Trip to Guatemala Feb 2026

Ben had the chance to travel to Guatemala with one of the Pastors he serves with here in RNV USA, Abraham Barron. We mainly went to help put on a Pastors Retreat for the pastors at RNV in Guatemala. Ben was also involved in some meetings at Love Guatemala with Katy and Amy Goldsmith, the LG Board president. Check out some pictures and videos below.

The first few days we visited with the different pastors now involved with RNV Guatemala. Above is Pastor Salomon who serves in a community called Santa Maria de Jesus. The 2nd picture is me with a Bible he gave me that is Spanish and Cakchiquel. He helped work on a version of this translation. This language was the very first translation that the Wycliffe Bible Translators started years ago before it was Wycliffe.

Above is Pastor Josue from a community called Sumpango.

Below is Pastor Yosimar who serves in the church we started in Magdalena.

The next few days were spent loving and serving this group of pastors and leaders below. This is the team now in RNV Guatemala.

Below was a beautiful time of ministering to them at the end of our retreat.

You can watch a 2 minute video of the retreat here.

We had lots of good meetings with Love Guatemala too. The one above was with the LG board in Guatemala and Amy and myself who are on the board here in the US as well.

I always have to visit the nutrition center when I am there.

This is the LG board in Guatemala.

We had a dinner with the staff our last night there as well which was fun to catch up with everyone.

Amy, Katy and I spent 2 days in meetings talking about all the happenings with LG and talking about the future. Katy is doing an amazing job and we have some amazing plans for the coming months and years. I am more excited than ever for the future of LG!

Here is another video of the whole trip. 

Red Nueva Vida USA Update

 One of the things I (Ben) get to do is work with the churches we serve in helping prepare them to use the resources we have. Our goal is to help move our churches towards forming and reproducing disicples, healthy churches and leaders. We offer several resources to help them work towards this goal. Our main resources is our disicpleship route. Here are a few trainings I have done recently.

This was at Iglesia Esperanza Viva a church here in Indianapolis. I was doing training on the next few steps in the discipleship process.

This is a retreat that another church in Indy did not too long ago.

This is a leadership training I helped with at New Life Church Indy.

This is a prayer time before a disicpleship group launched with this group.

This is an evangelism training I did in a church north of Chicago.

Thanks for the continued prayers and support for our family and ministry! 

We have seen the work grow from 4 churches, 10 disciples in our disicpleship route in January 2024 when I started in this role to now having 7 churches involved, 8 disicpleship groups with 114 disciples, and 9 leaders in training. All glory to God!

 

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

Planting our First Daughter Church

 Ben had the privilege of traveling to Guatemala to be a part of the launch of our first daughter church in Santa Lucia which is a community about 15 minutes from Magdalena. This work is led by Eswin (Pictured Below). He was our barber for several years before coming to know Christ. He was discipled by Ben and attended our Bible Institutes and Pastors School. We are so proud of Eswin, Evelyn and there son Richard and the whole team in Santa Lucia. 

Please pray for this new work. Pray for Eswin and Evelyn. Pray for disciples that make disciples. 

What is the Kunkel Family doing now?

This is the question we continue to get so since it does not yet seem clear to all about our role in Guatemala I wanted to take some time and explain exactly what we are doing in our ministry in Guatemala.

In January 2018 we planted a church. It began with 10 or so people in our apartment and now it is a church with a leadership team, Guatemala leadership and pastor and self-supporting. But the goal of this church was never just one church but a church that plants churches. A movement of churches all throughout Guatemala. 

(our first discipleship group that finished the 2yr discipleship process)

We began this church in cooperation with New Life Network. New Life Network exists to "Form and reproduce disciples, healthy churches, and servant leaders that are faithful and trained all among the Hispanic community globally." For more information on New Life Network you can visit our website here.

In each country where the network exists the network president has assigned a country coordinator. This is our role in Guatemala. Our job in this role is to expand the network here in Guatemala by establishing a a multiplying network of churches. So what does this mean?

• Coaching and encouraging pastors and leaders: Right now there is only one completely establish church and so I can coaching and encouraging this pastor, Carlos Lopez.
• Training New Pastors and Church Planters: We have a group of about 5 guys that are in the pipeline to become church planters. We are training these guys and other leaders through a variety of ways. 
• One way we are training is our Bible institute which contains two one year programs. The first year is how to plant a church and the second year is how to pastor a church.
• Another way is through our pastors school which gives more theological depth to those we are preparing.
• We have also established a program that includes our discipleship route, retreats, books and other things to help train several guys in church planting. Here is an example of one such retreat.
• Looking for potential areas to plant new churches.
• Develop Pioneers Program: This program allows existing churches to enter the network and use the tools and training we have developed.
• Form and develop operations team/staff in Guatemala that will serve to help us carry out training, processes developed, and coaching of church planters.
• Form and develop the board of directors in Guatemala that will help with the legal side of things. (We are autonomous and yet in related with New Life Network International)
• Communicate with and represent New Life Network International in Guatemala.

                                                                      (This is our institute)

In addition to these responsibilities. We are working on some missionary mobilization training to help begin mobilize more leaders Latinos to global missions. 

This should keep us busy for a while ;-) Thanks for your questions, prayers and support. It means a lot. Please let us know if you have any questions!