September 25 - October 1

This last week was the start of academic life once again. My classes at the university began on Monday as well as the classes that Maribel is taking. The kids went back to school after our time in Austria, and I began my class for the Bible Institute. I have a nice group of about 10 students for my New Testament Introduction class. We began by talking about the canon of the New Testament. I feel that is especially an important issue in the wake of the DaVinci Code and other such material. Viviana has been a special blessing this week. She started coming to church a few weeks ago through a contact with a lady in our church. She is in a motorized wheelchair and through that situation came to know the Lord through a local charismatic group. Since she started coming, she has been very faithful and seems to really be drinking in the teaching. She especially thanked me for the study before our Thursday prayer meeting. On Saturday morning we had our monthly men's prayer breakfast. Dr. Garlock was visiting and spoke. I found his challenge very direct, and it was a real blessing. He has been preaching on the family in Elche all weekend. Today at church I preached about one of the things that Paul warns believers not to be ignorant about: past blessings do not guarantee future success (1 Cor. 10.1-5). We had two visitors last night. After the service I spoke with them and found out that they are strong Catholics. They enjoyed the service and especially the preaching, but do not think that they should read the Bible. Reading and understanding the Bible, in their opinion, should be left to people who are trained to do so. They were just content to listen to the "exerts". I praise the Lord for the opportunity to preach to them, but I encouraged them to read for themselves. May God touch their hearts (they did promise me that they would attempt to read) and bring them to a personal relationship with Christ! After the service we had a time of fellowship to say good bye to Claudia who will be returning to Argentina this week.