Birthdays in September and October

 We have 3 birthdays in our family from Sept 24th to October 20th. Jacob's is on October 20th so unfortunately we don't get to celebrate with him. But here are some pictures from the other two celebrations.

Emma turned 5 on September 24th.

She keeps us on our toes.

She is full of personality and life.

Caleb turned 17 on October 9th!

He has grown into a fine young man. He is disciplined and doing well in school, works quite a few hours at Chic-fila and works out regularly. Most importantly he loves Jesus.

A special lunch celebration with the birthday kids.

Trip to Kansas City

 Our girls had fall break last week so we took advantage and went to Kansas City to visit Levi, Alanna, Joel and our new grandaughter, Magdalena. For most of us it was the first time we got to meet her. Emma and Jennifer went out in September. (below are a few pics from this trip too)

Here is the crew minus Jacob. Hopefully we can have everyone together for Christmas.

We had to get the grandparents in too ;-)

It was fun to watch Levi and Alanna be parents. They are doing a great job!

Even Luke got to "hold" Magdalena.

We are grateful for the gift of family. We are excited to be grandparents.

Here are a few pictures from Jennifer and Emma's trip in September. Jennifer's parents got to go to. This is four generations.

RNV USA Pastoral Retreat 2026

 

Pastoral Retreat 2026

We had a great time over the weekend spending time together with our pastors and wives that we get to serve. Unfortunately, not all could be there but we had a good time nonetheless. Our theme was the contemplative pastor after Eugene Peterson's book and Psalm 27:4. We contemplated our calling, our marriages, how to deal with conflict in ministry and failure in ministry. We had lots of fun and ate well too thanks to Jennifer.

Here Harol is leading us in thinking about what training we should do together next year.

We took some time to play together at a golf place here in Indy.

This was a special time praying for Jonathan Morton our president as he battles some health issues.

This was a first connecting with Guatemala who was having a retreat at the same time. It was great to hear testimonies from them and hear about what God is doing there.

Randy Spacht came and share with us as well on failure in ministry.

Daniel Godbey shared as well on Friday night about dealing with conflict in ministry but I don't have any pictures of that.

Financial Support for the Kunkels

I wanted to give a financial update on our family and our monthly financial support and ask for your prayers and your financial support.

Our needs like many families has grown with inflation and other changes. We have a monthly budget of  $6,500 a month. Recenlty, our monthly support has taken some pretty big hits. It is down to an average of $4,500 a month. This means that our support account which thankfully had a decent cushion is running out quickly with a $2,000 a month difference.

You can help in a few different ways:

• Please pray for this financial need
• Please give if you can a one-time gift or a monthly gift, you can give here: https://donorbox.org/benkunkel or send in a check to Red Nueva Vida at 7010 E Thompson Rd, Indpls, IN 46239 (mark as support for Ben Kunkel)
• If you already support us would you consider increasing your support? 

Thanks so much for your prayers and support it means a lot to us! We are so grateful for each of you.

Here is a little about how your giving is making a difference in the lives of many we get to serve.

Dia de RNV

Each year we take one Sunday on the last Sunday of August to celebrate day of New Life Network. We celebrate all the Lord has done in the last year and look forward to a new project. This year we were raising funds to start a discipleship program for kids.

This is New Life Church in Indianapolis.

I got to travel to Waukegan to be with another one of the churches we get to serve. The day before we did some training on a new version of our discipleship.

Sunday we celebrate together.

I got to preach about the calling of Jeremiah from Jeremiah 1:4-10.

Here is another one of our churches.

Here are some other churches from other countries that all joined in on this celebration:

Dominican Republic

Guatemala

Guatemala

Ecuador

Colombia

It is a blessing to be a part of a global movement!

It was a great weekend celebrating and seeing all the Lord is doing globally with RNV. We had a testimony video we shared in which we heard a bunch of people share how the Lord is changing their lives through discipleship.

Thanks for continuing to support us and pray for us and the churches we get to serve!

Family Summer Fun, Jennifer's Birthday and More

July and the first part of August have been full of activities. Jennifer had a birthday on July 25th. We spent as much time as possible at the pool and parks this summer. I took a few weeks off at the end of July for a staycation to spend some time with the girls before they went back to school. We did the pool, a musuem, movie and a few other things.

Celebrating with the other family members on Jennifer's side.

Pool time...the girls have gotten much better at swimming this summer. We are grateful for the neighborhood pool and the kiddie pools in the backyard ;-)

Jennifer got to sneak away for about 24hrs to celebrate our 28th anniversary.

Musuem with cousin Eliza

Jennifer, Caleb and the girls went to KY where her sister lives to celebrate baptisms of two of Brandi's kids! Praise Jesus!

Summer ends. Sofia and Grace starting 3rd and 2nd grades. Caleb is a junior but refused a picture ;-)