GRACE IRVINE PRESBYTERIAN CHINESE CHURCH
Grace Irvine’s Many Firsts – An Unexpected Journey
"Jesus is a better Boaz; he is a redeemer too, and..., I think he can be my redeemer." Yinqing uttered these words, after studying with us for 6 weeks in the book of Ruth. On the day that we concluded this mini-series, she gave her life to Christ.
Church planting is an exciting journey, brimming with God's grace in unexpected ways and moments. It brings to mind the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, who embarked on an unexpected journey accompanied by a spirited group, striving toward a seemingly unattainable goal, yet carries on with awe and wonder. Lin and I felt a similar sense of adventure over the past 4 months since we moved to Irvine.
FIrst Convert
On November 13, 2023, 6 weeks after studying Ruth, Yinqing gave her life to Christ. This brought me more joy than all the other progress we have made so far as a church. Grace Irvine exists first and foremost to reach the lost. A few weeks later, a family of 5 also believed in Jesus, just 3 months after they moved to the US. The entire family has already begun serving the church. "I have many in this city who are my people" I continue to experience the meaning of this verse by laboring alongside other believers and seeing many come to faith in Christ.
First Sermon
The unexpected nature of our journey also includes moments of unforeseen grief and sadness. Unexpectedly, the first sermon I delivered in California was a message at a memorial service. A gentleman who lost his wife in late August became one of the first friends I made in town. In the providence of our Lord, I had the privilege of ministering to him during this particularly challenging period and conducting the funeral service for his wife. While entirely unforeseen, I am deeply thankful for the opportunity to serve his family and the community in this manner.
First Retreat
By the first week of December, our core group has expanded to 28 adults and 17 children. The growth took us by surprise, and the enthusiasm and spirit in the group reminded me of the crowd accompanying Bilbo. We went on a weekend retreat on the second weekend of December, it was a sweet time of fellowship and a wonderful opportunity for team building.
First Service
Against our initial expectations and plans, we are preparing for a preview Sunday service on January 7, 2023. As the core group continues to grow, with some members speaking only Mandarin, we all feel the need to have a space to worship our God in our heart language. Thanks to the generosity of New Life Church Irvine, we will have access to the Music Room of Beacon Park School, and we look forward to baptizing new believers in our first service.
Pray with us - for our family, our core-group, Grace Irvine's first service, and the new believers among us!
Support us -- despite the progress, we anticipate facing a shortage in the spring of 2024. Consider become a regular supporter or give us a year-end gift.
Support Grace Irvine: https://give.pcamna.org/to/1958/
Church website: https://graceirvine.org/
#GlobalOutreach #GoodNewsLoves
romania Boxing Ministry
Check out the latest from our church plant in Romania. They are reaching men with the Gospel through a boxing ministry. Most of them are ex-convicts. They convert the church lobby into a workout area. Praise God!
Name - Deo Gloria (church)
Location - Cluj, Romania, Europe
Sunday Attendance - about 120 adults (60-65 men, 55-60 women), plus about 25 kids.
People in discipleship groups - about 85
International People attending church (we offer translation from Romanian to English) - about 12 (it varies upon their commitments in Cluj)
Men in boxing ministry - about 300 people have gone through the classes; in present there are 79 people - 8 of them are born again believers, some others are attending church and are in discipleship groups, while the rest of them continue to be exposed to the Gospel every single time they come to boxing (twice a week). In addition to them, we partner with Teen Chalenge from where we get about 11-12 men every week.
Goal - to see a movement of men that lead their families to glorify God by making more disciples.
#GlobalOutreach #GoodNewsLoves
India Update • November 2022
Global Outreach Update • Praise God that Goshen Presbytery was dedicated on 5th November 2022 in spite of many obstacles from the local people, rain, landslides and flood that hampered work and witness for quite some time. Pray for that God would quickly fill the pews with new believers as we share the gospel and minister to the community.
#GlobalOutreach #GoodNewsLoves
Belarus Update February 2022
Dear Friends,
I hope you have had wonderful winter holidays and started the new year in a blessed way. By having faith in Christ, we can look into the future with confidence. Thank you that you continue to pray for us and help us. Your support is tremendously important to us.
