The IMPACTO Latino team is gearing up for the VISION SUMMIT here in Pachuca that is quickly approaching on September 26 and 27. We continue to contact our partnering congregations to encourage them to send a representative to celebrate the church planting project and to also hear about the plans to expand that outreach.

The Summit weekend will begin on Sunday when the Jubilee Church will celebrate the collection of the land purchase deposit. Following the celebration, the Jubilee church and the U.S. visitors will enjoy a meal together. The Sunday activities will continue with a special fellowship time at the Duggins home for the Pachuca team and the representatives from our partnering churches.

Monday morning we will have a worship time and a special message from Dr. Charles Madinger, member of the IMPACTO Latino Board of Advisors. Immediately following we will have a ministry tour of Pachuca, visiting the sites of the other Pachuca Project churches. The tour will end with a prayer time at the tract of land we hope will be the eventual home of the Jubilee Church.

The Jubilee church ladies will provide a lunch at the Jubilee’s rented facility. Following lunch we will spend the afternoon talking together about the vision of the Pachuca Project, as well as the land and first phase building project. In the evening we will have a Victory Dinner when we hope to celebrate commitments and offerings that will move the contract with the land owner forward to the next level.

We ask that you keep the summit in your prayers. The potential is great, and we think this event will be a pivotal point in the ministry of IMPACTO Latino – NMSI and the Jubilee Church. We are thankful that presently around 12 congregations will participate, and we wait anxiously to hear from others about their participation.

If you have an interest to partner with us and the Jubilee church and would like to participate in the summit please contact us quickly. More information.

Jorge Del Angel and Luke Greer took on the leadership at Jubilee to plan the first Men’s Retreat for the congregation. As plans progressed, the retreat was expanded to include men from the El Camino church in Mexico City. We ended up with about 43 men participating, including a group from First Christian Church of Champaign, IL who led in the teaching time at the retreat. Two men from two other congregations participated, one here in Pachuca and another from the State of Mexico.

The retreat was a wonderful time of fellowship and teaching, and talk quickly began to circulate that this activity needs to be an annual event. It looks like the Jubilee church may plan another retreat next year, expanding to invite other congregations from central Mexico.

In the years since 2006 the drug wars in Mexico have become a major concern. More than 28,000 people have died in the growing violence associated with the war. Though many in the drug trade have died, many innocents have also suffered or died through the violence perpetrated in many areas of Mexico. There are even reports that drug gangs are asking for protection money and threatening Evangelical churches in the border area. Some commentators are saying that if the Mexican government does not get control of this situation, Mexico could become a Narco State in ten years.

We are thankful that major violence has not yet reached Pachuca, though there are growing concerns as rumors seem to indicate the expanding influence of the drug trade even in Pachuca.

We are excited to hear that the Gospel is continuing to grow in Mexico. The people of Mexico are searching for answers to the growing problems that they see cannot be resolved by politicians or stale religious traditions. The Christian Church needs to energetically respond to the growing dangers and needs in Mexico! We need to respond with creative and dynamic church planting projects in the growing urban centers of Mexico where 88% of the people live. We must not lose Mexico to the enemy!

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• July 2-10 / Eric Duggins will be in Indianapolis for the NACC and IMPACTO Latino will have a booth at the convention.
• July 11 / Baptisms at Jubilee Church. There will be a fellowship dinner after the baptisms at the New Life Christian Church facilities.
• July 17-26 / Work Group – Washington Ave. Christian Church, Amarillo. Sports Camp in Providencia.
• July 30 – August 7 / Regional Conference of NMSI in Panama City. The Duggins and Greer families will be participating in this year’s conference.
• August 20-21 / Retreat for the Jubilee men.

Stefanie Broom from Atlanta has been with us for a month to help with the English program. Dee Duggins has restarted the English program at one of the new rented storefronts of the Jubilee church with the hope that new contacts will be made through the program.

Stefanie is an ESL teacher in the Georgia schools and is a member of the McDonough Christian Church. Stefanie is also looking at how the Lord might use her in Mexico for an extended time at some point in the future. Please keep her in your prayers as she considers what God has for her future, and thank God for sending her to us for the month of June!.

McDonough Christian Church, from the Atlanta area, has been a major participant with the Pachuca Project for several years. This year a work group came from McDonough and greatly blessed the Jubilee church plant in Pachuca. Jubilee had to move to a new rented facility which needed to be painted throughout the worship area and the two basement areas used for the children’s programs. It was a group of extremely hard workers, and they blessed the church and the IMPACTO team by their good humor, hard work, and great kindness.

We were delighted that several members of the Jubilee church of all ages were able to participate with the group with the painting project.

