NEWS- JULY 2008

OUR FAMILY GETS BIGGER
Kayla Alexia Berryman was born on June 18, 2008. She was 3 kilos 150 grams (6.95 pounds) and 52 centimeters (19.5 inches). Karina and I could not be happier or prouder. Kayla was born fairly skinny but since then she has started to beef up a bit. She is very healthy and happy.
The hospital we used was great and so were the nurses. Karina went in to the hospital in the early afternoon because our doctor had decided to induce labor. After about 6 to 7 hours of trying to induce labor it became apparent that Karina’s pelvic area was not wide enough for the baby to pass for natural labor so we went to a c-section. This lasted for about thirty minutes!
Seeing my child for the first time was, of course, an indescribable and surreal experience. We are so thankful to God that Kayla is doing great in every way. Karina is recovering very quickly from the surgery as well. I think she was incredible during the whole process, and, though she still experiences some pain, she is walking quite a bit.
We are hoping that most of you reading this will get a chance to meet Kayla! She already likes outings and the voices of lots of people talking (it looks like she already takes after her mom in that respect).
WHAT'S NEW LATELY
Despite having Kayla, we still have not been able to move into our new apartment due to construction delays. This has been quite frustrating for us on many levels, but thanks to God we have been able to at least move our stuff into the apartment (the apartment is finished but lacks electricity and gas). Getting an adequate place to live this year has been complicated for us, but God has been faithful in so many ways.
We would like to introduce you to Adrian, Romina, Micaela and Carolina (we owe you the picture for next time) This family is what we consider our new co-workers in Christ to help plant our church. They are not full time missionaries, but they are people that love God and are willing to help us out when they can. We are thankful for them as during this transitory time without a house we had our group in their home for several weeks. Romina even hosted a small baby shower for Karina in their apartment as well.
Please pray for this family as lately they have had a high level of stress due to many different complications. Adrian is a small business owner and that always carries with it its complications, as well as other family issues and health issues. In addition, we’d like to ask prayer especially for Micaela who has had a headache for several weeks now. The doctors say that it is a migraine for now, but they are running several different tests to be on the safe side.
During this period of moving to a new place, God has opened several new doors for us in so many ways. We are living on the other side of the city, and time after time, God has given us new people that are open to listening to the gospel on one level or another. We have spent a lot of our time visiting these people as most of them are not ready to make a commitment to attend a small group or church. One of our new friends is very open and Karina has started meeting with her periodically to study the bible. Her name is Jessica and she has several complications and sadness in her life. It’s difficult to say the right thing, but the only comfort we can offer her is the news that she can have a full life if she gives her life to Jesus. Jessica was a coworker of Karina’s seven years ago, but until now she did not have true interest in making a commitment.
Others are not as ready as Jessica for something so direct and are certainly not ready to commit to a small group, but pray that God will continue to work in their lives. In the back of my mind I always pray to God that somehow we will form another small group with some of these people in some way, even if it means a small group of three or four. Please pray for all of these people.
We have also been looking for more ways to serve people and speak the gospel through our actions. This takes time, work, and discipline; but many times is much more powerful than any words we might say. Pray that God will grow our spiritual gifts involved with service.
Jacquie Mitchell has been having a rough time lately. When she was traveling in her car she lost her short-term memory and forgot where she was. Poor Karen, her daughter, called us in a state of shock. It turns out that Jackie had amnesia for a little while and couldn’t really remember much at all (then of course her memory came back). This type of amnesia can only happen once in a lifetime, and it is normally due to stress. Jacquie is waiting on some tests to make sure things are okay, but this is most likely what the problem is. Jacquie has been under a lot of pressure lately due to a lot of different things, so if you could remember her in your prayers it would be good. She seems to be a doing a lot better now, and right now she is travelling with her daughter Karen to the states.
We got to meet with Jacquie recently and she spoke to us about the church in Cordoba. They are having their share of difficulties, but we know that God is faithful. We didn’t have enough funds to travel to Cordoba this year, but we have already started talking about a retreat in March with the church there with Jacquie.
TRAVEL PLANS
We would like to inform everyone that we have bought tickets to go to the U.S. on September 16. We will be staying in the U.S. until December 29th, so we should have time to introduce Kayla to some of you that read this blog. On our trip we’ll be visiting supporting churches, family, prospects for long term workers, and friends. We are looking for long-term workers still. Also, on this trip we’ll be asking friends or anyone interested to commit to contribute to our support for one year. We are looking for monthly supporters for the work in Argentina for 2009. Any amount is useful. As little as 10 or 15 dollars a month is useful to us in the coming year. Please let us know if you’re interested.

