A great meeting

Andrew had his first follow-up meeting with one of the UNIFAM pastors on Friday to discuss how Social Ministries could help his church reach more people in the area. It was a great meeting. Andrew couldn't say yes to all of the ideas but he was able to help the pastor come up with even more efficient ways to reach the community. For example one of the original ideas was that the church receive £25/$50 a month to allow one child to go to the daily kindergarten free of charge. That very day the church had to lay off one of their teachers due to falling numbers of kids. Andrew asked how much a newspaper advertisement would cost. The answer was £12.50/$25 for a month. We also have contacts for making banners and Andrew suggested that we could design a new advertisement to place the tiny cloth, hand-painted banner with a bigger, bright, plastic one which would attract more attention.

This kind of conversation gets Andrew really excited and the pastor of course was getting excited as well. His comment to Andrew was, "I'm so surprised - I thought you were going to come here and say there was really nothing you could do!"

Andrew came home buzzing. Please pray for the church in Tultitlan and for the pastor Jonathan and his wife Cleide. They are a great, energetic and enthusiastic couple with a passion to reach the lost and a particular passion for kids (which strikes a chord with our passion). Pray that the kindergarten would grow and be instrumental in seeing kids and their families incorporated into the church. They are also keen to start a Mex-i-Kids. It was a good opportunity for Andrew to share some of the frustrations and things we have learned through our experiences in La Loma. Our suggestion has been that the club start with a prayer meeting for a month or two to determine how many dedicated people there are and then to plan based on that number of available and committed people.