The McDonough group was here for 10 days which also included visits to several locations of interest in Pachuca, to different church cell groups, and to the famous Pyramids of Teotihuacan.

We send our thanks you to Paul Leslie (senior pastor of McDonough) and his daughter, Caroline; to Mark Leslie and his daughter Lynn, and to Alex and Kim Doverspike and their daughters Daniele and Kristin. All left us thinking about the good people of Georgia!

On February 21st, the Jubilee Christian Church celebrated its third anniversary as a church family. The congregation of 190 packed into one special worship service and then shared a meal after the celebration.

The preaching for the anniversary was unique. The four members of our preaching team each took ten minutes to focus on a point of our theme, “Dare to Impact.” The preaching and the music added together made the service special and a great blessing to those gathered.

To prepare for the anniversary, the church held a prayer vigil on Friday evening from 9 pm till midnight. It was a beautiful mix of music and prayer focused on the impact and outreach of the Jubilee plant in Pachuca.

After the service, the celebration continued with an all-church meal of roasted chicken tacos. We sang “Happy Birthday” the church and ate a giant cake (there was a piece for everyone!)

“Dare to impact” will be our theme throughout this year at Jubilee. Join us in praising God for another year of living as His church in Jubilee.

The Jubilee Christian Church plant in Pachuca is beginning a month-long process to prepare a new location as a center for worship and ministry. The contract on the present building ends March 15 and the owner wants to raise the rent significantly. The church leadership and missionary team felt that the new rent was beyond what was good stewarship for Jubilee, especially with the land purchase project in process.

Jubilee’s new facility of three storefronts was actually used by the first church plant in Pachuca for about 7 years. Since they moved to their own building, the storefronts remained empty. The metal doors still sport the New Hope logo, and since the Aros de Amistad are also the name of Jubilee’s cell ministry, the logo will simply add Jubilee’s name.

A fourth store front is also being rented for the bookstore and a ministry center. The center will include classrooms for English and computer classes as well as a place for Jubilee’s youth to reach out to the university and high schools in the area.

Several projects must be completed to prepare the storefronts for Jubilee. Glass doors at the entrances will be installed and floor coverings will be laid in the basements where the children’s programs will take place on Sundays. Lights must be moved as well as doors. Fortunately, some can simply be moved from the present building but also some lighting fixtures must be purchased.

Fortunately, Jubilee has a couple of carpenters and an electrician who have indicated they are willing to donate time to hang doors, move the stage and put in the lights. Their work is a great help in reducing the costs involved in the move.

We are currently concentrating on the worship center and children’s areas of the new facility and later will work on the forth storefront. We hope that several of the spring and summer work groups from the United States will help with the outreach center remodeling.

We ask that you keep Jubilee in your prayers over the next month and a half as we prepare for this move. The reaction of the congregation has been very positive. Since the new location is close to the present building and in the same area of Pachuca, we are hopeful that the transition will be smooth and will not affect worship attendance. The first worship at the new rented facility will be April 18, 2010.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Our team of Missionaries and Mexican Church leaders are feeling great sadness for Haiti, and we are praying for the country’s people, including the many Christians and missionaries that live and work there. In the days ahead, the Jubilee church plant will be looking at how it can participate in helping with the great need there. Those of us that were in Mexico during the 1985 earthquake remember the terror and devastation of those very difficult days.

We would encourage you, our Christian brothers and sisters, to move quickly to help in this disaster by visiting the websites of New Mission Systems International (www.nmsi.org) or the International Disaster Emergency Service (www.ides.org) to make donations to their Haiti disaster relief programs. Both of these organizations already have established systems in place to quickly provide aid.

In light of the disaster in Haiti, we have come to the conclusion that it is wise for us to postpone our VISION SUMMIT that was planned this next month in Pachuca. The new dates for the summit will be SEPTEMBER 26 & 27. Though this is disappointing, it does not compare with the current suffering of Haiti’s people. We hope that this will help all of us focus on how our churches need to respond to the need in Haiti.

We will be in contact with each of you over the coming months to organize your participation with us in September. Please also be aware that information on the VISION SUMMIT will be on the IMPACTO Latino website at www.impactolatino.org.

If you have any questions, please contact your missionary directly at the contact numbers on the website.

¡Qué el Señor tenga misericordia por los de Haiti!

In Christ Jesus,

The Pachuca Project Team –
Sergio & Holly Alvarado, Eric & Dee Duggins, Luke & Lindsay Greer, and Jorge and Juanita Del Angel

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(Photo courtesy of United Nations Development Programme. Used with permission under Creative Commons license.)