Finally, if you think your church might be willing to support this ministry by sending missionaries or financially, please also let us know.

We are happy new parents and we are adjusting pretty well to this little new member in our family. Our schedule has been a little crazy so far, but we are getting back to normal. Many of you are parents, I'm sure you know what I am talking about.

We are looking forward to seeing everyone in the US! God bless you all

A volcano, the olimpic flame, flooding and more...

Hmm… It’s always hard to start. How to try to summarize lots of things that we lived in a short paragraph? Impossible. So here it goes, just as it comes out of my mind (I’m sorry if you were expecting to see a short report). The truth is that Jared can do better reports, but I can just try to share my vision and feeling of the last events. On the one hand, I would like to tell you that even though Argentina is going through a 6 year period of continuous financial growth, the ghost of the terrible crisis this country faced in 2001 is still in the air. Terribly high inflation is making people hesitate about our supposedly healthy and steady economy. On the other hand, there were floods in the city and ashes that blocked the sun from a volcano in Chilean territory. (These ashes spread so much that the locals in Chile had to evacuate the city and even the inhabitants of BA on the other side of South America could see our sky turning gray on sunny days). We also experienced, before that, a non pleasant smell from a fire which angry farmers set off in the country that lasted for several weeks, not to mention those same farmers’ blockade that did not permit trucks to enter into the capital with foodstuffs for several weeks before that (no beef for three weeks)… Anything else? Yes! People’s attention was also drawn to the Olympic flame that was brought to Buenos Aires to promote the Olympics in China… and Jared and I got to see it ourselves too by accident (we were passing by chance!) It seems that there is always something going on this city that never sleeps (though we are not New Yorkers). There is always something to make people talk about or pay attention to. However, all these ‘distractions’ do not make people’s needs and anxiety to solve their problems as quickly as possible and to make the deeper pain inside their lives to go away disappear. The truth is, that deep down inside everybody is crying out for Jesus. Some of them might acknowledge it, some might ignore it, but everybody knows that when things are completely out of our hands and control, we have to turn to that ‘superior being’ for help. And that’s when we Christians come to bring light among so much confusion and darkness. It is a challenging and wonderful blessing to be part of this process of transformation. What a wonderful cross! People wonder how we can be positive among all of the turmoil. (Argentine’s biggest flaw is negativity) It is SO good to share all the happiness and peace we can have despite any circumstances. I´m sure this has happened to you, too, but it is hard for people who do not know Jesus yet. How can you find peace in the middle of a storm?

ABOUT US

We’ve had quite an interesting busy time. And God has been so good to us! My pregnancy has been wonderful after the first trimester, and Jared and I decided to put our apartment (yes, the one we had bought and moved to into October 2007) on sale. It may sound crazy but we felt this place didn’t agree on with our vision of planting a church in our home neither with raising a child. We prayed for God’s direction on what to do and we said “let’s give it a try”. If it didn’t sell at least 2 months before the baby arrived, then we were not going to sell it. To our big surprise, the apartment got sold in 1 month and 10 days in April and we have just bought a new one which is going to be more comfortable and complies with our needs. Although moving can be pretty stressful, we have learned to be better and faster at packing up. In the middle of all that, my dad was seriously hit by a car. The car lifted him up and his head was nearly cut in half as a result of hitting the windshield and then the ground. Blood transfusions helped him to feel stronger after losing a lot of blood and there was not severe internal damage. The doctors continue to check him regularly, and, thank God, he is doing better and his recovery is amazing. It is a real miracle that he is alive. As some of you were aware of this, I wanted to thank you on his behalf for your concern and praying for him and my family.
We have a name for the baby!
As I mentioned before, my pregnancy has been very good and totally normal. I could feel God’s protection on us in every single way and my health has never been better. Jared and I finally agreed on the name for our baby, so Kaylah Alexis were the chosen ones. I am due around June 12th. We are very excited and grateful for this baby and we are looking forward to her arrival. (not to mention Kayla’s grandparents in the US and in Argentina!) I just want you to pray for me for and the baby to do well in the labor and for a fast delivery and also for our new roles as parents. Here there are some pics: Kayla’s preview in my womb ( 4d ultrasound) and me and my belly. (some of you have already seen it, so sorry, here it goes again)

