Red Nueva Vida USA: Chicago Trip, Baptisms, and People of Peace Training

 

Here is a quick update on the ministry with Red Nueva Vida/New Life Network. I (Ben) traveled to our church partner just north of Chicago to visit and serve them and their pastor. I was able to witness a special time of baptisms as well at a park and a great time of fellowship after.

On August 31st we celebrated the day of New Life Network in which we celebrate all God is doing globally and also take a special offering to support a project together. This year we helped raise money for Venezuela. We are beginning to partner with about 12 churches there.

We commissioned 2 new disciplers on this Sunday as well.

New Discipleship Group

This a new disicpleship group that was started in May and I was able to join them for some training this last Sunday and will be doing this the next couple of weeks as well. Please pray with them as they work towards forming a church.

New Life Network USA Vision for 2025

Ben learned a lot during 2024. There are a lot of challenges facing our hispanic brothers and sisters. It has been a joy for Ben to serve them and learn from them. New life network focuses on forming and reproducing discipeles, forming leaders and planting churches. Here are some things we saw God do in 2024:

• Started a monthly prayer time with our pastors.
• Started monthly coaching with each pastor.
• Started an annual retreat with the pastors and wives. (See pic above)
• 4 new churches or churches in process of being planted, entered the network. (6 churches in total now) (See pic at bottom which shows one new church signing)
• 2 new discipleship groups started. (See pic below of one of them)

The vision for 2025 is to continue seeing growth and implementation of our processes in the churches we have, grow in prayer, build a team to help lead the efforts. In addition this is what we are praying the Lord will do in 2025:

• See our churches grow from 6 to 10 in total.
• See our discipleship groups grow from 3 to 15, with 75 total people in our discipleship route.
• Have 10 leaders formed through our leadership training.
• Plant one new church.

Thanks for praying and supporting us which allows us to do this work of serving the Hispanic Church in the USA. 

"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28:19-20

Ministry with Red Nueva Vida in the U.S.

 Ben has enjoyed learning and growing in his new role as National Coordinator of Red Nueva Vida in the United States. His work looks different each week, but he is connecting and building relationships with the Pastors and churches and supporting them in different ways.

This was from a recent visit to one of our churches just north of Chicago.

This was some church multiplication training that Ben did recently.

He has also helped with our Bible Institute facilitating some of the topics shared there.

Thanks for continuing to prayer for our work amongst Hispanic Churches!

Bens Travels and Ministry Connections

 Ben has been adjusting to his new role with New Life Network. He as been connecting with many pastors and leaders in the Latino Church in the US. Most of the connections have been local with a trip to Chicago where we have some churches in the Network and also a trip to Phoenix to make some connections with other Latino leaders and learn about missions sending and challenges as well.

This was our trip to Phoenix which I made with our President Jonathan Morton. We connected with several Latino leader and learned alongsid them for a few days.

This is the main group we connected with and share about New Life Network as you can see below. We learned from them as well

This is my new friend Abraham who is a pastor on the southside. He has a great ministry and has a big vision. I am excited to see how the Lord leads us to partner together.

Please pray with us for these connections among others that the Lord would lead us in how to partner together for the gospel. We are better together!

Visit to Chicago

 

Jennifer and Ben were able to make a trip north to visit with the two pastors and churches that we have north of Chicago. It is about a four hour drive. Both churches have services at the same time so we could only visit one of the churches, but we had dinner with the other pastor. It was great to get to know them both. We are excited about the opportunities for further ministry and growth in that area.

We had a beautiful time of worship with them

Ben got to preach at the church "El Buen Pastor" pastored by Jose Juan. He and his wife Maribel are very sweet and we were grateful for the sweet time of fellowship with them and their church.

This will be a trip we take every 3-4 months to visit and encourage these churches. Please pray for the work there. It is an area that is about 80% hispanic so there are huge opportunities to plant more churches.

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