Mia Yaretzi Reyes

Mia Yaretzi Reyes has arrived. She showed up at 9:39 on Saturday morning, September 6th

We are doing good.. working on paperwork here in Mexico to be able to get back to Sucre pronto.

Thank you for your prayers and love. We are so thankful!!

We'll post some more pictures soon.

Love, Erik Jenny Zion and Mia

The soccer team in Sucre

This is a special group of people that have chosen to meet every Wednesday to study the Bible. Ivan is attending this Bible study. These are some of the Sucre soccer players and their wives and friends. Please pray for Ivan that he will be bold in proclaiming the truth and helping them in their search for Christ.

Sunday Worship

Pictures of the church on Sunday. The second is us praying over the new Christians.

The Soliz Family

The Soliz family. Left to right: Miguel*, Anna Gabriela, Maxima (the mom), Marta*, Luis*, Mary* and Mery. (All the ones with a * by their names are Christians.) The father has come to church a coupld of times and they have started to bring a cousin too. This is a great family and they play a huge part in the church and work here.

Baptisms

Pictures of the four baptisms we had last week. Erik, Janinna, Flor and Marta. Needless to say it was an exciting weekend. We had three of the baptisms at a pool on Saturday. Marta got the cold water at the church on Sunday but she didn’t seem to mind.

University Group

Pictures from the university small group. This group is going strong and an encouragement to everyone. The Torres, Luis Soliz, Sintia Santos and I are planning a youth rally for a weekend in July during their winter break. We are very excited about this and will start the sign up for it this week. We are hopping for about 25 youth between the ages of 16 and 25. Just with the youth at the church we have over 15, so I know this is possible.

The Reyes went to Cochabamba

We were able to visit Cochabamba this past weekend. Erik is taking a course that Josh is teaching to the church leaders here in Bolivia. We were so happy to meet Jana Faith, a new cousin for Zion

Fruits of His Hands

This month has been encouraging. We continue to see God move and work in so many lives. God is working in the lives of the new Christians here and we enjoy seeing the fruits of his changing hand. I will share a few highlights with you. Luis Soliz continues to be active in teaching the youth and leading a small group in Angela’s home. Carla continues to serve by helping us with the cleaning of the church building. Dr. Ernesto has given a great course to reach out to the public using the church building to give his First Aid classes. Mary and Syntia are now involved in helping teach the children’s class.
We continue to try ways to contact people who are seeking God. We have a 45 minute spot on the Christian radio every day.. along with thousands of flyers we’ve passed out.. newspaper adds.. and so on. God is bringing many to the Contact Center, and we are truly enjoying being used to share His word. The Contact Center is open for 10 hours each day Monday through Friday. It has been such a great blessing and tool.
Thank you for your prayers and e’mails.

March 2008

Team Report
This month has flown by… keeping all of us on the go. The work is flourishing and we are growing and learning a lot. I think we´ve been spread a little too thin lately because of trying to have too many ministries. It´s great to see God work inspite of our mistakes,and it´s been a good learning lesson. Almost everyone on the team has had a tough month as far as our health goes and it´s caused us to take a time to reconsider all the ministries we´re involved in and try separate them a little better and not to cross paths so often when it´s unnecessary. I hope this next month will be better.
We are now on the Christian radio daily for 30 minutes, from 11:15-11:45. This seems like it will be a great reach out to the community. We will see how this next month goes and if we start receiving contacts from being on the air daily. We do know that many are listening to the lessons, and have called the radio and commented on how much they are enjoying them. Right now Ivan has been giving a series on Faith.
The ¨Building a Home Course¨ that Erik Reyes has been giving has been a blessing and brought more contacts with families in the community. As well as the ¨First Aid ¨ course that Dr. Ernesto is giving at the church building Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights. The series Erik gave, called Baggage Claim also seemed to interest people and we received an average of 5 visitors each Sunday.
Our University lunches every other Friday bring a wave of new interested students that begin to take courses and seek God.
We have a lot of new contacts and we are trying our best to follow up with them. Please pray for their lives, and for us as we try to do our best as Gods instruments.

Maria's Baptism

Sunday morning we had five visitors show up which was very encouraging, but even better was that Maria decided to be baptized into Christ. She is the sister of Miguel and Luis who were baptized last year. Luis is already a leader in the church and leads the small group study at my house every Saturday. Marta and Maria have been studying with Jenny and have become more involved with other activities and the university group. Marta continues to study and their other sisters also have been coming to church. Their mom showed up Sunday and said she would try to come more often too. God is good.

