Hi everyone! This is an email we sent to all our supporters about our financial support transition for our family. This explains a little more about everything in this phase of our transition. Thanks for your prayers and support for our family! We need to raise an additional 10% to cover extra expenses in this new phase. Would you consider supporting our family? You can give here: https://www.rednuevavida.org/ourteam/ben Thank you! Check out all the details below.
Thanks so much for your ongoing prayers and support for our family! We are super grateful for your support over the last several years! We can’t be here serving in Guatemala without you. As you know we are in transition from Love Guatemala to New Life Network. We are excited and grateful for all the ways God is providing for this transition. God is raising up and providing leadership for Love Guatemala. We will still be supporting and helping Katy Lopez (New Director) and the LG team in whatever ways possible.
One of the parts of our transition is transitioning all of our financial supporters to the new organization we are working with called Red Nueva Vida or New Life Network in English. Check out their website here for more information: https://www.rednuevavida.org/english As we have shared previously our role will be focused on church planting, training pastors and planters, and providing coaching for these Pastors. You can read more about our role at New Life Network at this link: https://www.rednuevavida.org/ourteam/ben
So we would like to ask you to transition your financial support from Love Guatemala to Red Nueva Vida in this month of March if possible. You can do this in different ways:
By Check: Mail Check to Red Nueva Vida Inc., 7010 East Thompson Road, Indianapolis, IN, 46239. **please mark as Ben Kunkel Support**
(Red Nueva Vida, Inc. is a non-profit organization with 501 (c) (3) registration number: 83-0944963 in the United States of America. All donations received are tax deductible, as applicable.)
(If you have regular recurring donations through Love Guatemala you can email Tanya Spanglar at tanyakspangler@gmail.com or call her at 260-444-7943 to cancel these donations)
We have experienced some increased costs in these days as many have (ie. milk and gas over $5 a gallon) so we are trying to raise an additional 10% of support in this transition to cover the support fee we have through New Life Network and also some of our increased cost of living. If you are able to increase your support by 10 or even 5% in this transition we would be very grateful!
Thanks again so much for your prayers and support! Please let us know if you have any questions.
The Kunkel Family
“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 partnership in the gospel from the first day until now”
Philippians 1:3-5
Matthew 28:19-20 says this, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
This is what we know as the Great Commission. This is our calling and work as followers of Jesus. We do not need a missionary call or ministry call to be obedient to this great commission. It is for all believers in all places. One of the things that I have loved about being a part of Red Nueva Vida is the singular focus we have on making disciples.
They have developed what we call the Discipleship Route in which we help lead people not just towards becoming disciples but disciple makers. It is a 2 year long discipleship process. At the end everyone decides not if but where they are called to make disciples. Most are called to make disciples within their local church context, some are called to plant churches maybe in their same context or similar context, and yet others are called to be missionaries and make disciples in a cross-cultural context. None of these are more important than the other. But I love that the discipleship route leads everyone towards reproduction.
A few weeks ago I had the privilege to "commission" our first group of disciple makers. I have wept, celebrated, learned, grown, confessed and done life with these guys for the past two years. They are family. From this group will come about 5 more discipleship groups and hopefully 2-3 churches that are in process or Lord-willing will be planted in the next few years.
We are grateful for another year to serve the Lord through Love Guatemala. As you may know we are in the process to transition out of Love Guatemala to serve full-time in church planting. But we will continue to support in some ways the work of LG. We are excited to see the team God is putting together to lead this organization into the future. As you know Katy Lopez will be the new Director. She is doing a great job and LG will be in great hands with her.
We have started classes this year and we are over 200 students. The Guatemalan government still has some restrictions in place, but we are able to have in-person classes at least half of the time and the other half we will continue virtually. Enrollment nationally seems to be down unfortunately because of the pandemic. It seems that kids got used to not going to school and don't want to return and/or they are tired of virtual learning. It is sad to see the affect this has had.
We have begun a new program that you can read more about here. But basically it is a high school program that people over 18 can take and then go on to college. We are excited about this opportunity!
We passed out food baskets to our feeding center families. This little guy would not let go of my hand. It was a special visit.
