An Update From Bolivia

An update from David Del Castillo, co-pastor at Iglesia Gracia Soberana, Santa Cruz, Bolivia...

I have been really looking forward to this moment, since I want to update you on what God is doing among us. Thank you for all the support. It is very nice to be able to count on so many brothers in this great family to which we belong.

First of all, let me tell you that God has blessed us with several faithful people who have a passion for the gospel and are beginning to understand our Statement of Faith and our seven shared values. God has been very good to us. The church has grown remarkably compared to last year and now demands our focus on other challenges related to membership and leadership. We want God to guide us as we move forward. If you would like to see more of what our family has been doing, there is a video here. Right now, we are studying the book of Acts in the Sunday preaching and aspects of our Statement of Faith in our study meetings. God is building his church in our midst.

We are thankful to God that we have been able to work with other ministries. Simeon Trust has continued to invite me to participate in their training and with God's favor, I will be going to Venezuela from December 7 to 11 as an instructor of this ministry. I have also been invited to help in a workshop here in Santa Cruz in April 2023, and in La Paz in May 2023. I ask for your prayers.

By God's grace, on Monday October 24th my first article was published by the Gospel Coalition. Here is a link to the article in Spanish. This month I will be sending a second article as I have been invited to write for them quite regularly. I am convinced that I have been invited to participate in this ministry because of my role as a pastor and my affiliations with our beloved Sovereign Grace ministries.

I also want to tell you about our recent conference, "Servants by His Grace 2023" where we addressed the theme of "A Church According to His Word". This event was a great blessing. We had Joselo Mercado, Rich Richardson, Matthew Williams, Jose Mendoza and myself as speakers, as well as Chris and Maria Deloglos, Oscar Vargas and Erick Miranda as panellists. You can access video recordings of the conference here.

The conference was very good. We had close to 200 people attending, including several pastors. This number was higher than those who attended last year and included attendees not only from Santa Cruz but also from La Paz and Cochabamba. We had the support of the Gospel Coalition and Ligonier to give away books. In addition to this, we were visited by more than 10 different churches, among which two are considering adoption into our family of churches.

I really want to say that the expositors did a remarkable job. Each of them taught us about aspects of how a solid and good church should be. I do believe that the goal was achieved and many church members received the messages well, glory to God! We also spoke about the purpose of the church, the local church, how the church was the plan of God since the days of the Old Testament and how important missions are for the church. We thank God for all the support that each one of you has given us, either by being attentive to us or by praying. We believe that our little church is making an impact in our city.

Last but not least, I want to ask that you continue to pray for Pastor Jorge. His eyesight has continued to deteriorate. He cannot see out of one eye and has partial vision out of the other. Thanks to a relative, he is now in Texas and is being seen by a medical professional that this same relative is paying for. This medical professional has completed very prominent studies relating to the retina, and so Lord willing, it is my hope that we will have better clarity on how to move forward.

We ask for your prayerful support as we navigate the various challenges that a small church faces, including what it means to implement membership and leadership.

We will be traveling to the States soon to visit some churches and attend the 2022 Pastors Conference in Orlando. We are very excited to see many of you.

God bless you and thank you very much for reading.