Greetings!

Hello, friends, family, and supporters.

We would like to share with you a little about our work here in Mexico during the last couple of months.

Discipleship Class

Throughout the Spring of this year we met with a group of about 12 people for a series of discipleship classes. We would meet with them for a couple of hours each Tuesday evening, have a light supper together, teach on the basic Christian disciplines, and pray with them. Our group was very successful, and we finished the three month program without losing any group members. One of the couples even had a baby during this time, but they soon came back to continue the course with us.

Out of this group the Lord has provided a couple to be our children’s church leaders and another couple that is now serving along side our youth leader and his wife. Some of the others are also involved in serving in the church, and two of the newer young Christians in our group made the decision to be baptized. We praise God for the fruit this group has produced.

Online Bible School

Our Online Bible School finished its first publicly offered course in July. With just under 60 students enrolled from around Mexico and beyond, and four course facilitators, this was the largest online course we’ve ever tried to offer. The course went very well with the majority of the students finishing the first part of the Old Testament Survey. We look forward to offering the second part of the Old Testament Survey online starting in September.

We are also working on new material. Our New Testament Survey in making progress, and we’ll probably be offering that course soon, as well. I plan to do videos of more courses in the coming months.

We believe the Online Bible School will be a blessing to many Christian pastors and leaders around Mexico and perhaps other nations in the future.

David’s High School Graduation

In June, our oldest son, David Jeremiah, graduated from Lighthouse Christian Academy High School. We were very blessed to attend his graduation ceremony near Nashville, Tennessee, together with my parents, who traveled there from Michigan. We spent the first couple of days in the Nashville area and then traveled toward Mammoth Caves after the graduation.

David had worked very hard this last year to graduate with honors. After many hours of study and two attempts at the ACT, he finally completed the requirements for the honors program.

Youth Camp

We are just back from a great youth camp with the young people of our church. The group of about 30 spent three days and two nights at a property near Huasca, about 45 minutes from Tulancingo. Sara and I taught Biblical principles of relationships, including the importance of our relationship with the Lord, friendships, relationships with authority figures, and romantic relationships and dating. We had a total of about seven hours of teaching during the three days.

The kids really enjoyed their time at the camp. There was a swimming pool and plenty of room for fun and games. These young people even enjoyed the pool, although the weather around here was quite cool.

All three of our children (David, Daniel, and Anna) participated in the camp. That left Sara and I with a little extra time together, which we enjoyed.

New Children’s Facility

We are happy to report that we now have a new facility for our children’s church ministry. Located just a couple of properties from our church, it is a very convenient location as opposed to our previous facility which was several blocks away. In less than two minutes we can walk from one building to the other.

We inaugurated the building in June and now the kids are enjoying this new ministry area. Besides moving to a new location, we have started a new season of ministry for the children with new leaders. Sergio and Andrea have taken the leadership of the children’s church ministry, and Sara is now getting more involved in the supervision of this area.

Prayer Requests

We would like to ask you to pray for the following:

• For our youth leaders, Ricardo and his wife Tania.
• For our children’s church leaders, Sergio and his wife Andrea
• For our trip to Veracruz August 12-15, where I will be teaching at a men’s retreat
• For wisdom for David Jeremiah, as he decides where to study

Thanks!

We appreciate your prayers and support.

In His love,

David and Sara Lont and family

You may know that we have been working on putting together an online Bible School program. This program is designed to allow students in any location to study Bible classes in an online group setting. The program includes video presentations, written notes, quizzes, forums, and other tools to help the students learn the material.

After doing several test runs with our local congregation, we have now officially opened the classes on a broader level. We currently have about 60 students, most of whom are from Mexico, with a few hispanics living in the U.S.  Several of our students are pastors, worship leaders and youth leaders. I am teaching “Old Testament Survey” online with the help of several “facilitators” who help grade student work.

We hope to continue expanding the program and reach out to more students, perhaps someday throughout Latin America or even beyond, with a broad range of Bible courses. We pray that these courses will equip our students to do the work of the ministry.

April 30 is known as “Children’s Day” in Mexico. As a church, we did a couple of special events for Children’s Day this year.

First of all, we began a mission in a poor community up on the hills above Tulancingo several months ago. One of our leaders, Gabriel, and his wife, Silvana, are in charge of this outreach. They organized a game day for all the children of the area, with activities such as rallies, a movie theater in a tent with a Christian cartoon, marble games, and several others.  Our church also gave away kites and other toys to the children.

After the kids played, we had a few minutes of worship, and then I spoke briefly to them and the parents who were present about the need to open their hearts to Jesus Christ.

After the message, all were invited to eat together. A team of ladies had prepared food for everyone.

The following Sunday, we had our church’s local celebration of Children’s Day with pizzas, race cars, and inflatables.

Lk. 18:16 But Jesus called the children to him and said, Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. (NIV)

We are investing in the lives of children, because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Our church is working on a new children’s facility which is only three buildings from the building where we hold are services for the adults, and soon we will have children’s services in the new children’s center. There are many young couples with children in our church, and some of the kids do not attend children’s church, since our current children’s building is several block away. We look forward to soon having a better place for them to worship, learn about God’s Word, and give their lives to the Lord.

During the month of April, we had several opportunities to minister, including an invitation to preach in the “Spring of Life” church in Pachuca. We had met the pastor a few years ago, while ministering in another church. He and his wife expressed an interest in the Advanced School of Ministry seminars in Cuernavaca, and they have been attending for the past two years.

It was the church’s twenty-first anniversary celebration, and I was the guest speaker for the Sunday service. After the service, we all ate a meal together in the church’s dining area. Pastor Onésimo Torres and his wife were very hospitable and we enjoyed being with them and their church.

 

We had a very interesting ministry visit to Real del Monte, the village where Sara was born. Pastor Cirilo invited me to preach to their young church on Sunday evening, March 20, for a special service in which they were celebrating the second year anniversary of their worship team. A couple of months before this, we had visited him and his wife to invite them to the Advanced School of Ministry conference in Cuernavaca. At that time, they had told us that they were meeting outside of town on a rustic property that used to be a chicken farm. We headed to the service believing we would probably be meeting outside under a tent or in a barn or something similar. What a surprise when we arrived and found a beautifully finished church building!

Pastor Cirilo was very touched by the teaching at the Advanced School of Ministry conference and felt the Lord speaking to his heart about their church building. When he returned, he got the people together, raised money, and had the old chicken farm completely remodeled and converted into a nice church building in just over a month.

The night was filled with music, both modern praise and worship songs as well as some of the old classic Mexican praise songs. Two traditional Mariachi groups also participated in the service, which was almost full to capacity. I preached about the importance of praise and worship, and then the congregation praised and sang for another hour. After the five-hour service, we all had a late fellowship dinner together. It was a real blessing to see the unity and great atmosphere in this little church in Real del Monte.