On the Horizon... and Coming Soon

     I believe that God is always preparing us for the next step in our lives. I think we are constantly in a process of growth and advancement. We don't always know how our current life experiences are going to be used in the future. Sometimes it takes years to figure out why we have to go through our "trials" or joys of today. As we have faced this transition from Ecuador to ministry in the USA, we have been wondering just how God might be leading us in the future.

Soccer Outreach on Thurs Nights

    As we thought about our next two years here in California, we often thought about the Spanish ministry here at Church of the Open Door. Most of our members and attenders come for the English services, but we have 20 to 25 people who attend our service in Spanish each week. This is about the size of the church plants that we worked with in Ecuador.

     As we have become involved this summer in the church, we have seen a number of outreach ministries that could be tied a little more closely to the work of the Spanish ministry. A group of men play basketball every Tues night... probably half of those men are of Hispanic decent. There is an adult soccer league at the church that plays every Thurs night... about 90% of the players are Hispanic. Then there is soccer league for kids that the church sponsors... again 90% of the players and their families have roots in Latin America. Finally, one of the local school systems that is heavily Hispanic allows Release Time Bible Education.

More Soccer to be Had...

     These great outreaches are already reaching into the community that our Spanish congregation can minister to. So, together with the church leadership, we have decided to spend a lot of our time and energy in the next couple of years creating ties between these outreaches and the Spanish ministry at Church of the Open Door.

     Oh... we will still be working with HCJB Global. But this will take the place of the church planting ministries that we have been involved with for most of the years that we have been in Ecuador.  So the next couple of blog entries will begin to introduce you to some of these ministries so that you can be praying for us and for those we our touching through these outreach ministries.

Thanks,

Doug & Ruth