Gospel of John – The Maness Family

Stacie is teaching a weekly kids’ class!

It has been great getting to have face to face services at Marcelo’s house again. He had asked me to ask Stacie if she would like to work up a lesson before the Bible study on Wednesday nights. Last year the night before the quarantine started, we had our first big outreach like this with several kids present. Since starting again this year we have had much smaller numbers but everyone present has been throughly enjoying the time together.

We understand you better now!

This is what I was told one night after preaching on Wednesday night. They told me that before they had a harder time figuring out what it was that I was saying but now they were able to understand more. I guess that the language classes have been paying off!

If you have ever been in a cross-cultural situation where you are learning another language to preach and teach the heart of God and the depths of His word, then you will understand the difficulty. Over the last year during quarantine we have continued our language classes through Zoom and have continued to teach on the podcast and through Youtube and Whatsapp. There is not a day that goes by that we are not learning a new word or phrase and how to best apply the new found knowledge. Please continue to pray that the Lord, who made the tongue, would continue to aid us as we speak His message to the world!

5000 full color flyers printed!

We finished up teaching through the 22 doctrinal statements this month on the podcast. After finishing up the teaching, we made a separate post for each doctrine and linked the audio lessons to our “what we believe” page on our website. I then made a full color, single-fold flyer on high-quality, glossy paper that has the plan of salvation with a QR code to the “gospel of John” booklet that we prepared previously. Also on the front of the flyer is information on how to connect to the weekly teaching on the podcast and website. On the inside and back cover it shows the 22 doctrinal statements under the title of “how to recognize a scriptural church, a study in christian doctrine”. Next to each doctrinal statement is a QR code that will take them to my audio teaching on the subject.

We plan on passing these out over the next few months and praying that the seeds that are sown would take root. Our first purpose is to see people saved. Secondly, our purpose is to begin the discipleship process. We are praying that through this the Lord would touch hearts to open their home for a Bible study where they can invite their friends and family to hear the word of life. Even if half of one percent respond by wanting to have a home Bible study it will have been worth the effort!

Greek New Testament Parsing Guide translated into Spanish!

We would like to express our great thanks to Maurice Robinson for allowing me to translate his work “The online Greek New Testament parsing and declensions for all occurring forms” into Spanish. To my knowledge nothing like this existed before in Spanish and if it did it wasn’t freely available. This resource will be a great blessing to students of the Greek Scriptures and New Testament and will be made freely available on our website. It has an alphabetical vocabulary of the entire Greek New Testament with its Strong’s numbers and its grammar codes. We pray that it might be a great resource. I believe that it will fill a gap in the Spanish speaking world. It may be downloaded, copied, shared or printed as long as the content is not modified and it remains free of charge. Pray for us as we continue to share Jesus with a lost and dying world!

Thoughts from Stacie

We appreciate having so many people praying for us. We never know what doors will open at any moment. One minute we think our schedule will be going one way and just one phone call or conversation later doors open to go another direction. After almost a year of closed physical doors where we had to do things digitally, now doors are beginning to open up in the physical world. The kids will be going back to in person band and violin classes again. Please pray for our children as they interact with other children again in Spanish. We are coming out of the long lockdown of 2020 feeling a little shyer than before. It feels strange with all the mandatory masks and self distancing protocols getting in the way of good communication. Please pray for us that we are able to conquer these barriers in order to share the gospel with those we will be seeing regularly.

Click Here for the Printable PDF of this Report

Merry Christmas!

A Special Thank You for the Special Offering to buy Bibles and Print the Gospel of John Book

This year, while we were in quarantine, I finished preparing a Gospel of John booklet that has a clear plan of salvation, the complete text of the Gospel of John with the beginning steps of discipleship at the end. About a month ago a church, which desired to remain anonymous, had connected with us on what they could do to help us share the Gospel here in Argentina. We mentioned our desire to print these booklets to be able to give to people that we meet.

They had graciously voted to send $1,000 to either print the Gospel booklet or buy Bibles. We will be looking for the best options for getting them printed as soon as possible. This booklet will be a great resource as it could be used not only to visually share the Gospel, but also as a basic study guide for beginning discipleship sessions with someone. On the back of the book there are links to our Podcast as well as our Youtube channel. If we can get somebody plugged into our podcast we can continue to speak the Word of life into their lives. This book is free to download and copy, so if you know anyone in your community that speaks Spanish you can freely share it with them!

We Miss Having Places Like O’Reilly or Autozone

Culture in other countries can be very funny sometimes. We miss the fact that in the US, every town has an Autozone, ABC or some kind of autoparts store. The experience is usually very straightforward. You enter the store, buy your part and leave. Done.

Here in Argentina, in a city of almost one and a half million people, it was very difficult to by the part that we needed for the car recently purchased. When we bought the car, we bought it at a discount, knowing that it was going to need the rear light assembly. When asking whether the part was in stock, the auto parts store did not have one and were unwilling to order one from the factory for fear that the price would change while it was being shipped.

They gave me the number of someone else that might have the part. They did not, but they told me of another that would have the part. They did not but were willing to order it with a 7-10 day wait. I told them to order the part and two weeks later received notice that it came in.

When I arrived with the money to pay for it, they explained that it was not there but at the other location on the other side of town. He printed off the bill for the part and I traveled to the other side of town and was able to get the part that we needed. After several trips and translations, we finally have that part that we need! Praise the Lord!

The Lord Opens Up Opportunities to Share the Gospel

One thing that is nice about a large city like Cordoba is that you have great potential to meet new people. There are many times that you will meet someone for the first time and possibly never see them again. It is a great opportunity to share the Gospel. This month had been no exception! From the people that I get to talk to regularly to people that we met that were selling items for Christmas.

One such person was the green haired young man that came to Cordoba to take college classes right before the pandemic hit. While he was not very interested in making Jesus the Lord of his life, he did listen to the gospel and later I shared the link to our podcast. Pray for him.

Or the taxi driver that was sad when we got to our destination because he was enjoying the discussion. Please pray that the Lord gives us wisdom in all our words, actions and decisions!

Abortion Legalized

At the end of the month, our hearts sank with the knowledge that abortion had been legalized here in the country. Earlier in the month we even saw a notice by two women that wanted to become pregnant just to be the first in line to abort their babies. I am having a hard time even writing this paragraph without tears in my eyes over the evil rebellion in the heart of people. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Thoughts from Stacie

Thank You for making our Christmas so Special!

Our Children posing in front of the tree on Christmas Morning

Christmas is usually an unsure time of year and some years are a little tighter than others. Our children are really sweet though and are always excited for Christmas no matter how many gifts are under the tree.

This year because of several generous Christmas offerings we received we were able to get some really special gifts for not only our children here in Argentina but also to send a little something special to our State side children as well.

The five children here were especially excited a couple of days before Christmas when we gave each of them money to go out and buy gifts for me and Scott. I think they might have been more excited for us to open our gifts than they were to open theirs.

Christmas Eve we set out their gifts after they were in bed and Christmas morning they set our gifts around the tree. After our Christmas morning Bible reading where we read about the birth of Jesus from the book of Luke and Matthew, they wanted us to open our gifts from them first.