Prayer News from the Barretts, March 2015

Dear prayer partners for Spain and the Barrett family,

Bill Hybels once wrote a book with the title “The bumps are what you climb on”. This may be a somewhat overstated “positive thinking” way of how we, as Christ´s followers, are to focus on the difficulties encountered in His service but it should make us look in faith for outcomes that glorify the Lord.

Kofi Jaus, community outreach

We had planned a Youth Alpha course in the Kofi Jaus for late February. This came up against the spiritual wall among the young people in the gang. They were very closed after the death of the young man about a month ago and the subsequent discovery of his corpse. The official verdict was suicide/misadventure and there is considerable evidence of the use of alcohol and crystal meth. The lack of contact and the silence from the young people was a measure of their insecurity, being a group under suspicion. It could be used by Satan to block the little openness they have to the Gospel if we don´t turn to prayer.

So we have proceeded to hold “open houses" at the Kofi Jaus on Sunday afternoons to try and pick up the threads of contact with the young people handing around there. As our church no longer was willing to come to evening meetings regularly, we have started out again with films and games on some Sundays in the Kofi Jaus next door to the church. Please pray for breakthroughs because many of the young people´s ability to think clearly about anything is affected by the marijuana that they smoke elsewhere (not in the Kofi Jaus, we hasten to point out!)

With every attempted spiritual advance there is likely to be a counter attack. Within the district it may be clacking tongues and misinformation. The Monday dressmaking class has suddenly lost most of its participants and the reasons they give do not all appear to be sincere. Our volunteers need prudence and valour as to when to talk directly about the Gospel and when other approaches are needed. It can take a considerable time before we gain peoples´ confidence and even longer until they are spiritually receptive.

Positively, the Kofi Jaus awaits a couple of visits. One is from the group of believers from Villalba, on the other side of the Madrid region, who have decided to reach out using a model of Kofi Jaus, in part copied from the experience gained by interns who worked with us, Jonathan Josué y his wife Silvia. We expect a visit this week to talk through the progress in pursuing their “Kofi Jaus” project to serve the Lord.

The other is from the summer interns in May, young people with either time on a gap year or studying at Bible College who want to learn and serve the Lord through some of our projects. Please pray for all the preparations which need to be made.

SIFRA, crisis pregnancy counselling

Alison, together with our old friends Chris and Hilde Mathieson, and a Christian lady doctor are setting up this Christian organization to offer professional counselling to women in situations of crisis over their pregnancy. It is hoped to link the training offered by SIFRA with the Christian ministry team going into the Estremera prison which has many women prisoners, who need counselling about abortion. An added complication that the prison authorities angle their advice in favour of abortion in order to save the system money! The training session for the team is likely to take place in April, using the facilities at the Madrid Bible Teaching Centre. The prison team is led by a young man whose father is the elder in another of Madrid´s churches with a “Brethren” history. This chaplaincy team is facilitated by the agreements now administered by the regional Evangelical Councils. So please pray that this training offered to the Estremera team can eventually be passed on to other prison teams around Spain.

Rahab run, outreach/rescue for sex trade workers

This month Alison was able to spend part of the first specific donations which the ministry has received. She bought some small MP3 players, like the girls listen to for their phones and radio whilst they are on the street. These are then loaded with Christian messages and music so that they can be lent to specific contacts on the street. In the case of them being handed back then they are exchanged for new reloads! Don´t get the impression of a massive give way of MP3 players, but what these girls need is hope. So this is one thing that´s being tried out by the team at the moment.

We usually report that street contacts are not prepared to leave the street and go into a safe house. However last week on a bank holiday evening it seemed as if the Lord had led the team to a new girl recently trafficked from Africa and really scared by what she was being forced into and by the threats of the “business man” who put up the money for her to travel up through Morocco and come over on a small boat. Once through the Spanish detention centre, the “business man” turned loan shark putting the screws on family back home. These threats are backed by the fear of voodoo practices which exploit superstitious practices of a local Pentecostal group in contact with immigrants. The girl agreed to go with team members to a safe house the following morning but later returned to her “controllers” house. Nothing has been heard or seen of her since and all attempts to contact her have failed. Please pray for the girl (called”Peace”) and the Lord´s continued protection and guidance of the team.

Just showing the mercy of the Lord by offering to help gives some of these people a glimmer of hope in their misery. One lady and her family came to the church, which took considerable courage in itself. But behind the scenes Alison spends hours tramping the industrial estates with her leaving a CV in any likely place for employment. The lady is the only bread winner in her family and has not dared to tell them how she earns her money.

