June - July 2002
Dear Pastor and Praying Friends,
Greetings from Spain, in the
name
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! We are thankful to God for
the
arrival of our fourth son, William "Daniel" Beck. He was born on
July
5th at 12:30am, weighing 7 lbs 6 oz and 20.5 inches long. The
doctor
had to take Daniel by cesarean due to some complications.
Everything
went fine and Patsy and Daniel are both doing well. God took care
of
us and provided for all the needs during the entire pregnancy.
The
Lord gave us many opportunities to witness to her doctor and his nurse
(his
wife) during the doctor visits and hospital stay. He is from
Bolivia
and where he attended medical school an evangelical group had held
daily
devotions and prayer meetings before classes. He told me that he
loved
the song "Sublime Gracias" (Amazing Grace) and would like to hear it
again.
We made him a cassette tape of our services with this song and gave it
to
him. He loved it and said he liked the preaching too.
Please
pray that the Lord will continue to use this tape and us to win them to
Christ.
We had a young man make a
profession
of faith recently named Rocky. He had briefly visited the church
about
six years ago with Carmelo, who was saved in February and surrendered
to
preach shortly thereafter. Bro. Cooper had told Rocky then that
it
might be his last opportunity to be saved. Shortly after he left
the
church, he had a serious motorcycle wreck, which nearly took his
life.
Over the last six years he has had to relearn to talk, read, write and
recently
he has been able to walk again with the aid of crutches. Carmelo
has
been bringing Rocky to church the last four weeks and asking God to
save
his friend. God answered that prayer request in July. God
is
so good! When Rocky went forward to ask Christ into his heart,
there
was hardly a dry eye in the church. God's wonderful mercy
endureth
forever! Rocky and three others were baptized last week.
After working with the
Cooper
family for almost a year the Lord has directed us to move to Rota
Spain,
which is about 40 minutes from the Cooper's work in Lebrija. It
is
with mixed emotions that we take this step. On one hand we are
very
sad to leave the wonderful people that we have come to love over this
past
year, but the work of missions is being accomplished in Lebrija with
the
national men trained and performing the work. Bro. Steve Cooper
is
doing a tremendous work for the Lord and we can't express in words just
how
much we appreciate all that they have done for us. On the other
hand,
we are very excited to follow the Lord and begin a new work for
Him.
For a few months we will be living in Rota where we will fill in for a
missionary
to the military while he returns to the states to raise his
support.
We are very excited about this opportunity because we are filling in
for
Bro. Chris Parker who was our pastor in Rota, Spain when we were
stationed
there over 10 years ago. Bro. Parker is returning to Spain after
pastoring
a church in Mississippi for about four years. There is also much
opportunity
to work with the local Spanish community during the time that we will
be
in Rota and many of the American service members are married to Spanish
nationals.
Once the Parkers return we plan to move to Sevilla, as the Lord leads,
to
win souls to Christ and establish a church. We ask for your
continued
prayer and thank you for the way you have faithfully supported us
during
our first year in Spain.