Bienvenidos (welcome) to this, our first e-news letter. We've been saying for years that we need to do a regular newsletter to our friends, prayer partners, and supporters. Hopefully this will become that regular letter.

----- IN THIS NEWSLETTER -----

• Mexico

• Citywide Prayer

• Web Site

• Banners

• Prayer Requests

• Contact Information

• Radio

----- MEXICO -----

For anyone that doesn't know, we're on the Texas/Mexico border. We're ministering mostly in Mexico, but some in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas as well. We've been quite busy here, having two conferences a month, and ministering in at least a couple of different churches every week.

So far this fall, we've had five conferences in Reynosa, Mexico:

• God's Plan for Financial Prosperity

• And God Created Sex

• Emotional Healing (for women)

• Sexual Fulfillment (for women)

• Raising Godly Children

The turnout hasn't been as great as we'd like, but those that have come have received greatly. We've also recorded all these conferences on video and audio cassette. These will be made available to pastors and believers. We've already received an e-mail from a pastor in Columbia asking for information on how to receive some of our recorded conferences.

Right now we don't have the equipment to edit the videos, but we're believing God for it. From what we've been able to gather, we can purchase everything we need to do it on the computer for less than $1,000.00

We've been selling lots of books and tapes in Mexico. We sell them cheaper there, because the people have less money. But that show's their hunger for the Word of God as well. Many act with great surprise when we tell them our tapes are teachings, and not music. Apparently they've never seen them there.

There are some great problems in the church here in Mexico. Please pray with us over these problems:

• Division in the church. There are several pastor's groups because of this. It is very difficult to get the church to work together.

• Tradition. This describes the church in Mexico better than anything.  Everything we do, especially to bring a move of the Holy Spirit here is a battle against tradition. People in the church do things because of tradition more than anything else.

• Apathy. Many of the pastors feel that they don't need anything else.  They're comfortable with what they have (church size, spiritual knowledge, etc.) and don't want anything else. They don't want God to do anything spectacular for them. However, many of the people in the churches are hungry for more.

• Sexual sin. We know of several pastors who have been involved with women in their congregations. We've also talked to a number of people, especially women, who can't see anything wrong with living with someone other than their spouse.

• Child prostitution. Reynosa, Mexico is rated as #2 in the whole world for this, according to the Mexican secular news.

• Pastor's marriges. Many of the pastors wive's aren't involved in the ministry of the church, and many of the pastor's don't want their wives involved with them.

We're also battling with the problem caused by others working on what they call "missions work." What I mean by this is people who come here to give food and clothing, take a bunch of pictures, but don't give the church of Mexico anything spiritual. This has caused two problems for us. The first is that they expect the same from us. We're not here to give them physical things, but spiritual. So, some don't want to accept us. The second problem is that the many of the Mexican believers have their faith in americans instead of God.

----- CITYWIDE PRAYER -----

We're working with some of the native pastors to bring citywide prayer to Reynosa, Mexico. If you've ever seen the video Transformations, you know what I'm talking about. Intercessory prayer is a key to bringing revival to this place, and God has laid this vision on us.

We've received permission from the government to use the central plaza in Reynosa on Jan 8th all day for prayer. This is the first time in the history of this city that the government has given a Christian group permission to use the plaza, and we're excited about it.

Some of the pastor's here are against it simply on the grounds that it isn't their group's undertaking. Some others are concerned about the weather (cold in January). But, we're praying and believing for a good turnout.

----- WEB SITE -----

We finally have our own domain name for our web site. It's at:

     http://www.MaranathaLife.com

Our e-mail has changed as well:

     Rich@MaranathaLife.com (for Rich)

     Deborah@MaranathaLife.com (for Deborah)

If you have e-mail for us in general, please send it to Rich.

The web site is now at 169 pages, and growing. We keep adding more and more pages to it, as we write more and more. If you haven't already, take some time to check it out. Bookmark it in your browser, as we're constantly adding more.

----- BANNERS -----

We've added something new to our product offerings, Banners. This actually came about from our conferences in Mexico. We started making worship banners to use as a background for the videos we're taking of the conferences. A friend suggested that we start selling them, and we realized we had a ready pool of labor in the churches we work with in Mexico.

We're able to sell the banners cheaper than the others we've seen because of our lower labor rate. The proceeds help our missions work in Mexico, and also help some of the churches we're working with regularly. How's that for a plan of God?

If you know a church that needs some banners, please ask them to check us out at: http://www.MaranathaLife.com/banners Don't ask for a catalogue, as we aren't printing any. This is to help keep our costs down.

----- PRAYER REQUESTS -----

1 - Please pray for our vehicles. Both our motorhome and our car have problems right now. It looks like there's a blown head gasket in the motorhome engine, and the car is making grinding sounds. This week, we're ministering to our vehicles.

2 - Please pray for our finances. We're basically living off the offerings of the Mexican churches. They're very generous, but a 400 peso offering (a good offering in Mexico) is only $40.00 U.S. We have a couple of supporters in the U.S., but it's not enough. As our work increases, so do our financial needs.

3 - Please pray for open doors. As God doesn't allow us to kick the doors open ourselves, we need Him to open them. He's very good at it, but we need continued prayer in this area.

4 - Please pray for the church in Mexico. Especially pray for the items we listed above under the Mexico section.

----- CONTACT INFORMATION -----

If you want to contact us:

Our mailing address in Austin,TX is:

    Maranatha Life
    6705 Hwy 290 W., #502
    Austin, TX 78735

Our phone number in Austin, TX is:

    512-288-6713 (for messages)

Our address on the border is:

     Maranatha Life
     c/o The Lighthouse
     RR 1, Box 2883
     Donna, TX 78537

Our phone number in Donna, TX (on the border) is:

     956-464-8174 (when we're on the American side_

Our phone number in Reynosa, Mexico is:

     011-52-044-89-13-29-44

----- RADIO -----

We have the opportunity to start a half hour radio program in Mexico. This is going to be the first purely teaching program on Christian Radio in the city of Reynosa. All the other programs are music programs, possibly with some teaching (about 5-7 minutes out of a half hour program).

This is only going to cost us $20.00 per week. It's another way of sharing the gospel, and helping to bring the church of Mexico to a point of revival. Our current plan is to start this program in January. We don't have an exact time slot, but it will be in the evening, when most of the people listen.