Alcala church

The news about the outstanding debt on the building extension is good. A substantial donation from the UK, together with other smaller helps has take the outstanding figure to below 8000 Euros. Another UK congregation, which mainly prayer supporters, is organizing their annual Thank Offering, part of which will come to Alcala this year. Any extra from the Lord´s provision will go towards some second hand seating.

There are one or two other extra costs after a blocked waste pipe caused us a problem recently; and we need to resize and resite noticeboards, the church sign over the door and all the regulatory emergency signs. Please continue to pray for the official planning/licencing inspection. It would be noteworthy if we had all the bills paid within 12 months of starting the purchase and extension process. Eliezer Martín, the person who led the extension project, is suffering arrhythmia and needs treatment. It´s the recurrence of a former condition, not related to the stress of dedicating his retirement to this project. Please pray for him.

The daily pastoral business for Ken at the moment has more to do with discipleship. People need to seek the Lord and to do so because they hear Him speak and recognise His voice through Scripture. Finding that time together, even when the person is spiritually thirsty, is a weekly battle. A who is from a Han Chinese IB background, make a step of commitment a fortnight ago because he was able to link up with Chinese speakers. Almost immediately his boss moved him away from the shop (apparently temporarily) where he was employed with his Christian wife. J, an ex-addict has declining health and so the only fellowship he has during times in hospital are the readings and prayers of Christian visitors like Ken. Another man O has a month at home before his next seasonal job takes him away from his family. Others fight resentments, depressions and students have changing study commitments (and overseas students always want to “see Spain” at the weekends). One of the constant Chinese students at the moment L is reading the Bible and listening to her Christian flat mate U. So please pray for the alphabet remembering these needs! Positively, last Sunday we had a new preacher, Michel, one of our own young men from the congregation – a noteworthy event as there are only three others on the preaching roster. Ken is the preacher on Easter Sunday this year.

We had our annual Church meeting on a Sunday during March, a legal requirement which gives an opportunity to present the accounts, our economic planning and reports from different aspects of the ministry. Please pray on for unity and the ability to focus beyond ourselves.

Madrid Bible Teaching Centre

Please pray for:

1. The annual General Meeting is on April 11th. Ken prepared three of the administrative reports as we review our work in the Centre, especially in publications. Please pray that these reports would serve to inform, inspire and unify the efforts of different brethren.

2. We are still waiting for a positive outcome as the revisor struggles with the translation of Charles Marsh´s “Too Hard for God?” Please pray that this project´s progress would prove that the answer is “No!”

3. Generational renewal of those prepared to learn in the different areas of our ministry with the national magazine, publications and teaching, as well as the library/Archive.

4. Our next course teacher for October, Samuel Escobar, who has recently been bereaved.

5. Ken´s next presentations of the CEFB New Testament Bible Commentary on the weekend of the 11th - 12th April in Seville.

6. Our publications partners in the Dominican Republic, Prensa Bíblica, as they plan a co-edition of “Rules of Bible Interpretation” for the Bible Schools that the Templos Biblicos hold this year. Your gifts has made it possible to part finance such essential Christian books.

Personally

Some problems can just make a day wearying. For instance an attempted robbery of our car over the weekend damaged the master door lock and made the vehicle vulnerable to the return of the thieves. Between the police station, the insurance company and the concessionary who has to order the new lock, a whole working day has so far been lost.

The other time waster are plans which don´t come to fruition, such as placements in the Kofi Jaus, visitors who send several emails about possible dates and then can´t come and the student/discipleship meetings which don´t materialise. That´s not to say that seeking the Lord´s will doesn´t mean trying out plans, but we realize that we´re running a tight time budget, which some folks forget. May these people be for us, as George Verwer so humourously terms them, “grace growers”!

It is the moment of annual reports and accounts which have to be presented in a number of the legal bodies and teams to which we belong. Alison is treasurer of the Association behind the Kofi Jaus; and does most of the accounting for the Madrid Bible Training Centre. That means preparing the billing for our book distributors each year and the mysteries of VAT are still just that!

We won´t see Esther at Easter but she is coming for another weekend instead in April.A trip out to Australia, God willing, is planned for the 15th December and we return on the 6th January 2016. From a ticket price point of view it was cheaper to return to Europe and then for Ken to go on to Peru a few days later rather than making a circuit of the globe.

With our love and thanks in the Lord for your prayers,

Ken and Alison Barrett

Alcala de Henares,

Spain

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