January - March 2006 Newsletter

Prince & Gina’s Praise Report from Spain

Dear Prayer Partners,

May the Peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you always!

Church Planting Progress

Gina and I have been kept busy the last few months working especially hard to develop our new church into a mature body of Believers. Slowly but surely they are learning how to develop into servants that are useful for every good work.

The first Sunday of May will mark the first year anniversary for this new congregation. We began to minister here in Cáceres around March of 2005, but actually opened our present location and began our meetings as the officially registered “Iglesia Evangelica Nuevo Amanecer” (New Morning Evangelical Church).

I have never been deeply impressed with large crowds in churches, for they can be very misleading as to the true measure of the level of commitment of the individual Believer. Nor am I deeply impressed with much of what people call “decisions” for Christ. Of course all of this is pending on the amount and quality of personal consolidation and discipleship given to every individual.

When we speak of an average of 80 people attending our Sunday morning services or having first time visitors almost every single Sunday, it might sound like no big deal in the States where you have the blessing of having such a rich Christian history and so much Gospel that it is common to have churches of 300 or 400 members. Whereas in other countries, like Spain for instance it’s a genuine miracle!

So, even though we in our new work fluctuate between 80 and 100 in attendance every Sunday and could say, “For Spain, this is incredible!” I’m not impressed until we can effectively consolidate every one of these that are coming and going and find out if they can be discipled to become useful servants of God in the advance of His kingdom here in Europe and throughout the world.

And so it is that at our one year anniversary we can say that we are beginning to take our very first baby steps. We praise God for what has been accomplished, but there is yet so much to do before we can begin to honestly confess some level of maturity and true spiritual growth in the work. To this end Gina and I and those in missionary discipleship have wholly given ourselves. We are patiently building, line upon line, precept upon precept; teaching, organizing and above all building strong relationships with these precious new souls. ç

The Ministry Center

I am absolutely terrible with photos and cameras, but I broke down and asked Varian, one of the young missionary trainees, to go with us and take photos of the present stage of development of the Ministry Center. (Please find these photos attached to this newsletter. In the photos the Ministry Center is the section of the construction that doesn’t yet have the exterior wall erected.)

We’ve put two townhouses together to for the Ministry Center. They are located in a really nice, totally new section of the city that is being developed. The entire area is being urbanized with parks and green areas. From the looks of the pace of construction of the building itself, the streets and everything else around we don’t this that we will actually be able to move in until at least January or February of 2007. At that time we will also have to come up with about $30,000 per townhouse for closing costs.

Once again, to answer the question of what exactly the Ministry Center is: It will be our much needed ministry headquarters supplying the housing needs of the missionary discipleship training team, office spaces, guest rooms (for the many visitors and ministry teams that come this way), personal living quarters for Gina and I as well as several other necessary details and needs.

Other News

Gina and I were privileged to be invited back to minister in Okinawa, Japan, and to accompany and support our dear friends and fellow missionary-pastors James and Gloria Whittaker. Brother and Sister Whittaker celebrated 25 years of ministry in Okinawa, Japan. Several other pastors and ministers came from all of Japan and other parts of the world as Bishop Frank L. Stewart, of “Zoe Christian Fellowship of Los Angeles”, ordained Pastor Whittaker as a bishop over works in Japan, the Philippines, India and other countries where our beloved brother labors for our Lord. We praise God for we were blest to be able to minister and our minister was also greatly enjoyed by the precious body of believer there. While in Japan, the worship leader of the event, Rev. Jeff Booth, blessed our church when bought and sent to us a fantastic electric keyboard (piano) for our worship team!

Family News

On our way back from Japan, we stopped in Washington to spend some quality time with our daughter Jasmine who had just given birth to her second child: an 8lb. 8oz. beautiful baby boy named Jeremiah. I told her and her husband that they could remain in the gene pool and have more kids because the make beautiful babies! The awesome thing is that little Jeremiah looks exactly like my son Jason when he was one or two months old. Placing the photos side by side you can’t tell them apart.