I joyfully would like to give you a short overview of our exciting news. We held a Christmas celebration at our church and had a lot of visitors. I am sending you some pictures. We started our church school that meets once every two months. Our church members were thrilled about this idea. Despite the political pressure and risks, we have more people attending our church and we see how God gives people hope amid the bad news. Unfortunately, last week a new law came into force that threatens 2 years in jail for meeting as an unregistered organization. Our church still can’t acquire the necessary registration. But by God’s grace we continue to meet. However, we are optimistic about the new year and believe that the Lord will help us to reach new people and be their encouragement and support. We started working towards developing new leaders and ministers. As a result, we will be able to accomplish more as a church.
Please pray for:
The opportunity to have services
For the people who got baptized and their spiritual growth
For the new people who attend our church services
For the freedom for our country.
Please share your needs with us and we will be happy to pray for you!
—Slave Kanavalchyk
Kazakhstan Update • Arman
Dear friends, greetings from Florida, the sunshine state. It was a good 4 months in the USA, but we still have 2 months ahead of us. The Lord continues to amaze us through new and old friends, wonderful nature, delicious food, and even through alligators who live in the lake a quarter of a mile away.
We are now in Orlando, but a couple of weeks ago we had an amazing opportunity to spend five days with the whole family in St. Augustine. The church from this city is partnering with our presbytery in planting a new church in Astana and they invited us to visit the church and the ministry and by providing us with a condo on the ocean beach they blessed us with a wonderful time and a "sea" of new experiences. Literally, an "ocean" of the new emotions and impressions. While we were in St. Augustine we had the opportunity to meet with a youth church group, an international outreach church group, and other church groups of people. Arman had the opportunity to share about the church in Kazakhstan and open the Word of God together with the Church on Sunday service.
We also had the opportunity to visit a Russian speaking church in North Port on the Gulf Coast of Florida. We got to know this church two years ago, but we have a feeling that we have known these people all our lives. We had wonderful fellowship with the family of the pastor of this church and an unforgettable time on the beach in Boca Grande.
In Florida, God is giving us the opportunity to see some of our good friends. As we wrote earlier, we see how God takes care of us through friends and we see that friends are a special blessing from Him during the period of our sabbatical.
Back in Kazakhstan in our Church we use materials of the Third Millenium Ministries at the Sunday school for adults. Here in Orlando we had opportunity to visit their headquarter and meet some of our new partners. We also had the opportunity in Orlando to meet with the new leaders of the mission, which sent the founders of our Churches to Kazakhstan back in the 90s.
PRAYER REQUESTS
For the remaining 2 months in America (we plan to be here in Florida for another month, and we will write about our plans for December in the next letter )
For the church in Astana. There is a group of believers in Astana, started from our presbytery, but the leaders of this group made a decision to move to another city, pray for new leaders in Astana fellowship
For the church plant initiative in the village of Malinovka (Russia) and for the preparation for an outreach project in the city of Prizran (Kosovo)
For the Almagul church in Almaty and our return to the ministry
For the churches of our presbytery and overall the Church in our region - Kazakhstan, Central Asia and Siberian part of Russia
Belarus Update • Demas Lazouta
We are very grateful to you for your prayers and support. We need that as never before. We live in the most challenging time facing both Covid and political crisis. Please, pray God would give us courage and wisdom to bring encouragement to our churches. Many people are depressed, unfortunately.
Baptism in Light of Truth Church
Last summer Dima baptized several people in our church. One of them (his name is Max) is a member of our small group. He visited our small group for the last two year. When we met him, his marriage was nearly broken, one step from divorce. Today through fellowship in christian community he not only became a follower of Christ, but also a caring husband and a great father of three kids (with one on the way).
The second person, Lena, has read the Bible with Alyona for couple of years. Her husband did not approve her decision to follow Christ, she obeyed him for a long time regarding this issue, but then decide to be baptized anyway. Praise be go God!
Church Camp.
Every year we dream and plan to have a church camp. Praise the Lord it happened this year too! there were 127 people for 7 days! It is practically impossible to leave the country now so many people were looking for an opportunity to have a vacation inside the country. So our camp provided such an opportunity. We focus our teaching on marriage and had lots of great and fun activities. We felt like it was a week in heaven. It was so special to be together 24/7 of the whole week. We believe that tim there helped many to strengthen their marriages, and for single people to feel that they belong to a church family. Some people are attending church services after the camp.
