Dear Brothers and Sisters,
This morning as we were getting ready for church, Rachel said, "Today is going to be a great day!" She must be a prophet, because we did have a great day. The Lord's day is always a great day, but today was amazing. We had a packed house. The singing was great. There was a buzz in the air. I preached on "Spiritual Maturity" We read Hebrews 5:11-14. We challenged the listeners to "grow up spiritually, and get into the Word!" Well God did amazing work! We had around six people respond to the invitation asking for prayers and to rededicate their life to Christ. We had one lady, Ofelia, give her life over to Jesus in baptism. Ofelia has been visiting us for about a month now. The Flores family has been studying with her. This morning I asked brother Jose Flores if he would like to perform the baptism, he excitedly accepted. I wasn't aware that this was his first time. He did an amazing job, said everything correctly, and did everything just right. There was one little funny part...Ofelia (who turns out was a little nervous of the immersion part) asked him "please do it fast" but she kept holding on to the wall with her arm! Brother Jose, told her "I will do it fast, but you have to let go of the wall." As for the rest of us in the audience, we weren't sure what was going on, from our angle it just looked like brother Jose was trying to drown her! Well, it was beautiful none the less. There was a party going on in Heaven and in Hialeah. As icing on the cake, then we had several families place membership at Hialeah: Ireno Nunes which has been a Christian for about 58 years, baptized in Cuba, Oseas (I can't remember his last name) also Cuban was baptised into Christ in Oklahoma, Joel and his wife Maria, who moved to Hialeah from South Miami, have been Christians for a couple of years, and lastly Amiel Perez Jr and his wife, that just arrived from Cuba about 2 months ago. Please keep our new sister in Christ and these new members at Hialeah in your prayers. We feel really encouraged by everything that happened today. Rachel and I feel so excited about what God is doing here. I pray that God continues to use all of us here in this mission work to bring more souls to His Kingdom.
Many of us take it for granted that we live with such freedom. However many of your fellow brother and sisters in Christ don't enjoy these same privileges. Mario Castillo is a brother that has been a faithful Christian for over ten years. He has been in and out of immigration courts all of these years working on his legal status. He and his family always tried to follow the law and do everything the right way. Several years ago I had to go before a judge on his behalf to share the kind of man he is. Both of his daughters have been born in this country and are US citizens, his wife Emma, also got her residency around five years ago. However, because he was in a special ops unit in his country of Guatemala, during a time a very bad government had control, he was never given his residency. We have continued to pray for him and his situation. Two weeks ago he came forward at church praising God because finally the government gave him his legal resident status. Well, this Friday, immigration stormed the factory/warehouse where he works, many people were detained, and your brother in Christ, Mario was also detained for deportation. After being handcuffed for over a half an hour, the officers finally decided to pay attention to him as he explained that he was a legal resident, but just hadn't received his card yet. We ate lunch together today after services. He was laughing and joking about the entire situation. But, can you imagine being handcuffed, after being through all that he's been through? If they had came to his work 2 weeks ago, we would have never seen him again. Emma, says she is so proud of him, because he was a true example, he never lost his temper, and he sang church songs while he was being detained. God looked out for this brother and his family. He never let's us down. Brother Mario really appreciates his residency!
God bless you all.
