets and the curtain.  What a great time to build families up and allow God to minister to us from early in the morning until late at night! 

 
 
 

 

Youth

Through small group discipleship times, our new youth group on Fridays and the other corporate church meetings and events our youth have been learning a lot about community in the Body of Christ and about sharing their faith with others. They passed out socks with hygiene packets to the homeless in the park in front of our church recently and were really excited in the challenge of talking to people about Jesus. Pictured below is a group of the youth that went to the LA County Fair for a fun excursion.

 

Leaders in Training

Chad will be going on a retreat with our two Leaders in Training (LITs) Italia and Alex (pictured below) September 22-23 to plan out the year and press into God more. 

Pray that both of these young people would grow leaps and bounds in their personal devotion to Christ, their character and leadership. 

 
Family

Pictured at below are our two children Rebecca (6) and Justice (4) on their first day of school.

They both love being in school. 

We are so thankful for Ms. Hammond (Kindergarten) and Mrs. Abe (Second grade) their wonderful Christian teachers. 

 
 Justice turns 5 on October 4^th!

We can’t believe how fast time flies.  Justice has lived most of his life on the mission field. 

Rebecca’s faith in God is growing deeper.  She is a great older sister – very loving and caring for her brother. 

 

News

The helicopters above us circling seemingly just out of reach and the numerous sirens jetting past our home are part of life here in South Central.  Please pray protection and that Christ’s love and holiness would truly penetrate the hardened hearts and darkness that lurks here. 

 

Here are two events that happened over last two weeks just blocks from us that impacted the families from our church in one way or another:

 

A 100 year old man ran over 9 children and 2 adults as they exited the school (Rebecca’s old school) critically injuring 4.  Thankfully every one ended up living. 

 

 

Bank robbers tossed money out of their car during police chase causing a mob scene.  Many people think that society has robbed them so much that they are entitled to the money they grabbed during what is being called a “Robin Hood” chase. 

 

 
 

 

Please Pray with Us…..

ü  Church without us! 

We are taking a family vacation to refresh and refill and will miss the church gatherings on a Wednesday and a Sunday.  Then the following Sunday we will be away at a World Impact missionary retreat – so what a wonderful opportunity to give our emerging leadership more of an opportunity to do the many things we are doing on a weekly basis. 

They will be running the nursery, the children’s class, the worship, all the set-up and clean-up, teaching the message, even running the Bible club and tutoring programs we have in the afternoon.  Please pray for spiritual protection and growth as they go through this important time without us. (It feels a bit like sending our children off to school on the first day of Kindergarten.)

 

ü  New People Arriving

We have an exciting wave of new visitors coming to the church.  All of them have been invited by people in the church (previously it was all through our invitations).  Pray that we would do a good job integrating and retaining these new arrivals into our church family. 

 

ü  Family grieving the loss of two

Last week one of the ladies from our church lost her mom to a heart attack.  She hasn’t seen her mom for ten years since moving here from Guatemala.  Then we got a call as this letter was being written that her brother-in-law (husband’s brother) who was living with them just was hit by a car on his bike and killed immediately on the same intersection mentioned above where the bank robbers were detained and the mob formed.  Please pray for comfort and strength for this family. 

Both the father and the oldest daughter have birthdays this week.  The daughter understands that her birthday party they were organizing must be cancelled at this time.  Also pray for us that we may know how to wisely and effectively walk them through the grieving process and even how to send the brother’s body back to Guatemala. 

 

We rejoice with you that we are living in this amazing grace and getting to walk with Jesus through all these ups and downs with a great group of people.  Just to think God partnered all of us together to pray, financially support and do this work…so that all these people might get to know and embrace Jesus for all of eternity.  Thanks for doing this with us!

 

To more victories day by day,

 

Chad & Fabiola

Youth Lovingly Exhorts Mother

School is in full swing; the communities of South Central Los Angeles are into a new, yet familiar rhythm.  Summer has come and gone, but was definitely a fruitful season for our church plant.  The believers are maturing and we met a lot of new families seeing numbers of them get integrated into the church. 

We would appreciate your prayer support this fall as we launch two new ministries.  We have been building up to them since last spring, but we have just launched a new youth ministry through our church and a scholastic tutoring program as a means to serve the community and build more relationships in the community.  We are perfectly sandwiched between a public elementary and high school.  Our youth group’s focus is discipleship and training the youth to take leadership and initiative to minister to their peers and their families.

There is a mother that we have known since we moved here that has come out to a few events, but has not yet given her life to Jesus.  She is a single mother of four.  One of her children has special needs.  She often feels overwhelmed.  One of her sons, Ricky (name changed), gave his life to Jesus through our ministry and was later baptized.  At church we have talked with him about how he is one of the leaders who will help take the youth ministry to the next level.  We have also been training the church in how to give words of encouragement and life to one another. 

The other day a group of us from the church were doing some work projects to fix up the building where we hold the youth ministry and tutoring program (along with our music ministries and office space) and Ricky’s family came out to participate in the BBQ we had afterwards.  After eating, Fabiola challenged Ricky to listen to God and see what He might want to say to his mom.  This is what the 14-year old Ricky shared with his mother:

“Mama, God thinks that you are a strong women and He is proud of you for raising four children.  He thinks you are intelligent and wise.”  After that he asked, “Mama, can I ask you a question?  But I want you to promise to answer honestly.”  “Do you want to go to the Christian church?”  The mother responded positively and Ricky continued, “Then why won’t you come?” (Ricky comes to church activities two to four times a week – always alone.)

Ricky then prayed, “God, thank you for my mama.  Help her to come to church so that she can know Christ and be saved.  Help her.  Thank you God, because without her I would have never found how to walk in your ways.”  As you can imagine, both Ricky and his mother were crying at the end of this beautiful exchange.  She also came out to church the following day with her two youngest children and a beaming Ricky. 

We are here to see families and individuals restored through Christ.  Thank you for praying over our lives and the lives of youth like Ricky and his family.  Together we are making an impact and seeing more and more people enter the Kingdom of God.

Restoring broken lives through Christ,

Chad & Fabiola