New Church Plant in Baranovichy
Please, pray for Denis and Karina as they are starting new church in Baranovichy. Denis just finished this time with IFES (InterVarsity). We have been trying to plant a church there for 10 years, but were not successful. Please, pray for them.
Leadership retreat for new churches.
We just had three days retreat for leaders of new churches. We were growing in skills of prayer. It looks like leaders were encouraged a lot. Praise be go God!
Alona’s women retreat.
Dima's PhD studies.
Please pray for Dema as he started his PhD work at the University of Pretoria (South Africa). He is making research about the role of one of very influential evangelical leader in initiating and developing missional movement at the beginning of 20the century in Russia. He thinks that the result of the research might be very useful for the contemporary evangelical church here, in Belarus as well as in all former Soviet Union countries.
Your prayers are making difference.
We know that you never cease praying for us! We feel supernatural support through that. Let God continue to bless you by His Presence and guidance in all issues that you face today.
Yours, Dema, Alyona, Bogdan and Daniel Lazuta
Salvation Church (Ryan Jorgenson)
Hello friends and family of Salvation Church plant!
With great excitement I get to announce to you one of our answered prayers for Salvation Church! God has given us our Worship Director and his name is Matt Cocchi! Matt is a local recent college grad who loves Jesus passionately and enjoys leading His people into His presence through song. He also loves to share the Gospel with those around him! In fact, the way I met Matt is a God-story! This past February I was driving at a busy intersection and saw a young man praying over 2 homeless people and thought "I have got to pull over and join this guy in praying for them and meet this bold follower of Christ." I soon learned this young man's name was Matt Cocchi! I got to pray with him after some discussion, shared contact info and we went on our ways until about a month ago. Our College Age Ministry Director Josiah told me he had met Matt and they made the connection how we had met. Josiah also told me Matt loves to lead people in worship, so I reached out and now here we are, joining together to share the Gospel and make disciple makers through Salvation Church!
Thank you to every one of you who prayed with us for Matt! God truly has answered many prayers with every person we have (all 35 Core Group Members) among many other provisions!
Watch this video to hear more of Matt's heart for this role.
https://youtu.be/oEQWgsVmFSY
PRAYER REQUESTS
More Core Group Members. Our prayerful goal is 50 adults by our October 3 launch.
The funds to purchase all our estimated $35,000 of portable church equipment.
Salvations to come through Salvation Church once we launch in October.
Disciple-makers to be made once we launch.
Our College Age Ministry kicks off events with a Beach Day this Sat Aug 28. Pray for people to attend, form friendships and want to go deeper in community and with Jesus
Sept 25 Family FunFest Event at JCP Park! Ask God for more connections with people towards Christ and Salvation Church
For all plans to come together for our October 3 Launch and COVID stay away OR His wisdom if He wants us to adjust to any changes
Mexico (Jorge Aleman) Update
The pandemic has stuck with us for a long time. In Mexico right now, we are deep in the third wave. Our hospitals are full and a lot people have been infected. Our government has been opening business and then closed them; and the church has not been the exception. Therefore, we are really living difficult times where we have to make quick decisions all the time due to the changes in the regulations. Do we have our worship services with people or just on-line? Do we encourage people to come to small group meetings or not? The great news in the midst of all this madness is that our church planting movement continues forward to extend the Kingdom of God. We haven’t shut down any church planting project thus far. Some of them have been growing, others have been steady, and others that started right in the middle of the pandemic we have seen the Lord bless them even with struggles.
TRAINING
After more than one year this past June we had our first Incubator training for church planters in person in conjunction with CTC. It was a great time seeing each other, for praying together and sharing our battles. Church planters from 6 different cities (Mexicali, Guadalajara, Acapulco, Hermosillo, Cd. Juarez, Durango) came to Monterrey for three intensive days. We don’t know if this is going to be happen again in September since everything is so unsure so I ask you to please pray for wisdom and to see what is best for the future.
After 16 months of not traveling this past July I had the privilege of being the speaker in a retreat for pastores, leaders and wives in Cancun. It was such a blessing to share the gospel of grace in these times where people are looking for answers. After being in a pause, we will continue the training of the leaders of this presbytery next month to grow a church planting movement in the area.