NEW HORIZONS and NEW CONTACTS.

We are moving to a new neighborhood called Caballito. This neighborhood is right in the center of the city and will enable us to keep in touch with our contacts in the Belgrano area (our old neighborhood) that is located in the north part of the city and also will enable us to make new ones. But God started working already before us and brought new opportunities to share the gospel in this new neighborhood. Recently, I had a phone call from an ex co-worker who invited me to go visit her at her house. I hadn’t seen her in many years, but while I worked for the Jockey Club of Argentina for 6 years, I had talked to her about Jesus on many occasions. It is encouraging to see that what I said to her such a long time ago, made effect 5 years later! (Psalms 126:5-6) As we talked and caught up with lots of things to tell, I didn’t know that she had invited me with the intention of telling me all the pain and struggles she’s been through in the last 10 years. She is in her thirties and married now, and I haven’t seen a person so young with so many fears. She started sobbing and she cried for a long time. She has a loving husband, but she can’t have peace because she is afraid of absolutely everything. So, she asked me.. Please, tell me.. What do I need to do? Well, I said that I was just going to repeat the same words I spoke to her long time ago, but that have the same powerful effect: You need to turn to Jesus! So, I am about to start studying the bible together and she is willing to open her heart to let God work in her life. Jared also got to meet her husband who is very nice. So, I ask you to pray for this couple. Their names are Jessica and Cesar.
With the selling of our place, I got in contact with a nice real state lady whose name is Edith. One day on the phone she started telling me her life story and she said to me “I don’t know you so I don’t know why I am telling you all this.” To make a long story short, a relationship came up with Edith and she invited us for dinner with her family. She is a widow and she has to two daughters in their twenties. Their boyfriends were there, too, and we got to share a wonderful time together and share our testimonies as Christians. They seemed very open and receptive. Please, pray for Edith, Maria Laura and Barbara. I can continue with more names and stories of people who we have recently met that we shared the gospel with. Also, pray for a girl who I just met from Ecuador who is living in Buenos Aires. Her name is Veronica and I started a relationship with her. Also pray for Marta, Rodrigo, Abel, Paula, Carolina, Jacobo, Karen and Federico, Loida, Vanesa and Norma (who is studying the bible on a weekly basis. She’s struggling with her husband’s death Jorge). And please continue to pray for us. We pray that God continues to fill us with his love to bless people’s lives and that we can be brave enough to bring not only words of love but of repentance.

Also, continue to pray for Jackie Mitchell and the church in Alto Alberdi, Cordoba. Jackie asked us to support this new church spiritually. We are praying about it as we might try to visit them every 2 or 3 months in the future to encourage them. This church is about an 8 hours drive from Buenos Aires city.
Just to finish, once again thank you for your love, prayers and support! While I’m writing Kayla is moving like crazy inside of me so maybe that’s her way of trying to say hi to everybody also? Maybe ….:-) We love you very much!!

