Salgado DR Mission: update

 

“Those who give and pray for missions, play a role just as important as the missionary on the field.”

 

Greeting friends, mission partners, brothers and sisters in Christ,

Now that our donations will be handled through Central MIssionary Clearinghouse, you can now give to the ministry here in the DR online through the new giving solution called “click and give” at the CMC website.

To get started you just need to click on the link below and register the first time. Just a simple click on the donate button on their page (see link below), and then click the “click and give icon/button”.

You will then have a private giving solution that comes with many benefits to you the donor. If you have any questions please call the office (tel:1-800-262-7729 or 281-599-7411), and they very kindly will walk you through what you need to do.

Thank you for the prayers and support, God bless!

https://www.cmcmissions.org/donate

 

“I give thanks to my God for every remembrance of you, always praying with joy for all of you in my every prayer, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”
‭‭Philippians‬ ‭1:3-5‬ ‭

Pastor, su manera de predicar es despreciable

 

“Porque ellos dicen: “Sus cartas son severas (pesadas) y duras, pero la presencia física es poco impresionante, y la manera de hablar despreciable.””
‭‭2 Corintios‬ ‭10:10‬ ‭NBLH‬‬

 

Pablo era un hombre de tremenda inteligencia. A él se le habia revelado los misterios de Dios. Cosas que en los tiempos de antes fueron ocultas. Sus cartas y sermones eran de profundidad y de gran peso teologico.

 

Sin embargo, se decía de el, ¨la manera de hablar era despreciable¨. Aun con el conocimiento que tenia, muchos no le gustaba su forma de hablar o de predicar. Decía cosas verdaderas si, puras palabras de Dios, nada que era no biblico. Pero no era tan elocuente como otros predicadores, o aun los filósofos de su dia. Debemos recordar eso cuando juzgamos a nuestros pastores, o cualquier predicador de la Palabra.

 

Dios ha dado pastores y maestros a Su iglesia como regalos para edificar. A la vez, igual a los diferentes autores de los evangelios, cada uno tiene su forma distinta de comunicar las mismas verdades. Unos suenan mejores que otros, unos tienen mas pasión que otros, unos mas elocuentes y académicos de otros, cada uno es una persona individual. Y ninguno va complacer tu estándar de preferencia, opinion, o tradition o preferencia perfectamente.

 

La pregunta es ¿si están predicando la Biblia o no? ¿Aman la Palabra y el Señor y la iglesia? Tal vez no predican de la manera que es su preferencia. Tal vez fallan en un punto o se les escapa un detalle de un texto. Pero la pregunta es si ¿Dios esta edificando Su pueblo o no por medio de ese hombre? ¿Tiene sus debilidades? ¿Tiene sus luchas y pecados? ¡Claro! Van a tener algunas diferencias teologicas con lo que tu entiendes de las Escrituras en ciertos aspectos tambien, si!

 

Casi siempre, por lo menos en algo por seguro. Pero esta bien y normal mientras que no son cosas fundamentales de la fe en donde ellos fallan.

Debemos siempre tener unidad en lo principal, libertad en lo secundario, pero amor en todo. Y hay verdadera hermosura en esa diversidad.

 

Tenemos varios ejemplos en las Escrituras de hombres que predican o cuentan historias correctamente, pero de diferentes maneras. Muchos adoraban a Apollos por su elocuencia …. mientras que otros despreciaban a Pablo. Algunos incluyen detalles que otros no y vice versa. ¿Pero estan predicando la Palabra del tal manera que se ve claro lo que ellos dicen en el texto, y los hermanos en la congregacion estan siendo beneficiados y edificados por medio de las enseñanza? ¿Estan gozosos y te lo expresan de como Dios les ha hablado y enseñado algo que ahora entienden deben cambiar en su vida, dando gracias a Dios por esos mismos sermones que otros desprecian y juzgan?