PRAYER REQUESTS:
In September we will visit the city of Chihuahua. We have two candidates for two new projects in the second largest city in Northern Mexico. Pray that the Lord will confirm the calling.
The CPI will have changes in the leadership next year 2022. Pray for a good transition, for recruiting new leaders and missionaries for our office.
Pray for our church planters. We are living a completely different time and we need to learn quickly strategies to connect with new people, to have safety meetings, and to share the same powerful gospel of grace.
Pray that the Lord keeps us healthy and safe as family. Keila has been 2 1/2 years in Reynosa, Katia is in her 4th year of College and Keren has changed work to be a math teacher in a Junior High. Mary and I continue working hard to lead the church.
Russia Update
Our Church planting movement currently has two Church planting projects. One in NurSultan (Astana) in Kazakhstan and another in Malinovka village (Russia, near Tumen). We also hope to send outreach project to Prizran (Kosovo) where God is putting on our hearts to plant the Church. So far with help from Good News Church we support Kusainbekov family, Duman and Tanya, who are serving young people, students and young professionals in Astana city. Duman, currently is studying on distance at reformed seminary "Holy Trinity" in Tumen, Russia.
Please pray for:
1. Many new born Christians in Astana, so the Church in Astana will be established.
2. Dumans study in the semminary, so the Church in Astana will be established with the healthy teaching of the Word of God
3. Pray for our Church plant project in Malinovka village in Russia, traditional russian orthodox leaders and the government are so against any protestant church movements. Pray for Gods protection of those who share the Gospel in this part of the world.
4. Pray for God to prepare people from our Church movement and their hearts who will be going to the project in Kosovo in the near future
In Christ,
Arman A.
Northern Mexico Update
ONE YEAR
It has been more than one year since the Covid-19 changed many things in our lives. And also, it may be a year since my last prayer letter; I am sorry. The Lord has been so good to us as family and in our work.We give thanks because we have been without Covid. We give thanks because the Lord has opened new opportunities to share the gospel through bible studies on line (Mary has 3 with women), and I have others. The on line services of the church has reached out other people with the gospel.
The other side of the coin is that a lot of churches have been struggling to support themselves. A lot of people are very confortable not attending the church even when they can do it. One question that constantly remains is how to be a real community in the gospel with social distancing.
MEXICO CHURCH PLANTING CHALLENGE
Every 10 years Mexico does a census. One area that is asked is religious affiliation. One interesting highlight of the 2020 census is that there are the same number of Protestants or Evangelicals compared to people without religion or religious affiliation, 11% each. The difference is that the churches grew around 50% from 7% to 11%; that is not bad. Meanwhile skeptics grew more than 100% from 5 to 11%; in the last 10 years. From 2000 to 2010 the non-religious group also grew at 100%. If this trend continues by 2030 there will be more than 20% who have no religion or religious affiliation. This is without counting all those who claim to have a religion but in practice and in truth do not live their faith or their beliefs. Mexico needs urgently the gospel because our many religious Roman Catholics do not preach the gospel of grace and now a significant number in our cities are skeptics. The challenge is to preach the gospel that appeals to both groups.
One of the big challenges is that we haven’t been able to walk with our church planters in their sites of work. All of them they have been alone working, struggling and staying faithful. On-line coaching and mentoring have been good but are never is the same as spending time a face to face. Thanks for your support and prayers for us and our movement.
PRAYER REQUEST:
1. PRAY FOR THE TWO NEW CHURCH PLANTERS —MARCOS VALERA IN CULIACAN, & BENJAMIN ROMERO IN LA PAZ, BAJA CALIFORNIA.
2. PRAY THAT PEOPLE COME BACK TO OUR WORSHIP SERVICES.
3. PRAY FOR KATIA’S SUMMER INTERNSHIP IN ISAIAH 55, AND FOR SUPPORT RAISING.
4. PRAY THAT OUR ON LINE TRAINING, MENTORING AND COACHING CAN BE EFFECTIVE IN OUR CHURCH
PLANTING MOVEMENT.
