Danielle and I have been very blessed by the opportunity to serve in various ways over the last year and want to share with you what is coming in 2009.
We moved to Dallas last year to follow God to the next phase in our lives. We know God has put the two of us together and can say without equivocation that we are made to live and serve together for the rest of our lives. We want God at the forefront of our lives.
God has us in Dallas to continue His work through Worldwide Voice In the Wilderness Prison Ministry. WVIW, has been greatly used and greatly blessed by God for over 30 years. Wviw is an International Prison Ministry that brings the message of Jesus Christ in to prisoners, professional correctional personnel, victims, and their respective families. WVIW’s faithfulness and hard work has been the vehicle for God to restore relationships, overcome alcohol and drug addiction, and put lives back together which would otherwise be lost forever.
I knew God called us to be missionaries from the first time I stepped on foreign soil in Honduras. I felt God stirring something up as I first heard the stories of the men and women who pioneered the ministry in Honduras forty years ago. I knew I wanted to be a part of work involving foreign places & cultures, new languages, and anything else that would broaden my thoughts about who God Is.
I used to think that a Missionary was just someone who lived in a grass hut, ate exotic food and had a hundred stamps from a hundred different countries in their passport. Now I believe a missionary is someone being called by God and sent into different and unfamiliar places, for the express “mission” of preaching His message to all he or she encounters. The experiences we have had in missions and the calling we feel on our lives has led Danielle and I to agree we want to spend our lives on the “mission field.” We know the mission field is not always thousands of miles away in some remote place you can only get to on a bumpy dirt road. God puts mission fields right in our neighborhood like the times He prompts us to visit a friend who is sick or to volunteer at the homeless shelter or when He tells us to go into prison to visit inmates.
Mark 16:15-18 He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."
We have decided that “All of Creation” really does mean “all” and is the reason we have decided to plug into Worldwide Voice In the Wilderness and preach the Message of Our Savior to All of Creation. Through WVIW we have the opportunity to reach the men and women behind bars who have never had an opportunity to hear about the restorative and redemptive power of our Savior.
There is a Great need in the prisons of Texas and in the world. With one in one-hundred Americans currently being imprisoned in the US; the mission field of Prisons is vast but nearby. There are over a hundred prisons in Texas which means we have plenty of opportunity here in our new “neighborhood”.
We are up to the challenge and committed to the work. It is not going to be easy and there are obstacles everywhere. There is a real enemy out there who would rather see us give up but we will fight because it is a good fight and “if God be for us then who can be against us”.
One way we are connecting through WVIW is through Marriage Seminars in the Texas prisons. What is a marriage Seminar in Prison??? Good question; it is a 3 day event in which we teach biblical principles on cultivating, maintaining, and renewing marriages with prisoners, prison officials, and volunteers. God has commanded that each of us love our brides as He loves the church. If you think it is hard to live this out in your own life, imagine how difficult it is for families to live out this commandment when divided by steel, concrete, and razor wire. Texas Prisons have been changed for the positive through these Marriage Seminars. WVIW has hosted 4-6 seminars every year for the last 14 years. Wardens, officers, prisoners, and volunteers have all seen the constructive impact of their presence. Prisons request these seminars to be held within their walls because of the positive attitude and mentality shift they bring.
We moved to Dallas last year to follow God to the next phase in our lives. We know God has put the two of us together and can say without equivocation that we are made to live and serve together for the rest of our lives. We want God at the forefront of our lives.
God has us in Dallas to continue His work through Worldwide Voice In the Wilderness Prison Ministry. WVIW, has been greatly used and greatly blessed by God for over 30 years. Wviw is an International Prison Ministry that brings the message of Jesus Christ in to prisoners, professional correctional personnel, victims, and their respective families. WVIW’s faithfulness and hard work has been the vehicle for God to restore relationships, overcome alcohol and drug addiction, and put lives back together which would otherwise be lost forever.
I knew God called us to be missionaries from the first time I stepped on foreign soil in Honduras. I felt God stirring something up as I first heard the stories of the men and women who pioneered the ministry in Honduras forty years ago. I knew I wanted to be a part of work involving foreign places & cultures, new languages, and anything else that would broaden my thoughts about who God Is.
I used to think that a Missionary was just someone who lived in a grass hut, ate exotic food and had a hundred stamps from a hundred different countries in their passport. Now I believe a missionary is someone being called by God and sent into different and unfamiliar places, for the express “mission” of preaching His message to all he or she encounters. The experiences we have had in missions and the calling we feel on our lives has led Danielle and I to agree we want to spend our lives on the “mission field.” We know the mission field is not always thousands of miles away in some remote place you can only get to on a bumpy dirt road. God puts mission fields right in our neighborhood like the times He prompts us to visit a friend who is sick or to volunteer at the homeless shelter or when He tells us to go into prison to visit inmates.
Mark 16:15-18 He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."
We have decided that “All of Creation” really does mean “all” and is the reason we have decided to plug into Worldwide Voice In the Wilderness and preach the Message of Our Savior to All of Creation. Through WVIW we have the opportunity to reach the men and women behind bars who have never had an opportunity to hear about the restorative and redemptive power of our Savior.
There is a Great need in the prisons of Texas and in the world. With one in one-hundred Americans currently being imprisoned in the US; the mission field of Prisons is vast but nearby. There are over a hundred prisons in Texas which means we have plenty of opportunity here in our new “neighborhood”.
We are up to the challenge and committed to the work. It is not going to be easy and there are obstacles everywhere. There is a real enemy out there who would rather see us give up but we will fight because it is a good fight and “if God be for us then who can be against us”.
One way we are connecting through WVIW is through Marriage Seminars in the Texas prisons. What is a marriage Seminar in Prison??? Good question; it is a 3 day event in which we teach biblical principles on cultivating, maintaining, and renewing marriages with prisoners, prison officials, and volunteers. God has commanded that each of us love our brides as He loves the church. If you think it is hard to live this out in your own life, imagine how difficult it is for families to live out this commandment when divided by steel, concrete, and razor wire. Texas Prisons have been changed for the positive through these Marriage Seminars. WVIW has hosted 4-6 seminars every year for the last 14 years. Wardens, officers, prisoners, and volunteers have all seen the constructive impact of their presence. Prisons request these seminars to be held within their walls because of the positive attitude and mentality shift they bring.
We love our job and are expecting BIG things to happen this weekend. We will be in Prison this weekend for 3 days ministering and teaching to 27 convicts and their wives. Please pray for endurance, direction, and hearts to be changed. ThankYou
Javier
