I have a lot of good news to tell you all...
I have informed many of you that as a family we were transitioning out of the local work at Hialeah and into the more global work of the TV program "Con La Biblia Abierta." Although working ourselves out of the work at Hialeah, was always part of the mission goals, it was not easy. When you grow up at a congregation and then you see it grow and sometimes suffer, you feel especially attached. So these last 6 months have not been easy. However, we do feel that God is the one moving us and leading us in this new direction. I say new, but really it is not new.
Rachel and I have been part of the TV ministry almost since the beginning. When Rachel and I decided to become missionaries, we challenged our supporters to help us become the future of the TV program. Well, I guess the future is now. We have 138 programs that are on the air in 23 different countries throughout Latin America, Carribean, and North America. In the U.S. we are on all 50 states. The Spanish speaking population continues to grow in this country. There are approximately 585 million spanish speakers in the World. Of those that live in Latin America, there are less than 50,000 that are members of the Lord's church. There is an emergent need to preach the Gospel of Christ to those that are lost. We must continue to develop our TV ministry to reach the lost for Christ.
This last weekend, our family was invited to meet with the missions committee of our sponsoring congregation in Madison Tennessee. We were encouraged and showered with love by every member of the missions committee. Rachel and I brought to them our dream and vision for the future of the TV program. God touched everybody's heart and spirit as everyone was in agreement that God is calling us build on the foundation we have before us. Rex Morgan has worked so hard to get the program on in so many places throughout the world and we realize that if we don't take advantage of that, we will be wasting a precious opportunity that God is giving us.
With the approval of our sponsoring elders and missions committee we will develop a new TV program that will target a new audience using a new format. Our target audience will be the "unchurched." People that are lost, that will not walk into a church building, that would change the channel if they new they were watching a "religious" TV program. This means a lot of work. This means shooting a pilot TV program and raising funds for the production of this new TV program. These are really big dreams!! Let me remind you that the God we serve is even BIGGER!!
In the meantime we will be working on developing attention grabbing public service announcements, that will hopefully be aired for free, calling on people to look for Christ as the answer to their problems. We will be developing short video segments for people to download on "youtube" in order to share Christ with the lost. We have a goal of making every new program HD and closed captioning so that an English speaker can share the TV program with a friend and actually know what the TV program is teaching. Actually our goal is to be able to reformat all of our existing programs with this technology so it can better be used as an evangelistic tool. Wow, don't get me started!
Friends, we need your support now more than ever. These tough economic times have affected all of us. Many have lost jobs, homes, cars, etc. Our family has lost $600 of support a month. We understand that everyone is hurting. We pray that the enemy doesn't use this situation to affect the preaching of the Gospel. We have lost support from several sources. Right now I am in need of a computer (laptop) since our desktop and laptop both decided to call it quits. This is not in our present budget, but we need a laptop to develop a new TV program. Besides our personal budget, we need to work on raising funds for production of the TV program. Again, we know this is going to be big, but our God is bigger. We will be keeping you updated as to our progress. We also plan on being able to see you all more often, since our focus is not in local work anymore. We look forward to seeing you soon.
We want to thank you for your love and ongoing support. Please continue to keep us in your prayers. As you know, when we are trying to do something great in the name of Jesus, the enemy Satan is never too far behind. Please pray that we will remain strong, pray for our lives as we strive to serve God and His Kingdom. We love you in the love of the Lord.
Your brother,
Luis