5. PRAY THAT THE LORD’S MERCY CONTINUE BEING WITH US TO KEEP US HEALTHY.
6. PRAY FOR A NEW CHURCH PLANT PROJECT IN NUEVO LAREDO, A BORDER CITY WITH JOSE LUIS VILLASANA.
7. PRAY THAT THE LORD RISE A CHURCH PLANTER FOR THE CITY OF CHIHUAHUA.
8. PRAY FOR WISDOM.
In Christ,
Jorge Aleman
Italy Update
Report from Italy
We are very grateful to Good News Church for your relentless support to church planting work in Italy. You have been faithful supporters throughout the years and we praise God for your example and take your passion as an inspiration. As you are well aware, church planting is a process that can have unexpected accelerations or stops. Not all the projects are at the same level of growth and health.
Breccia di Roma
We praise God for the church planted in 2010 and the new Church that was planted in 2018 (Breccia di Roma San Paolo). Our next project is going to be Breccia di Roma Trionfale in 2022.
After much prayer and reflection, the two churches (Breccia di Roma and Breccia di Roma San Paolo) positively evaluated the calling of two families to relocate to a neighborhood called Trionfale (Triumphant) on the northern border of the Vatican City. For those of you who are familiar with Rome the entrance of the Vatican Museums is where Trionfale begins. It’s a densely populated and in many ways thriving area (approx 100.000 people living there) with little if any evangelical witness. It is literally under the shadow of the Vatican and St. Peter’s cupola dominates the whole area being visible from afar.
Bologna
Your help here was to re-plant an old and dying church. Praise God, in recent months they have seen the first conversions to Jesus Christ after many years without. The new converts are all young people. New families are joining the church and this is also a great encouragement. For personal reasons, the former pastor left the church but a new leadership is now developing and building a kind of momentum that has not been experienced for years.
Verona
In the midst of the covid pandemic, the launching of the Verona church happened in October 2020. Praise God for the core group that continues to meet under the leadership of Daniele Bozzini and Luigi Dalla Pozza, build relationships and networks, and evangelize. In the most difficult season in recent years, the project was launched and is looking ways the get established.
Pescara
The project there is still in a pre-launching phase. The mother church (Chieti) is still working in the area in which they want to plant by building relationships and evangelizing the neighborhood. The time line towards the planting is slower than expected but the process is still on.
Catania/Sicily
The work in the Catania region was developped by the church in Caltanissetta. The church was planted in Comiso using the premises of the former US air force base. The church there is very involved in the community by fonctioning as a local food bank for needy families. Regular services are held in the area and that are promising signs of growth.
Rome, 16th April 2021
Leonardo De Chirico, Rome, Italy
leonardo.dechirico@ifeditalia.org
Mexico Update
Yes, 2020 has been the year of the Lord. It has been a year of challenging our faith, however, we have grew in the knowledge of God. Almost 10 months isolated, not being able to have face to face worship services or trainings and only having extremely little personal contact with my Latin America team, church and relatives. It is unbelievable for new churches to survive in these circumstances. It is now when all these scripture verses that I teach constantly, came to make deep sense to my life. Our dependency on God, his wisdom, his will, his care for my church and family have become more real in my life and the life of pastors and planters. Still in the midst of the pandemic, we are able to minister, to plant churches and to develop leaders in Monterrey and Latin America only because the church is Jesus’ church. We are not the Holy Spirit, I understood that before, however, I experienced this reality through the pandemic. We are not able to be side by side with my own people and family when they are suffering, however, the Holy Spirit has been with them. I could not walked 35 steps across the street to comfort my neighbour who lost her husband due to Covid, but I understood that the Holy Spirit, the real comforter, was there. I have been not able to hug my mom for 10 months, but I know that God is hugging her all the time. It is amazing how the Lord has been working through the pandemic to even make us to see how to be more missional. Most of the churches thought that without face to face worship services we lost our sense of being a church. At the end of April pastors and leaders were despair to come back to gatherings, and that is correct, however, when I asked the motivation to come back they gave me what I think are not correct motivations. Some of them were; “we are not worshiping the Lord”, “we are losing tithe and offerings”, “we are not able to disciple them,” etc, etc. After several months we realized that this situation will take longer and we started to reflect on our convictions about being a church. Face to face worship service does not define the church of Jesus Christ. We ought to have face to face worship, but like the persecuted church, we are not able to have it and we understand that it does not define us, but the very presence of Jesus in our lives and the unity in Christ and to each other through different means. We are united, we are worshiping together as one local church in many different places in the city. We understood that even though, face to face worship is very important to practice church, if we cannot, we still need to look for the essentials to continue being the church. Discipleship is growing, worship is going deeper in and from our houses and the mission of Christ has now more opportunities than ever. I have three couples in remarriage counseling, some individuals asking questions about Christianity, a couple of families asking when are we opening services to come, and all of them have come from our digital worship services. They started connecting in the midst of the pandemic and now they are a part of our church. The lord land of our rented building gets connected every Sunday and he is unbeliever. These are the experiences through out Latin America. Our CTC planters or pastors have had similar experiences and growth in Christ. We give thanks and the glory to God.
