Dear prayer partner,
What a pleasure to serve our God! During April, we continued to work and prepare for what is to come. We finished our church Website, got our church tract design done, saw our social media presence grow by 8x, posted lots of videos, looked at seven potential church rental locations, started teaching Saturday evenings to a small group of Christians, and had a pastor friend from Argentina visit us! We have also been surprised at price increases. I figure things have gone up 50% since we calculated our ministry budget in 2020. Thank the Lord we have not needed anything because God has gone above and beyond to care for all our needs. Thank you very much to those who have given extra last month!
Facebook (local outreach)
We started this month with 14 followers on our church's Facebook page. All of our followers are here in the city. We have purposely not made our page known to those who know us because we aim to use this as a tool to reach our city. After running two ads, we finished the month with 133 followers from Posadas! From this, we have had three people ask where our church was located because they wanted to attend, but we don't have a location yet! This seems so small, but at some point in the next three years, it will become a major outreach tool in our city. I expect weekly visitors to the church just from this one means of outreach.
YouTube (Spanish world outreach)
In April, there were 17.8 thousand views, 191 hours watched, +107 Subscribers, and one person requesting where our church is located because they want to attend. Things are growing steadily, and someday, it will be a tremendous outreach tool.
Saturday Services
After arriving in Posadas, we visited churches to see what was in town. We visited a Baptist church pastored by a Brazilian missionary about to retire. I set an appointment to get to know him, and during our visit, he mentioned that he was trying to help a small group of Christians start a church on the other side of town and asked me if I would be willing to take this on. We agreed to pray about it, and I visited this gathering on the far side of town on Saturday. I enjoyed spending time with these ten or so people that Saturday and got to preach to them. In the following days, after verifying that we were both of the same beliefs doctrinally, much prayer, and another visit with the pastor, I agreed to minister to this small group on Saturday afternoons. We started a series last week presenting the gospel from the book of Mark and have enjoyed our time getting to know these precious people. They have met for seven months in this form but have not had a pastor. For now, we will love them, pastor them, and work to see the group grow. This has led us to focus more on finding a meeting location.
Church Meeting Location
We have looked at several places, but currently, in my opinion, only one would qualify for our church plant, but they are asking $1300 per month. This rent amount is above our budget, but I'm slowly realizing we will not find a place within our budget. We desired to rent for under $500 a month, but that price is based on four years ago! So far, we have only seen properties worth $400+, and anything decent is around $1000. We also figured that our church electric bill could run $500+, which is way more than we had figured previously. But we will continue to look for where God wants the church to start. I love a building in a great location, but we have yet to find out who owns it. In the coming weeks, we should figure out if he will rent it and for how much. Amongst all this, we are also looking into purchasing land for the church. We won't need to rent if we can buy in the coming months. Who knows what God's plans might be? Please pray for God to guide us regarding all this.
For His Service,
Benjamin and Bernice George
Comments