BLESSINGS AT NEW HOPE!

I need to take a brief blog break from “reading through the Bible” blog because big things are happening with New Hope Church here in lovely downtown Shafter, CA. You can rejoice and celebrate with me!

Friday evening our friend, Mayte, brought Ramon Monroy over to our house. Ramon is a 54-year-old field worker who speaks no English. But Ramon has the gift of evangelism. He has evangelistic Bible studies going in several homes around Shafter and he has another at lunch in the fields. He has been looking for a church where he can bring people who are coming to Christ; a church that teaches the Bible; a church where simple field workers would be welcome. The church has to be open to Spanish and English because Ramon has four older kids at home who are English-speakers. He wants a place where they can be discipled as well as a place he can bring the people he is reaching who speak Spanish. We all sat for 2 ½ hours Friday evening talking, sharing, and praying. I spoke as much Spanish as I could and Mayte took care of the rest. At the end of the night Ramon said he thought we should work together. He would bring his wife to meet us and begin preparing his family to come to New Hope.

Yesterday morning I met with Joe Carranza and his associate pastor, Manuel. Joe has a small church meeting in a small room in a church here in Shafter. They need more space. They need a place where they can have meetings during the week. They want to associate with a another church in town but none of the pastors seem to be interested in working with him. Joe speaks pretty good English. With my Spanish and his English we get on pretty well. This time we met at a coffee place where Mayte works. At the end of our discussion Mayte told Joe and Manuel that they could trust us, that we really believe that Latinos and whites are the same in the Kingdom. Joe went away from our meeting excited about being able to work together at New Hope.

That’s all great news. But I’ve saved some awesome news for last. A school building came up for sale a couple of weeks ago. It was the high school continuing education building and it is right on the main street through town. It’s basically one big room (5,000 square feet) and it sits on two large commercial lots. When our realtor called to let us know it was going on the market he informed us that it was being sold by sealed bid. I hate sealed bids! They run against everything that is sacred in my cheap Scots soul. Our core group talked and prayed and prayed and prayed. Our bid had to be in to the school district at noon yesterday and the bids were going to be opened at a meeting last night at 7:00. At 8:30 one of the guys from New Hope who attended the meeting called and informed me that ours was the only bid and we got the building. This is great news because we will be paying less per month for this building and we’ll have it 24/7 versus four hours on Sunday mornings! We will be able to have stuff for kids and moms during the daytime and events for youth in the evenings. We’ll have a place for midweek things and a place for a Spanish service if God works that out! I’m just so grateful to the Lord for giving us this building! All of us at New Hope sense that He is opening some big ministry doors for us in our community and we are celebrating joyfully! It feels like Christmas all over again!