CHURCH PLANTING
Can we plant churches in the midst of a crisis? That was the question at the beginning of the pandemic. By the grace of the Lord as a CTC Latam, we helped to start 6 churches in Monterrey, Mexico City, Quito, Cartagena and Valparaiso. So, yes, it is possible only because Jesus is in charge to build his church, not us. We are instruments in his hands.
CITY MINISTRIES
The fact that we use online means of gatherings and communications, we were able to start 4 initiatives for the whole region; Faith and work, Catalytic leaders, Couches and Trainers. These initiatives for leaders gathered in 2020 around 85 key leaders from 18 cities and 12 countries in Latin America from Mexico to Argentina and Brazil.
TRAINING
One of the biggest challenges for our ministry has been the question of how to do an effective training online when one of our main blessings is to build a community of the gospel through that? Well, in line of our new reality we re-designed all our trainings for an online version. We created a couple of city labs and a new training in response to the pandemic. This new training was called “INDUCTION.” The purpose was to respond to many of the main problems for ministry that the pandemic brought. By the grace of the Lord, two incubators started and five induction program were developed. We had almost 300 leaders in training trough these programs.
PRAYER REQUEST
• For my family protection.
• For the 300 leaders in training. For them to be encourage by online services and trainings.
• For San Pedro Church, as this church deals with the pandemic. This is my church which is a flag ship church in Mexico.
• For the 6 new churches we started in 2020.
• For my team, in order to work in unity and wisdom facing the pandemic.
• For my support account in MTW. I lost some sponsors and has been a difficult year.
In Christ,
Adres
Belarus Update
Watch the dedication of Belpuan Church in India
I am glad that I can share the latest Belarus news with you. Our people are still protesting. At the same time, there are more repressions from the government. People are put to jail even for alternative news channels subscriptions. People’s phones can be checked anytime. Sometimes policemen call people and make them come to the police station as a witness, but in the end, they arrest them anyway with a fake protocol.
At the same time, it a good time for church to reach young people. We have already provided financial help to four victims of the arrests.
We are happy that our church services have an atmosphere of support and encouragement. In October we had a retreat for active church members. There were 14 people there. This event improved spiritual and emotional state of our church. Here are a few testimonies.
Nadya Severinchik:
The weekend that has been so lacking! It was a great time to socialize well, to relax physically and spiritually, to free oneself from politics, study and, in a sense, people. Get to know each other not as ministers, but as friends. Singing, sitting around the fire, debriefing and just free time helped a lot to recharge for a while ahead. Thank you for this opportunity to go to the retreat with such different people and come so similar)) after all, spending time together brings us together very much!)
Maxim Logvinov:
It was a great time to relax and recover from the tough government news in the circle of loved ones.
Sveta Nenasheva:
Retreat. The place where the soul sang and rose from the ashes, where the body rested and faith was strengthened. Two days, and according to the amount of happiness received, a whole small life. Thank you
Please pray with us for the opportunity to have a winter English camp for the church and our friends who don’t know God. The situation in the country is changing every day which makes it really difficult to plan anything.
Please pray for the repressions to stop. Pray so we could do our best at sharing the gospel in given opportunities and for the winter English camp to take place.
Link for retreat video:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GLIX4WfN3_-Ne5qz4uoTIwJ5FK-o7YQv/view?usp=sharing
We love you and praying for you!
Slava