 

Miran a los hombres que Dios ha usado grandemente en el pasado y compara sus sermones. Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, Whitfield, Pink, Tozer, Piper, MacArthur, etc. Todos predican la Palabra, y con excelencia! Algunos con diferentes metodos, algunos con mas pasion. No solo en la comunicacion del mensaje, sino de de la forma de organizarlo tambien. Es algo hermoso como Dios, por medio de diferentes hombres y de diferentes maneras siempre hace Su voluntad por medio de Su Espíritu para hablarle a y edificar Su pueblo.

 

Los sermones de Spurgeon sonaban mas como poesía que cualquier otra cosa.

 

Cuando nos aferramos a un solo metodo, y en nuestra inutil manera tratamos de limitamar el Espiritu Santo de Dios por decir que solo de tal manera debe se un sermón, y si no es asi, el pueblo no va ser edificado, estamos mostrando nada mas que un orgullo profundo en nuestros corazones e inmadurez.

 

Lo mas importante en cualquier mensaje de un predicador es que Dios es glorificando, …pero también hermanos, hay mucha sabiduria en el siguiente versiculo.

 

“Esto, hermanos, lo he aplicado en sentido figurado a mí mismo y a Apolos por amor a ustedes, para que en nosotros aprendan a no sobrepasar lo que está escrito, para que ninguno de ustedes se vuelva arrogante a favor del uno contra el otro.”
‭‭1 Corintios‬ ‭4:6‬ ‭

 

Es verdad hay metodos mejores y mas exactos que otros. Hay maneras de predicar mas eficaz académicamente que otros, pero cuando nos ponemos como el juez de estas cosas, especialmente cuando no somos pastor, no conocer la luchas interiores de cada hombre, o cuando no estamos apreciando el tiempo y esfuerzo que da ese hombre para poder predicar ese mensaje lo mejor que el pudo en ese momento, estamo haciendo lo que La Palabra prohíbe. Quejándonos….

 

´ “Hagan todas las cosas sin murmuraciones ni discusiones,”
‭‭Filipenses‬ ‭2:14‬
(Para los teólogos- si entiendo el contexto inmediato de este texto, sin embargo esto se puede facilmente aplicar a cada aspecto de la vida cristiana)

 

Cuan facil es juzgar el otro en vez de amarlo y recibir lo bueno del mensaje que se predico. Cuan facil es desear mas a otra iglesia, otro pastor, o un mejor metodo especifico de predicar, EN VEZ de amar la iglesia que tenemos, amar el pastor que tenemos, y buscar lo bueno en lo que se predicó en vez de juzgar con brazos cruzadas como el experto que ni somos.

 

Cuidado como tratamos a los hermanos, Filipenses 2 nos enseña que la humildad de Cristo es lo que trae unidad en Su iglesia. Y la falta de humildad en cualquier miembro de la iglesia por cualquier razon, solo traerá division y lo contrario de lo que Cristo desea de nosotros.

 

“Sobre todo, sean fervientes en su amor los unos por los otros, pues el amor cubre multitud de pecados.”
‭‭1 Pedro‬ ‭4:8‬

“A los necios no les interesa tener entendimiento; solo quieren expresar sus propias opiniones.”
‭‭Proverbios‬ ‭18:2‬ ‭

“El que retiene sus palabras tiene conocimiento, Y el de espíritu sereno es hombre entendido.”
‭‭Proverbios‬ ‭17:27‬

Salgado dr mission newsletter

Dear friends, mission, partners, brothers and sisters in Christ,

First of all we would like to thank all of you who have prayed for, and supported this ministry. It is because of those prayers and your financial support, that we are able continue to minister here. Thank you so much for “holding the rope” for us. May the Lord bless you for your sacrificial giving.

This past month we have been VERY busy. We were asked to translate for a medical team that was visiting from Arizona which was a great blessing. We did a medical clinic with them for five days in and around  Santiago. We got to work with new brothers and sisters, able to help hundreds of people, but most importantly, we shared the Gospel with almost everyone who came!

Last week we were in the southern part of the country with a visiting pastor and friend, to bring encouragement and resources to him. It was good to see  the different places and ways Franklin was serving the people there. The drive was pretty long, and turned out to be about seven hours one way. But it was certainly worth it.