Pictures- Top: Sunday worship time. Middle: Maria about to be baptized. Bottom: Luis hugging his sister with Erik.

Spiritual Growth

Team News (Jan. 2008)
Well, I have the joy again of informing you of the month and how it´s gone. It has been a good, but slow month. I think that some of the highlights that I have enjoyed seeing God at work would be the following.
The men of the church have expressed their desire to be more involved and so they starting meeting all together. It´s very encouraging to see our brother Dr. Ernesto desiring to help out and serve. He is going to start a first aid course at the church with an open invitation to the public to sign up, and we will use this oportunity for sharing the gospel also. Our brother Juan Sandoval, wants to be more involved as a prayer warrior. Luis is actively sharing the gospel and teaching his own small group. This shows us that this works is God´s, becuase God is moving faster than we expected.
Another highlight is for me to see Carla Duran, also a sister in Christ, trying so hard to learn to read and write. She is reading the Bible outloud to her boys every night and after they finish a chapter, she says that she takes the boys to the table and they all write a verse they liked from what they read. This is so exciting to me because when I first started studying with Carla 8 months ago she could barely read a verse with me. Praise God. He even teaches to read and write by changing lives for his glory. Carla also showed up every Saturday this past month to help Erik and I clean the church building.
We have continued with our prayer times as a church, every Monday and Thursday at 8 in the morning.. and Sundays at 9:30. I am glad that we have set this as a priority in the ministry.
I would like to say a little something about my teammate Juan Carlos Cabrera. I feel that this has been a true highlight also. In the past months, Erik and I have truly seen a spiritual growth going on in his life. I don´t know how to descibe it, but Juan Carlos has been a big blessing to the work here, and his love for God has influenced his dedication and passion towards the work.
The Sucre Team (Jan. 2008)

CARNAVAL

The Rains

We´ve been receiving constant rain the last few weeks. Things here have been very wet to say the least, and to add to all the water, we have been experiencing Carnaval. Carnaval here is very different from what I grew up with in Ecuador, they don´t just wet everyone with buckets of water and baloons, but they have about a week long of dancing in the streets, and getting horribly drunk, while they walk down the street with their licor, and have a marching band behing them. We`ve had many of these marching bands and drunk people go by our house, in the past two days. I would say one every 30 minutes or so. It is not attractive at all. Well, Zion and I figure that at least the drunk men staggering on the street deserve to get wet, so we go upstairs when we hear the bands coming with all the drunks and we throw water down on them from our bathroom window. It`s what everyone does here. We`ll be glad when Wednesday rolls around and these five days are over.. Erik and I are thinking about maybe leaving the city for a couple of nights, since we will have the contact center closed Monday and Tuesday. We`ll see if we feel up to it. But things are insane around here.... Windows have been broken twice at the Contact Center by water balloons. Just thought I would fill you in on our Carnaval experience so far. - The Reyes

Inauguration

More pictures of the inauguration: Top: The guys from San Angelo with some Christians from Santa Cruz. Middle: David with Naomi Torres (who loved all the attention she got). Bottom: Two weeks after the inauguration Miguel Angel was baptized!

The Inauguration

Here are some pictures of the inauguration Sunday. Top to bottom: Full house (top 2 pics), the kids did a song, Paul preaching and a picture of those who had been baptized.

Waiting on the Lord

FOR THE RACE IS NOT GIVEN TO THE SWIFT NOR THE BATTLE TO THE STRONG BUT TO THE ONE THAT ENDURES TO THE END

THEY THAT WAIT UPON THE LORD SHALL RENEW THEIR STRENGTH, THEY SHALL MOUNT UP ON THE WINGS OF AN EAGLE THEY SHALL RUN AND NOT GROW WEARY THEY SHALL WALK AND NOT GROW FAINT

This year has been one BIG MIRACLE of God. We were in awe to look back to just a year ago and see where God has brought us. From being a team without a sponsoring congregation... all the way here to Sucre Bolivia. Now a year later.. God has done so much to bless our lives and allow us to see His Glory. God has done so much more than what we had previously considered. We pray that He will always take us beyond what we can see, and that we would never limit God in any way.

The month of December has a been a little different in that many from the church left to visit family for the Holidays, but it gave us great time to make new contacts and do some much needed visitation. It was a good month.. We send all our love to you and wish you the very best in this upcoming year.