February Update!!

With hearts full of praise and thankfulness….!

December: We enjoyed a wonderful time of fellowship as we celebrated Christmas with a special potluck dinner. On Saturday the 18th we held our third annual community outreach event – the Children’s Spanish Christmas Party. We are thrilled to share with you that we had around 90 children with their families attend – about 130 people in all! What a successful, exciting day that was – as we served them a meal, guided a craft, a piñata, and most importantly, shared the gospel with them. Each family went home with a gospel tract and a children’s Bible story book. May God plant those seeds and make them grow! We were also so humbled and grateful for the outpouring of support from the EBC church body. Since the event, we have had one new family join us (pictured at right) and we have over ten new contact numbers and addresses. Praise the Lord! And thank you for praying for Ramon and family - God has provided for them in many ways! It is so exciting to see that family grow.


January: Jose was blessed beyond measure to be able to return to Honduras (using airline miles) and attend his childhood church’s 75th anniversary (photo: receiving a special recognition on behalf of his mother). He also enjoyed the reunion with his family, and spent some valuable time with his mother, who is in the hospital (see photo on the lower left). Back in Vancouver, another monthly fellowship dinner was held where members were blessed in getting to know one another better. We now have around 20 weekly attenders in our Sunday service, with many of those attending the weekly Life Group that Jose teaches. Jose also began a weekly guitar class, to enrich those in the group and also to hopefully provide some future musicians for our Sunday morning services.


Family News: After exactly one year of attempting to purchase a house, God has opened the door (pardon the pun!) and is allowing us the blessing of our own home! We signed the accepted offer on New Year’s Eve, and next week we’ll be signing the loan and title documents, receiving the new keys a day or two after! Praise the Lord! We can’t wait to host Spanish Life Group and summer barbeques in the backyard – what a blessing. It is our prayer that God direct us as we strive to become wise stewards of His gifts. (Email us if you'd like the new address!)

Prayer: Shortly after we sent out our last update to you, Jose was warned that his night job may face some layoffs. So far we haven’t heard anything more, and we ask that you pray with us that God would provide according to His will. We have been so thankful and greatly blessed these past four years for these solid employments! We also want to share with you the strain that Jose’s current schedule is causing on his heart’s desire and the true need for time in the ministry. We’re including some charts to illustrate what that looks like as far as time and income. (The figures are rough approximations, and don’t include things like sleep, doctor’s appointments, etc. Job #1 is the Spanish teacher job at Vancouver Christian and Job #2 is the night janitorial job.)

As we begin a new year and plan out Spanish Ministry at Evergreen Bible for 2011, we face the fact that many goals will have to remain unmet due to these circumstances. Visitation in this culture is vital, and we would love to be able to visit these dear ones in their homes. Also, a midweek church meeting such as a praise and worship service would be of great blessing and benefit, along with inviting families to our home for dinners and one-on-one time. Would you please pray with us that God would move hearts and provide so that we might dedicate the time truly needed in order to help this ministry flourish? And would you pray to seek the Lord’s guiding if He might even use you to make that happen? We are around $1,000/month short of what we would need in order to eliminate just one job and jump into ministry full-time. Thank you for your prayers! We are confident that we are where God wants us, and that He has already given us more than what we need…we are truly grateful. Many thanks to those of you who are already praying for us and those who are faithfully giving towards our ministry here in Vancouver!

May God bless you richly as you serve Him where you are, in your every day life!

Oh Me of Little Faith!

I just got word that indeed the poster was hung on the announcement board at the WIC offices and not only that, but they made photocopies to distribute to their clients!! This is GREAT news! These offices are a great place to come in contact with Spanish speakers in need - I am ecstatic! Praise the Lord!!

Praise! and...Prayer!

This morning I went to the local W.I.C. offices with a poster promoting the Spanish community Christmas party, thinking the odds of getting approval for the poster to actually be posted were quite slim! Much to my surprise the young lady at the desk was quite enthusiastic to hear of the event we're hosting and not only did she believe that her supervisor would post the advertising but that they would also be able to make many photocopies to distribute to their Spanish-speaking clients. This is an exciting possibility and that's why I'm asking for your prayers! Please pray that the supervisor would approve the posting and that copies would be distributed. God be glorified that a government office might be used to bring the lost to Himself!!

Ramons testimony

Your faithful prayers are helping in many unseen ways for people like Ramon, who was just baptized last month! Enjoy his testimony (especially if you speak Spanish!), and prayerfully consider how you might become more involved with this ministry! See our quarterly update below...

December Update

Beloved friends and family,

"…And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace…." Isaiah 9:6

What a delight it was to work with Rebekah as she memorized this verse for Awana -- listening to many different versions of Handel’s Messiah on YouTube. We trust that this Christmas season you and your home will be celebrating our Savior, our Wonderful Counselor…our Prince of Peace!

Last month we joined with the congregation of our brothers and sisters at Evergreen Bible for a very meaningful baptism service. The new believers that we mentioned in our October letter joyfully professed their faith through baptism, as did our precious eight-year-old daughter, Rebekah. Jose performed the service for these three and as you can imagine, our hearts overflowed with blessing!