Once Again, You’ve Been A Big Blessing!

Finally, thank you so much for all of your prayers and loving support of our ministry and may God continue to bless you for your generosity! You are a BIG BLESSING to our lives and the lives of countless others that you help us to reach for Christ! We love and deeply appreciate you all!

H.M.S.,

Prince & Gina Parker

Personal Correspondence:

La Roche Sur Yon #1

Principal "F"

10002 Cáceres, España

Tel: (34) 927-242-959

Spype Phone: (301) 637-5906

Financial Support:
Ambassadors Fellowship
P.O. Box 62309
Colorado Springs, CO
80962 USA
Phone: 719-495-8180
Fax: 719-495-3313

September 2005 - January 2006 Newsletter

Prince & Gina’s Praise Report from Spain

Dear Prayer Partners,

May the Peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you always! Gina and I want to wish you a very belated blessed New Year! We also wanted to give you a summary of our church planting progress in 2005 as we move into 2006.

In The Beginning…

If you’ll allow me to say, the church here began pretty much just like one concept of the creation. Genesis 1:2 says, “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Some believe that there was something her before [this present] heaven and earth but that it suffered some kind of horrible catastrophe, was destroyed and recreated.

Well, I don’t know if I believe that, but it still serves to illustrate my point. When we arrived in Cáceres, last year we found an unformed, devastated remnant of what had almost been a church. There were eleven people (only four of them were baptized believers) that had been part of a fairly new work that started out bad and went south from there. The catastrophic damage was so great that news of the scandal here spread far and wide, was constantly in the local newspapers and would make an “R” rated movie that Christians would protest. Pastors and Christian leaders from several denominations from hundreds of kilometers radius gathered continually to see how this breach to the Evangelical testimony in this part of Spain could be repaired. Many of these leaders knew us from years ago and also know we had plans to return to Spain. So they made a formal invitation to see if we would choose to take charge of the the work in Cáceres. We gladly accepted.

Apart from the scandals of crass immorality, abuse and various other unimaginable sins, the church was deeply in debt (20 grand) because of misappropriation of funds. So one of the first things that Gina and I had to do was to take out a loan for the owed amount and pay off all of the church’s debts. We then found and rented a new building, officially changed the name of the church and began anew. The new congregation is paying off that loan as part of the church’s monthly expenses.

Since then, in such a short period of time, God has brought such healing to the land. We were able to break and cancel the curses that had formerly mulled the land and God has opened up great doors of favor and ministry into the lives of hundreds of new contacts. He has brought light to overcome the darkness in many lives and the Spirit of God is moving preciously. Praise God that Gina and I have been able to earn the respect of all of the other Christian leaders in this region of the country and of the community at large sees us in a very favorable and encouragingly positive light.

The congregation has grown rapidly with all new converts and contacts and has become the largest and fastest growing church in this part of the country. Of course this is always good, but it presents it own set of pleasant challenges. We’ve not yet been able to transition the church into the cell church model for we are still just laying basic foundations (in Biblical teachings, convictions and disciplines), but we have about 100 new adults and about 35 children that have begun to come faithfully every Sunday. The challenge is to consolidate and disciple all of these new Believers with just a handful of mature Believers that are still being discipled by me.

Gina was finally able to establish an excellent multilevel Sunday school program that is fundamental but is so good that 4 out of 6 of the other pastors in our province that have been here for years have asked her to help them establish their Sunday school programs. Also, after years of being somewhat inactive in my ministry as a psalmist, I’ve been able to form a worship team that, slowly but surely is learning to flow in the Spirit of true worship and praise. So now the church is also gaining notoriety for our ministry of worship and praise.

Team Ministry & the Ministry Center

We have a small team of missionaries in training for career missionary work serving with us in various aspects of the ministry.