Looking ahead

Sometime in August we plan on traveling to the U.S. for a while. We plan on making a more extended visit in order to accomplish some goals. Our first goal will be to look for a couple or people to come and begin to work with us in Argentina. If we cannot find these people (and even if we do find them), then our goal will be to raise support for a Christian couple that lives here in Argentina to work full time with us. Our original plan was not to work alone, but to work with another couple/couples or singles.
We will also try to raise some extra support, since some of our support has been reduced a bit this year, and a new baby brings quite a lot of new expenses. We also would like to raise extra support in order to be able to buy and maintain a car. We currently use public transportation for all trips, but we had some new situations arise where we know people that live a long ways away in public transportation (2 hours), but in a car it’s only thirty minutes. Returning from someone’s house in the province (outside of the capital) at night with a baby in tow is dangerous and extremely unpractical. For this reason we’ll be looking to get the money together to buy a car and maintain its insurance, gas expenses, and parking space (which you have to rent). A car is also much more practical with a baby than trying to drag a baby onto a rickety bus.
As you can imagine, this trip will have to be a bit longer, and we plan on visiting for four to six months, depending on how long it takes to complete our goals. We will appreciate any help that any of you who are reading this can give us! We look forward to seeing all of you and introducing our new baby. I can’t begin to describe how excited I am about our new little girl. (Here is an old picture of Karina's belly at 4 months.I really like it!)

Update

Please continue to pray for our friend Norma. Earlier, I had written in my blog about Jorge and Norma. For the past year or so, Jorge had cancer. It got worse and worse, until finally, Jorge passed away three weeks ago. We were very sad, as Jorge was our neighbor and friend since I moved to Argentina. I spent many times with him talking to him about why he needed to follow Jesus, but he never responded. In the meantime, Norma has had a very different attitude. Norma believes in God and Jesus, and she has expressed openly that she wants to follow Jesus. The next step for Norma is to repent, be baptized, and become a part of the church. Please pray for her as I’m quite sure, like all people who are outside of the church, that Norma is carrying a lot of baggage from her past life.
We also have quite a bit to do this year. There are several contacts that we want to begin working with extensively. We need prayers in dealing with all these people. One particular person we think if is Karen and her husband, Federico. Karen is the 31 year old daughter to Jackie Mitchell, and missionary friend of ours who has been in Argentina for a long time now. She had breast cancer, but was operated on recently and is currently receiving aggressive chemotherapy treatments. Pray for her treatments. She is such a wonderful addition to our small group. She always has a good attitude and good things to say every group.
Her husband, however, is not a Christian. Federico is just beginning to consider what a relationship to God means in his life. He is attending church once a month in a small congregation in the province area outside of the capital. He does not like people pressuring him to follow Jesus, but we pray for him consistently. I hope that in the future he will get involved in our small group if it is God’s will. Pray for Federico, and pray for his family.
There are many others to mention. Abel is a good friend who has experienced depression because he is a workaholic and does not spend time with people or family outside of work. Jacobo is a dentist whose family is originally from Korea who has seen some changes in some friends who recently became Christians. Adriano is a friend that grew up in the church, but left it at a young age and is looking to form a family. Marta is a new English student of Karina’s that Karina has already begun to talk to about Jesus. There are many others. God has truly given us people to work with, some of them with very open hearts. Please pray that Karina and I will have the courage and insight to say the right kind of things to each of these people. It takes time and patience to work with all of these people, lots of prayers, and trust in God that his Holy Spirit will begin to work in their lives. Also pray that each of these people can begin to participate in our small group.

Moving and big news

The past few months have been a flurry of activity for Karina and I. Since our return from the States, we have had quite a few things to do. We searched for and bought an apartment, closed with our apartment we were renting, and then spent three months renovating the new apartment. We painted the whole apartment, put new ceramic tile in the kitchen and ground floor, worked on restoring the living room floor, put a new floor down in the bedroom, and other such restoration. It was a lot of work, but we now have already hosted many people in our new apartment, even though it is small. Our apartment is a big blessing from God and we are very grateful to him for it. We have already been able to make such good use of it, and we expect to have many more people in our home in the future.
It was a big surprise to hear during the whole process of moving that Karina was pregnant! Karina found out the pregnancy test was positive when I was setting up our bed in the bedroom. She was so shocked that she went out and bought another one just to make sure. Positive again. It still took me a little while to completely convince her that she was pregnant, but after a doctor’s visit it was confirmed, Karina is pregnant.
On top of all this renovation, as a result of the pregnancy Karina spent her first trimester constantly sick all the time. It was rough on her, but now that she has emerged from the first trimester and she is doing much better. We feel so fortunate that, so far, both baby and Mom are healthy and doing great. We recently had an ultrasound and it looks very likely that the baby is a girl.
Karina and I now find ourselves preparing for the important task of being parents. We are both blessed and excited. God has given us many blessings together all at once. The due date for the baby is sometime in mid-June.
We have quite a bit of planning to do! Please pray for Karina’s pregnancy if you get a chance. We added some pictures to show you briefly with images with we’ve been up to.