Here in Hato Mayor, we have a lot on our plate and need your prayers. Visiting and new baptism candidates, serving at the orphanage, prayer and Bible study, sharing the Gospel at the school, and soon a bible study there too. We also have a weekly men’s meeting, bi weekly women’s meeting, a bible study with the youth, and a new bible study in Creole that we began with several Haitians in the community. Enough to keep us busy for sure!

May God give us the strength and the grace to keep running the race and redeeming the time.

Our oldest daughter Trinity has started a fundraiser for a five month trip to Papua, Indonesia. She will be serving in the jungle there with a missionary family. Although she will be mainly be serving that family, and helping the wife many tasks, the husband and wife are both registered nurses. They have a school, church, and treat disease and injuries there. It is such a remote location that they are the only medical attention, education and bible teaching that the people there have access to. Trinity wants to study to become a nurse and then use those skills on the  mission field. This is a wonderful opportunity for her to get some experience doing that on the field, and shadowing this precious family. Please pray for her, and give if you can. You can find that fundraiser on our Facebook page.

Please begin praying for a new evangelistic endeavor, as we move a bible study that is presently held in a home, over to the school and begin evangelizing that community.

There are many needs and giving has been down, please pray that the Lord will supply the funds needed for the work here. Pray as we consider making steps to becoming a 501c3, and for the fundraising needed to continue the work here. Our desire is to expand and to help support some local missionaries and pastors in the area, for the future leaders, and Lord willing, future church plants. Pray.

In service to our Lord and King,

Antonio Salgado Jr.

Salgado DR Mission

 

 

Salgado DR Mission Newsletter

Dear mission partners, friends, brothers and sisters in Christ,

The feel of things here is beginning to change. But change for the good. The church, though still relatively small, is beginning to grow in other ways. There are new people coming. Some new converts, others who have come from other unbiblical churches and are seeking truth and wanting to be fed. The most encouraging thing is the answered prayers we are receiving. We have a good amount of men coming to the church now. Most have come through intentional outreach efforts, evangelism and home visits.  They are learning and asking to meet more often. They are wanting to spend more time together and they look forward to going out sharing the Gospel. We even have some aspiring the office of an elder.  We are  now putting together a plan for the next phase of growth. Pray about those plans. Lord willing, it is just a matter of time before our men grow in knowledge and maturity and we discover their gifts before we consider planting. Pray for this.

Christ is building His church here, there is no denying it. And God is so gracious and loving in His use of such flawed and weak vessels to do so. But it hasn’t come without a price. Many missionaries would steer clear away from sharing bad news or anything remotely negative at all in a newsletter. I have personally been told by other missionaries not to do so, that it isn’t good for supporters to hear, but we know the importance of prayer, and we NEED your prayers.

In the great awakening of the 1700’s during the time of Jonathan Edwards, early America experienced waves of revival and a moving of God’s Spirit unlike any other. According to the biography ‘The Short Life of Jonathan Edwards”, after times of great movements of God’s Spirit, there were some strange and evil things that followed. An obvious working of the evil one, people were hearing voices and having thoughts of suicide. Though futile in comparison, there certainly was a “counter attack” if you will, by the enemy in response to the many who were experiencing true repentance and strong new affections for Christ with an awe and fear of the holiness of God.

It is probably safe to say that it is not strictly unique to the great awakening, and has probably happened elsewhere in the world after times of revival and salvations during different periods of church history. Though on a much smaller scale, this has been our experience as well.  The last year and a half, we have experienced some of the hardest times with many challenges and periods of attacks on our family, our marriage, our children. It can take it’s toll. God has done so many great things around us in a remarkably short period of time, but the battle has also been most fierce during this time. Discouragement, deep emotional wounds and despair are no strangers. By God”s grace we stand united and trusting in Him. We stand still waving the flag of our Lord, proclaiming His glory and His mighty power, but we stand as those injured and weary after the war.

Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. – 2 Timothy 2:3

We still continue and will not surrender, but we do need your prayers. We are pushing forward and see that God is still working in so many things. We are praying for wisdom in when we can take a furlough for a time of rest and recuperation. But in light of the Gospel, to be sure we have made no sacrifices.

I never made a sacrifice. -Hudson Taylor missionary to China

Nothing is too great a cost to pay in comparison to Christ’s work on the cross on our behalf. But we are just weak humans and we need a little rest from time to time. We pray that our soon to be five years on the field can justify our need for a furlough for the health and longevity of our family on the field.

Please pray for Yeison’s visa. We are still waiting for that process to be finished. Then we would take a furlough so we can be together and Yeison can meet the rest of our (and now his) family for the first time. Christen has not seen her father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, in a long time and now her mother is discovering some medical conditions affecting her health and she desires to see and spend some time with them.

I will be in the states sharing the things the Lord is doing here and seeking further support for the Biblical Christian Missionary Society. A plan to send out of Hato Mayor and support both Dominicans and Haitians, closley working with them in the spreading of the Gospel, in the city, and to other parts of the island. This requires a much larger network of supporting churches partnering with us. Lord willing, and with the help of the brethren and mission minded churches back home, we will soon be able to send and support  local missionaries here out of the city. We believe that the Lord has brought us to this place for this purpose.

We have worked in more rural areas in the past, and the Lord has blessed those efforts, but our philosophy of missions has changed over the years. Now it is geared more towards equipping local men in the city who can be sent to reach their own people in places like where we used to work, and with the prayer, resources and proper training, do so more effectively than we could. Please pray for the Bibical Christian Missioanry Society and for the Lord to open doors to new partnerships that would help make this possible. The Lord is rasing up faithful men and we are reaching a point where we only lack the resources to be able to effectively and consistently send more laborers into the harvest and more soldiers into the battlefield.

Those who pray and give towards missions play a role just as important as those on the mission field.

It was only a few years ago that we were praying for the Lord to send us men. There were days when I would sometimes preach to just my family and a couple of other people. That is still our continued prayer, for Him to send more laborers,  but it is a beautiful thing to know God heard and answered those prayers. Not always how we would expect Him to, but in better and often time bigger ways. Just yesterday I sat with a brother who was expressing his love for the Word and desire to preach the Gospel and teach others. Wow, just wow.

Our God is Good and He is Faithful, blessed be the name of the Lord and to Him alone belongs all the glory forever and ever.  Pray.

… For my name will be great among the nations, says the LORD of hosts. – Malachi 1:11

Salgado DR Mission Newsletter

Dear mission partners, friends, brothers and sisters in Christ,

First let us say that we are thankful for each  of you who pray for and give to this mission so that our family may minister here. Thank you and God bless you for your faithfulness.

It has been a long time coming but we finally celebrated our first wedding at Hato Mayor. There have been two couples we have been trying to get marrried for over a year now. But there were many challenges in getting paperwork done here. Especially when people are from small towns out in the country where old documents have been lost and there are no offices that keep public records in that area. Both couples we have been wanting to marry have had much difficulty in obtaining copies of birth certificates which are necessary to be married by law here. We were forced to make a decision.  Allow them to continue to live in sin, or do a ceremony as a church where the two make a covenant together, before God, with the church as witnesses to that blessed and holy union. They understood they had been in sin for too long and wanted to be right before God and be a good example to their children.  So as the church, we married them!

This is a couple that has been together for 23 years!  After showing them through the Word of God the importance and meaning of marriage, they knew it was time and no longer wanted to live in sin.

This is a very big deal and we wanted to celebrate it, because it is a relationship that is a reflection of Christ and the church, the most important of all human relationships, and for them to be an example to the church and others.

 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. – Ephesians 5:31-32

This is in a culture that for the most part does not value marriage at all. They call anyone here living together “married”.  The wife has been a christian for some time but the husband may have just come to Christ in his time with us this year. We will still help them with their legal documents and try to marry them through the civil court, but that could be a very long process in proving who they are and where they were born. We have another couple in the same situation we hope to marry soon as well. These are just some of the things you deal with on the mission field.