Varian Dean, from Chicago, IL, has set up a school of English classes that we offer as an out reach to the community. He has done a fine job and it is bringing in several people that we probable would not have been able to reach otherwise.
Lucienda Smith, from New Jersey, is working with our youth and some areas of consolidation and outreach. She is also a strong vocalist on our worship.
Stess Cain, from Washington/Idaho, our most recent addition to the team, has brought so much to the table in the way of talent, experience, intelligence and maturity. She is an accomplished violinist and is a tremendous addition to our worship team. Slowly but surely she is taking over our children’s ministry to develop it to its fullest potential for that is her burden and vision.

The three of them are in varying stages of linguistic development, for they’ve had to learn Spanish here on the field, still they have marvelous additions to our labor here. We are praying for more to hear the call to dedicate their entire lives to foreign missions. If you feel that God has called you and would like to join our missionary discipleship training team, please contact us and we will tell you what steps you need to take.

The Ministry Center

Finally in summary, because of the housing needs of the missionary discipleship training team, office spaces, guest housing (for the may visitors and ministry teams that come this way) and many other needs we’ve begun the construction of our international ministry center headquarters. With your remarkable help and support and the contributions of those that are on the ministry team with us here, we were about to raise all of the initial funds to begin the building of our ministry center.

The actual construction should be finished by December of this year and after government inspections, red tape and other “stuff” that the local government has to do to grant entry approval; they will give us the keys probably around February of 2007… a little over a year from now. However, when they give us the keys we will have to come up with another major payment of about $30,000. We believe God for complete provision between now and then. The ministry center will have ten bedrooms, two kitchens, four complete bathrooms and four half baths or washrooms, two large offices, two garages for sever vehicles and space enough for several cell meetings and other functions to be held simultaneously.

Pray for the stability and increase in strength of the dollar. The total cost of the international ministry center is 540,000 €.

The Biggest Surprise

The Catholic recently approved of the showing of the movie, “Luther” in local theaters here in Spain. Something that would not have happened five years ago! Seemingly as a result I, along with the other two Evangelical pastors in our city, received an invitation to meet with the priest of the wealthiest parish here. He wanted to meet with us in one of our churches. It turns out that he has come to us with an olive branch of peace. He formally asked us forgiveness for having called us heretics and having opposed Evangelical “Protestants” all of these years and said that he now understood that Martin Luther was actually a prophet of God! Since then, the Father Miguel Angel Morán Manzano and I have become good friends. He has told me that he not only wants fellowship with us, but our personal friendship!

He and several of his leaders have already joined us for three very exciting unity prayer meetings. He has a group of about 60 Charismatics in his parish and he has invited us (the three Evangelical churches) to have a unity worship/prayer service at his parish. All of the pastors have agreed that I should officiate the service. So alone with elements of our worship group, I’ve invited three or four Catholics and two from each of the other Evangelical churches to form one worship team for that special service.

In the more than 25 years that I have ministered in predominantly Catholic countries, I have never had this happen… nor have any of the other pastors here! Father Miguel Angel’s friendship makes ministry for us here so much easier. We would MUCH rather have the Catholics as friends than as an opposition. For their opposition, quite frankly, can get very hideous! Believe me!

One Other Thing

For those of you that get a snail mail hard copy of our newsletter and desire to receive an emailed version, please drop us a note. Some of you that used to receive our emailed praise report and wonder why you stopped receiving it just ask the question, “Did I change my email address?” We get a lot of automatic replies bouncing back to us from address that are no longer valid. So please let us know if you’d like to continue receiving our cyber prayer updates.

Our email address is: prince_parker@mail2missionary.com. I must add that this address is for ministerial correspondence only please. For all casual communications with us, which we heartily welcome, please write us at: prince_parker@hotmail.com.

Once Again, You’ve Been A Big Blessing!

Finally, thank you so much for all of your prayers and loving support of our ministry and may God continue to bless you for your generosity! You are a BIG BLESSING to our lives and the lives of countless others that you help us to reach for Christ! We love and deeply appreciate you all!

H.M.S.,

Prince & Gina Parker

Prince & Gina Parker