Trip Aug-Sept 2007 (From TX to NY)

JULY- 2007

We have a lot of telling to do, as we’ve gotten a bit behind on our blog. July was a helter-skelter month for us as we had to prepare for our annual trip to the US, finish a friendscamp, and close out our bible-reading project.
LET'S START TALKING
Our Let’s Start Talking style program that went on for about six weeks ended in July. I have three readers I’d like to tell something about. Jacob is a dentist, a nice man who was born in Korea but grew up in Argentina. He is open to talking about God as he has a Christian friend who Jacobo said had “changed.” This friend made quite an impact on Jacobo, even more than his Catholic wife. Jacobo, Karina, and I went out for dinner together, first in a restaurant in our neighborhood, then in a Korean restaurant closer to his neighborhood. I ate raw strips of beef (although I must say they had been marinated in some type of sauce) in some kind of Korean plate. Jacobo and I have had some pretty intimate conversations about God.
Another reader is Silvia. She is Catholic/new age (another words, she doesn’t really know much about what she believes). Silvia is a sweet lady. She is a single woman in her forties and a lawyer. At this point, Karina and I have mostly just established a good friendship with her. She was open to talking about God, and she believes in the virgin birth and that there is a God. That’s a good start.
Our last reader, Jose, is little strange but he is a good guy. Jose is from Peru but was planning to study in Argentina. I could tell he was going through culture shock, and it’s his first time living away from home. Jose decided at the end of our time to go back to Peru, unfortunately (although he may return to Argentina). However, we had very intimate talks about his life, and he opened up about a lot of things. Jose seems to know that Jesus is the way, but he has some dark things in his life that hold him back from following Jesus (this is basically what he told me). These things are more attractive for him than Jesus is. Pray for Jose and these three if you get a chance.
Overall, our project got us a few good contacts that we’ll keep up with. May God use this to bring about his glory in these people’s lives.
FRIEND'S CAMP
Close to the end of our project in July, we had a friendscamp, which is a retreat for the people that participated in the bible-reading project above. We did this in conjunction with the Villa Urquiza congregation and the Caballito congregation. Fifty attended. I preached on Sunday about friendship (David and Jonathan). For some, it was the first time they heard the story of David and Goliath or Jonathan. The camp went well in all aspects and everyone enjoyed the time singing, listening to God’s stories, and escaping from the city life.
OUR FIRST BAPTISM
Vanesa was our first baptism here in Argentina. The first 'baby' out of our group. She is a wonderful woman that wanted to follow Jesus from the moment we met her. Vanesa was not originally one of our contacts. She had bounced around at different churches looking for Jesus, but always living in the emotional experience and never truly committing to a daily relationship with Jesus. She did this kind of thing for seven years. When we got her, though, she was ready and anxious to be baptized and take a first step of real commitment towards God. We are so thankful that we found someone with such an open heart to do God’s will. Vanesa loves God and is so ready to serve him with all that she has.
She was baptized right before we left for the US. What a blessing! In the picture you will see her with her aunt Martha, who has been praying for Vanesa's life for such a long time. God still answers prayers!
VISIT FROM THE US
Unfortunately, it was just for a couple of days, but Jessica, Kyle and Erin's visit to our house reminded us of all the good times with them. We really enjoyed having them. Thanks guy for stopping by! We love you!
SNOW AFTER ALMOST A 100 YEARS
Last but not least, we wanted to mention all the things that took place in this month of July. And certainly, the unexpected weather changes brought some snow, surprise and excitement among the 'portenos' (citizens of Buenos Aires) who had never seen snow in their lives in this city before. The last time was 1918.
Here there are some pictures for you to enjoy