There are many other things going on as well. We are still adapting to the changes of having the two other girls living with us. Moises the Haitian young man from Esperanza, was with us for a little while as well. He was recently reunited with a sister he hasn’t seen for 12 years. He was very young last time he saw her and did not remember her, but found out she was here in Santiago when visiting his mother in Haiti, who he hadn’t seen either for just as long! When we had him with us we had nine people in our home!  That’s a lot of mouths to feed on a small budget.

Please continue to pray for our family. We are stilll being challenged and stretched in ways we never imagined, even after four years here. Here are a few prayer requests:

First and most important is our family’s spiritual lives and health. Pray for the church to maintain spiritual growth and unity. Pray for our evangelism efforts. The Gospel is being shared here by some faithful brothers and sisters on a regular basis. There are other prayer requests as well. Maya is struggling very much in school, the kids have needed dental work, Yeison has been sick a lot and still coughs pretty bad at night, the van is in the shop, giving has been down significantly, and we still have money to raise for our family’s monthly budget and a project at the church building. Please keep these things in prayer.

We are thankful for the Lord’s gracious provision and He has been so very kind and faithful to us.  Please continue to pray about giving and share these needs with others as well.

If the Lord so lays on your heart to give back to Him by supporting this ministry, you can send your tax deductible gift to:

Romeo Baptist Church 20545 SW 5th Pl. Dunnellon Fl, 34431.
*Please be sure to write Salgado DR Mission in the memo.
You can also donate to this ministry online. Click the donate button on the home page and you can send support of any amount directly to the ministry. Unfortunately we are not set up for receiving recurring donations at this time.
For tax exemption, you must send your donation to our sending church at the address above. We do not use a sending agency that gets a percentage of the money donated, so you can be sure that your gift goes directly to the mission field. Whatever you decide, thank you so much for praying for us and God Bless You!

 

Salgado DR Mission Newsletter

Dear friends, mission partners, brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are thankful for each of you that pray for this ministry and  financially “hold the rope” for us so that we may continue to minister here. We are so thankful each day that the Lord sustains and provides for us. Even in the midst of so many uncertainties on the mission field, we can see His grace in all things. We realize we are truly blessed and we are grateful.

This month we began with a small conference on family held outdoors on the church property. Our beloved brother Kenny Rodrigue from Ocala, Fl., was the speaker and was used by the Lord. It was a very edifying, Christ centered three days as he taught on biblical relationships within the Christian family.

We are seeing definite spiritual growth in a couple of the men in the church but we have had a busy few weeks that threw us off of our normal schedule a bit, but we are getting back on track now. This means we will be back in the homes of our people and in the streets meeting and sharing with others. That part of the job never ends. The core group we have has grown very close and very much like a family as it should be, but we ask that you continue to pray for our evangelistic efforts, that the Lord would raise up other laborers and use us to bring more people to Himself.

Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” – Matthew 9:37-38

On Sundays we have been going through the Gospel of Mark. It has been an expository journey that Kelvin and I are taking turns preaching through. He has been doing a great job with the messages and it is a tremendous help to have someone else who can preach, teach, and share the gospel faithfully. Next Sunday we will be wrapping up chapter four of Mark. Please also pray for him and his wife Yaris. Yaris is about three months pregnant and has been sick quite often. Pray that the Lord would meet their needs as a family,  that Yaris’ health would improve during her pregnancy, and that both mother and baby would be healthy and safe after delivery.

We are still praying for new mission minded churches to partner with us. We recently put together an information packet on our family and ministry in PDF format and would be glad to share with anyone upon request. We have had difficulty making new contacts from this side in order to share our ministry with new people and churches so that we could obtain more resources for the things our family still needs, and also to be able to do more ministry with. There are still many needs within the church. Please pray that the Lord would open new doors of opportunity. We need to raise quite a bit for the children’s schooling next year and the church building also will needs some major renovations soon.  Although as a praise report, we are very thankful to God that we have been seeing Him answer some prayers in the area of the support we lost recently.

