-a recent prayer letter received from Joshua and Amanda Allred (Mexico)

Thank you for your constant prayers and faithful support! There is a lot of news to catch you up on! I will start with some bad and good news.

Jesus Mendoza, a graduate from our seminary, has pastored the South Merida Baptist Church for the past several years. He is no longer pastoring that church and is now working to plant another church independent of our ministry. Sadly, he did not leave on good terms and will no longer be working with us. The members that were at South Merida left with him, so we will be working to relaunch and rebuild that church from the ground up. While we regret the circumstances that led up to it, we are excited about this new project and expect the Lord to do great things in South Merida moving forward! I (Joshua) will be pastoring the church and a young couple in our seminary will be working with us. As a father, I am especially excited to involve our whole family in this ministry project. I was twelve years old when I first helped my parents to plant the North Merida Baptist Church. Our oldest son, Gabriel, is now thirteen years old and will be helping us to plant the South Merida Baptist Church. Amanda will be teaching the children. Gabriel and Michael will be helping with the music and the children’s classes. Even the little ones will be helping to clean and prepare the building for services. Jonathan & Ximena will be working with us. They are both studying in our seminary and believe the Lord wants them in full-time ministry. They are excited about serving, growing, and gaining ministry experience at South Merida. We don’t want to force the Lord’s hand at this point, but we would love to see them take over this church down the road. They will be getting married on October 19th. Please pray for them, their marriage, their growth, and their involvement in this new project. As things progress, we will keep you updated. For now, please be praying for the following events: On Saturday, September 21st, we will be passing out 10,000 invitations to our Grand Opening Service. On Sunday, September 22nd, we will have a special send-off service at North Merida Baptist Church. On Wednesday, the 25th, we will have a special prayer service for the new church. On Sunday, the 29th, we will have our Grand Opening. We look forward to sharing how that all goes in our next newsletter!

I will try to fit the rest of the news in a short paragraph! Ciudad Caucel Baptist Church is growing and seeing more and more members get involved in the ministry. San Jose Tzal Baptist Church has been reaching out to the villages surrounding San Jose Tzal. Last week, they had an evangelistic event in a small village. Three hundred people showed up and heard the Gospel! Many made professions of faith. The North Merida Baptist Church continues to grow as it waits for the final approval to start working on the new building. The government is in a state of transition right now after recent elections and the bureaucracy is slowing down the permit process. Please continue to pray for the final permit to be issued soon! Our school kicked off its second year a couple of weeks ago with twelve students. This is less than we had last year, but we feel much more organized and prepared for this school year now that we have a year of experience under our belts. The seminary also started the school year a couple of weeks ago with 43 students. Thank you for all you do to keep our ministry going here! Please keep us in your prayers. We look forward to sharing more updates in our next letter!