Grace's Birthday and Ginger Bread Houses

 The tradition of ginger bread houses continues. This year we did it with the cousins. Matt and Emily and their girls came over. We miss doing this in Guatemala with our friends there but it was good to do with family here.

We celebrated Grace's birthday this week too. I can't believe she is already 5 years old! We normally celebrate with extended family or friends but everyone has been sick this year so we celebrated with just our family. But good times were still had!

Not sure where she learned to pose like this ;-)

Chocolate cake of course!

We are so grateful for Grace and her life. She has been such a blessing to many. We named her grace because she was our first girl and we had prayed for 15 years for a girls and by God's grace we were blessed with a beautiful, 

Trip to Guatemala December 2023

 Ben was able to take a recent trip to Guatemala in which he worked with Carlos on the transition of leadership in Guatemala, helped install a new Pastor at New Life Church, Magdalena, Guatemala. He was also able to participate in the Love Guatemala graduation. See some pics and more info about this trip below.

Got to hang out with kids in the feeding center. Still going strong with over 50 kids!

My friends and fellow pastors Josymar and Eswin. Josymar on right was the one we installed as pastor, Eswin planted a church in June in Santa Lucia

Carlos sister who worked with us is just recovering from major surgery to remove a tumor from her stomach. Please pray for her!

One of the graduates who has opened her own beauty salon.

Coffee with friends, Jose and Norita!

My friend Will graduating from the English School

Rous and Mayra who work for LG.

More friends who are graduating!

This is Milton who has been part of the ministry for a long time. He graduate from the Carpentry School years ago and continued to get his middle and high school finished. We are so proud of him!

So fun to spend time with the Lopez family!

Volcano fuego still very active!

The service to install Josymar.

My friend Cesar who has an amazing testimony!

Our church plant in Santa Lucia!

The views are still incredible there!

Got to meet this beautiful baby who belongs to Rous the LG secretary and has been like a daughter for many years!

Ben was grateful for this time in Guatemala to celebrate with LG and NLN Guatemala!

Partner with Us in Church Planting and Missions Mobilization in 2024

(First daughter church planted in Guatemala)

After years of church planting in Guatemala we are moving to the US to lead the church planting efforts with New Life Network. Our role consists of coming alongside the churches that have already been established (2 in Indianapolis and 2 in Chicago) to support them and help them to make disciples and plant churches. We also hope to see many new churches planted and some existing churches enter the network. This will require connecting with other Latino Church planters and organizations. We have one such trip planned in Phoenix in February in which we will share with about 30 churches that have shown interest in working with New Life Network.

(Recent missions team to another area in Guatemala)

Another role we will have is leading the global missions efforts at New Life Network. This will include helping our other coordinators and pastors mobilize their folks towards global missions. And as the Lord continues to raise up new missionaries we will train and send. This will eventually mean a need for a Missionary Training Center.

This ministry God has called us to we can't do alone. We need a team alongside us praying and supporting us to lead these works. 

"I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your parntership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:3-6

Gospel partnership is biblical and necessary! We are so grateful to each of you who partner with us in many different ways. This past year we have had people pray for us, give us a van, let us use there home, support us financially, help connect us with other partners, taken us out and encouraged us etc! Thank You! 

Would you Consider Partnering with Us? Here is how:

1. Commit to Prayer Weekly for our family and ministry. We need a prayer team committed to weekly prayer praying for protection, provision and fruitfulness in ministry. This team will get a weekly email with specific prayer requests. If you want to join this prayer team please send an email to ben here: benjamin@rednuevavida.org
   
   
2. Commit to give financially to the Kunkel Family. We are still in need of $2,000 a month in monthly gifts to be able to meet our financial goals. If so you can set up financial support here:

• Online:  https://www.rednuevavida.org/ourteam/ben
• By Check or Bank Bill Pay: Red Nueva Vida Inc. 7010 East Thompson Rd, Indianapolis, IN 46239 (Mark "Ben Kunkel Support")

Thanks so much for considering partnering with us in this gospel work!

The Kunkel Family

Vision for 2024

 

As we wrap up 2023 and look forward to 2024 I wanted to share a little be of what we believe the Lord has in store for the coming months and years so you can know how to be praying and supporting us in this season. As we learned in 2023, "In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes his steps." Proverbs 16:9 so we hold these plans loosely and leave God with the final "steps".

Family: We are looking forward to finding our own place to live, community to get more grounded in and church to serve in. We are looking forward to some time in Guatemala as a family helping bring some closure to that chapter of our lives and also celebrating the wedding of our son Levi in May. We also want to find better educational opportunties for the other kids. Jake has finished up highschool and is considering the military in 2024.

Ministry: Our vision for the next 3 years as we start our work with the New Life Network in the US, is to see the network in the US grow from 25 disciples to 150 disciples, from 4 churches to 10 churches and train 25 leaders and pastors. We also want to see 10 missionaries mobilized and in process of training for global missions. Currently there are over 60 million Hispanics in the US so there is a great need for healthy disciples and churches!

Partnerships/Friendships/Community: We have seen the Lord bring new partners into our ministry and the ministries we are a part of over the last year and we are excited for more partners. We truly are better together as Ecclesiastes 4:9 says. We also hope and plan on developing more friendships and deeper community for this next season of life and ministry!

Thanks for praying with us for these things for 2024! Let us know how we can be praying for you!