We have continued the monthly fellowship dinners, which has proved to be of great blessing as those relationships strengthen. Jose is leading the Friday night small group through Focus on the Family’s Spanish version of the Truth Project. In addition, the Ecuadorian couple on our leadership team has taken on a “First Steps” study with the new-believing couple. We are so thankful for this, as it is grows both couples in discipleship and in the knowledge and understanding of the Word.

This month will hold two important activities for our Spanish-speaking group. Saturday the 11th is our Christmas dinner, where each family will bring a special Christmas food unique to their country and culture. Saturday the 18th we will hold our third annual community Christmas party for Spanish speaking children and their families. This year we are ramping up the promotion, increasing the scale of the program and hope to have a larger group from the community with whom to share the gospel. Please pray with us for this outreach event! May His Name be glorified and may He draw many to Himself.

How to pray for us:
*Pray for the Christmas party, that the gospel message would be clear to those who don’t have Christ as Savior
*For Ramón and family, who have only enough funds for one more month
* Strength and energy for Jose as he keeps up with his work, ministry schedule, and bi-monthly volunteer trips to teach at the Bible school in Salem, and for financial provision. Our ongoing prayer is that God would graciously provide so that Jose could keep just one job (rather than two or three) and dedicate the rest of his time to ministry. Would you prayerfully consider if God might use you in this area?
*For our family, that Christ would remain the center of this holiday season in our home and our hearts

Merry Christmas to each of you!
Jose, Ruth, Rebekah, Isabella, and Daniel Alvarez

To send monetary support by mail (Checks made out to “NICE” with our name in the memo):
N.I.C.E., PO Box 64750, University Place, WA 98464-0750

October Update

A busy summer blew by us and with it some really amazing blessings that we are excited to share with you!

Summer park outreach: In our June update we told you about our plans to go to a local park in order to meet and bless other Spanish speakers. God let us have sun and warmth for each Sunday out of the month that we went, and for that we are thankful! The park outreach events were successful in that we were able to strike up conversations with Hispanics, including them in games of soccer and volleyball, sharing hotdogs with them, and inviting them to our Spanish service. Though we have ended this activity for the year due to our typical Washington weather of rain and cold, we will definitely pick this up again next summer, hopefully increasing the outings to several times a month.

More souls won for Christ: Recently three more of our service attenders accepted Christ as their Savior! Take a second and praise God with us for that! One of these new believers had just moved here, and as she and her husband had hardly any belongings, our beloved church generously responded by furnishing their home.

God’s provision for our ministry: We were contacted by a brother in Christ who God has used to send us children’s Bible story books in Spanish – one of the new believers is reading these Bible stories to her young daughters and they are now learning these treasured stories together!

Additions to our leadership team: A beautiful young couple from Ecuador who has been attending the Spanish service since their wedding in March of last year has now joined our leadership team as we plan and pray together – what a blessing to have them!

Alvarez family activities: As mentioned, it was a crazy busy summer, but what a joy to get to visit family members from both sides. In July Ruth and kids flew out to Virginia to be with her sister and family for two weeks, rejoicing in the addition of a new nephew. After that came a fun-filled week with a visit from out-of-town friends. A week later we as a family of five finally made it back to our beloved country of Honduras for a two-week, never-a-dull-moment, fast-and-furious visit with precious family and friends. September brought a big challenge for Ruth in speaking at Evergreen Bible’s women’s retreat – praise God for stretching us beyond our self-imposed limitations and for equipping us along the way! Now that October has arrived, we are one month back into the typical school-year routine. Jose continues to work two, sometimes three, jobs as Spanish teacher, sanitation engineer :), and soccer referee. He has really enjoyed his trips down to Salem to teach at the Spanish Bible school and is forming a great relationship with those students…even meeting a fellow Honduran!

How to pray for the Spanish Ministry and for us this fall:
*Planning and carrying out the annual Children’s Christmas Party outreach – we hope to reach many more this year and work much harder to go farther with this event.
*Discipling the new believers and wisdom in the weekly Bible studies and monthly fellowship dinners with the Spanish speakers
* Stamina and encouragement for Jose as he keeps up with his work and ministry schedule, and for financial provision. Our ongoing prayer is that God would graciously see fit for Jose to keep just one job and dedicate the rest of his time to ministry.
*For our family, that God would be glorified in our home - in our words, thoughts, and actions

We praise God for all of you, our dear friends and brothers in Christ, for coming alongside and lifting us up in prayer! Thank you for visiting our blog, and feel free to join us on Facebook or contact us and let us know how you are and how we may pray for you.

Trusting, obeying, and happy in Jesus,
Jose, Ruth, Rebekah, Isabella, and Daniel Alvarez

To give online, see the link over there on the right!

Or to send monetary support by mail:
N.I.C.E., PO Box 64750, University Place, WA 98464-0750
Checks made out to “NICE” with our name in the memo

Welcome to the Family!

Please pray for Irma, her husband Ramon (not pictured) and their three daughters...may the daughters follow their parents' decision to become Christ-followers.

Also remember Teresa who recently prayed to receive Christ as her Savior.