We continue to depend on Him and trust that in His time these things will be accomplished. In the meantime we ask that you join us in continued prayer and that you might share these needs with others that the Lord would put it on their hearts to help. We have shared the link to the fundraiser for the children’s schooling on facebook and in the email with this newsletter. Thank you all and God bless. Pray.

Salgado DR Mission Newsletter

Dear mission partners, friends, brothers and sisters in Christ,

We hope everyone back home had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We are very thankful for another year that the Lord gave us serving here in the Dominican Republic. The last week of December marked one year of our new work in the community of Hato Mayor. It came with it’s share of challenges, but we definitely saw the Lord move and bless.

We are so thankful to the faithful giving of the brothers and sister back home who the Lord uses to provide for our needs so that we may minister here. May the Lord bless you for your sacrificial giving in the past year and hopefully in the coming year as well. With the new year upon us we are focusing on organizing ourselves as much as possible and exhorting the brothers and sisters to committment and to serve.

“Your committment to the local church says alot about your committment to Christ!”

We have a new solid curriculum for the children’s ministry we are now using that systematically goes through the redemptive history of the Bible with verses to memorize. We are also using it at home now with our kids. We are finally setting dates for two weddings and a couple of baptisms. We are drawing up the church calendar and praying and planning some outreach events and a possible teaching event we will host on the topic of biblical family open to everyone. We are going out in the community weekly sharing the Gospel through open air preaching, Gospel tracts and church invitations. We are seeing the people we engage in the streets show up to church. Praise the Lord! We try our best to obtain contact informationa nd follow up with them. Please especially pray for our evangelism efforts.

“There’s nothing in the Bible that tells the world to come to the church; but, there’s everything in the Bible that tells the church to go to the world!”

We have begun visiting the brothers on a regular basis to spend time with them in their homes and observe their families, pray with them and begin the necessary Bible studies in different areas of discipleship. These things are coming together and being put on the calendar as well. We understand the importance of being consistent. We also hope to soon establish a membership and we are working on developing that process and what what it will look like. We don’t want people to come in and just sit around. We want to engage everyone personally and lovingly, and as soon as they are ready, put them to work.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. – Ephesians 2:10

So we are putting a plan together so that after we visit with new people, we know and have in place, somewhere to plug them in. Whether it be continued visits and attempts at sharing the Gospel with a specific family, baptism class, further discipleship in areas of family, Bible study, etc.

We hope to organize a couple of  teams to come later in the year as well with churches willing to serve and meet needs. Our building needs many repairs. The termites are eating away the wood beams that hold the tin roof, the wiring is very old and shoddy, and many other things we need help with. We have very few resources here but the Lord has been more than gracious with us in the past providing all that we need. We still need and pray for the Lord to lead people to help and become partners in this ministry. Those who give to the mission not only help to provide for our family’s needs, but also are enabling us to help others.

“Those who pray for and give to missions, play a role just as important as those on the mission field.”

What we receive directly impacts the church’s ability to meet needs. On a regular basis we help families with food, prescriptions and several other needs as well. Please pray about becoming a mission partner. Pray that we may see the Lord do great things in Hato Mayor this year and be glorified in all we do. Please continue to pray for our family as well. Ministry here is very challenging and comes with it’s share of sacrifice and trials. We are learning more and more to rejoice in all things. May the Lord make His name great in Hato Mayor! Pray.

For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering. For my name will be great among the nations, says the LORD of hosts. – Malachi 1:11

If the Lord so lays on your heart to give back to Him by supporting this ministry, and would like to join us as a regular mission partner, you can send your tax deductible gift to:
Romeo Baptist Church 20545 SW 5th Pl. Dunnellon Fl, 34431.
*Please be sure to write Salgado DR Mission in the memo.

Or

If you feel led to give a one time gift of any amount, you may go to the home page of this site and click on the “donate” button to conveniently give online. Thank you and God bless.