Baptism Sunday!
Seeing new Christians follow the Lord in believer’s baptism is always an exciting time! The church we’re helping in has not been able to baptize in quite a while. The baptistery needed some repairs to make it functional. It took a lot of time and money, but we praise the Lord that we now have a good, functioning baptistery. Pastor Silva decided to have a special service on May 28 for all those who wanted to be baptized. We taught baptism classes in the weeks leading up to it to help the people better understand what baptism is. One teenager told me that she had been baptized as a baby, so she didn’t need to do it again. I had to explain to her how that wasn’t Biblical baptism. Our oldest son Ethan trusted in Christ as his personal Saviour on March 6 of last year. I also explained to him the meaning of baptism. In spite of being terrified of having to stand up in front of a large crowd, he wanted to be baptized as well.
The attendance at the special service was the highest that I’ve ever seen! It was extremely encouraging to the pastor to see that. Pastor Silva preached a short message on baptism and then explained how salvation precedes it. He asked people to raise their hands if they wanted to get saved. After the service, those people were talked to privately, and 4 adults accepted Christ as their personal Saviour. Pastor Silva then had those who wanted to be baptized to come to the front of the church, where he asked them if they had trusted in Christ and if they were planning to be obedient to the Lord’s commands. They then went to the back to be baptized. Twenty-one children, teens, and adults followed the Lord in believer’s baptism, with 6 of those being children and teens that our family personally reached! The joy on the faces of those young people after being baptized was incredible! Praise God! Please pray for these 21 people to continue in obedience to the Lord. Also, please pray for more souls to be saved and that we can have another baptism service in the near future!
Survey Trips
I am patiently trying to pray and prepare for when we will start our own ministry. We believe the Lord would have us to establish our first church in a neighborhood in our city, with the goal of starting other churches out of that one. As a result, I’ve been visiting different neighborhoods to see where the greatest needs are. Several of the areas I’ve visited recently are called Pocitos, Buceo, Malvin, and Malvin Norte. There are over 300,000 people in these areas. Those are also middle- and upper-class areas, for the most part. There’s a great need for soul-winning churches in those areas. For example, in Malvin over half of the people are either “spiritual without a religion” or atheist/agnostic. Lord willing, we will have some solid plans here in the next few months. Please pray for wisdom as I develop a strategy of faith to accomplish the vision that the Lord has given me for Uruguay.
Praise
• Elizabeth is a healthy baby!
• 4 people saved and 21 people baptized during the special service!
Prayer
• Christa’s continued recovery
• The health and safety of our family
• Wisdom as we are preparing for our own church plant
• Our children as they are learning Spanish
• The spiritual growth of the teenagers
Thank you for continuing to give and pray! We love you all so much.
Your missionaries to Uruguay,
Tim, Christa, Ethan, Evan, Emmalynn, and Elizabeth Simmons
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- Recent teen activity
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- Baptizing Ethan
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- Christa and our daughters at a Mother’s Day event!
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- The 21 people who were baptized