Thank you for your prayers for our ministry and especially for our family! God has been so good and faithful to us, and we can give testimony that when God calls, God provides.
January and February were very busy times of preparation for me and the men of our church. It was time to see how well I had prepared them to lead our ministry while I was gone. They have planned big days and special events, and the church has continued faithfully reaching people for the cause of Christ every week.
At the end of February, Rebecca and I arrived in the United States. I had the great opportunity to preach a conference in Florida, and afterwards I preached in churches in California to raise support. Rebecca traveled with me while being pregnant in her last trimester. It is funny, but as my wife grew bigger, I grew bigger too!
At one of the churches we went soul winning with, my partner was a young man called to be a missionary. After telling how many people we see saved in Bolivia, I felt like the pressure was on to produce. We started knocking doors in a middle-class area, and door after door was closed on us. I was begging God to give us fruit until we knocked on the last door. A university student answered and graciously got saved, and he told us he had been searching for God. It was as if God had given us a divine appointment!
Because we now can speak Spanish, we went soul winning with English and Spanish churches. Sometimes I preached in English and then afterward went to the Spanish service in the same church to preach in Spanish. Knowing Spanish has opened a whole new sphere of ministry and has given us new opportunities to serve the Lord.
In the months of March and April, we continued to travel, win souls, and meet pastors. I preached in churches while we were waiting for our baby to be born. My wife and I had the great opportunity to speak at a Spanish couples’ retreat on a Friday night, Saturday morning, and then again at noon time. That Sunday morning we drove two hours so I could preach in another church, and then that Monday I drove about two hours away for a conference that night. Rebecca was too tired to go to the conference with me, so the plan was that I was going to stay the night where the conference was, which was about 45 minutes away from where she was staying.
The conference ended early, so I decided to drive home to be with Rebecca, and thank God I did! Her water broke about two hours after I got there, and she went into labor almost one month early! It was too early in the morning, and it was too early for the baby to be born! We called the hospital, and they told us to come in. We started frantically packing, trying not to forget anything. When we were going out to the car, instead of pressing the button to unlock the doors, I hit the panic button, and the car alarm went off—it was 2:00 a.m.! We got to the hospital in record time, and Abigail Grace Lopez was born on April 22, 2014, weighing 5 pounds 14 ounces.
So far, so good. Abigail is a healthy little chubby baby with big eyes, a beautiful smile, and a little bit of hair. Please pray for us as we make preparations to go back to Bolivia the first week of August. Please continue to pray for the health of our new baby girl. Our church in Bolivia is so excited to meet her.
Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise,
Xavier Lopez