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!  

Re-entry: Moving Back to Your Passport Country

One question we have heard a lot recently is: "How is the transition going?" So here are my thoughts on how it is going. Not really a good answer, but my thoughts on transition and re-entry anyway.

We wrote about here how we have decided that for this season the Lord has us back in the USA leading the church planting efforts in the US with New Life Network. This means us re-entering the culture in which we lived for so many years and yet so much has changed over the last 11 years since we have been in Guatemala.

I (Ben) have been taking a lot of time to ponder, reflect and work through this re-entry process. I am using a transition coach to help me work through some of the challenges related to this. It is a hard process to talk about or express especially to those who have never lived abroad and "re-entered". It is even different for each member of our family and probably has been most challenging for me. 

There are feelings of grief, confusion and excitement all at the same time sometimes. It is a weird feeling for the country you grew up to not feel like home. Indeed, there has not really been a "home" since we moved to Guatemala and not sure there ever will be again, but maybe that is the way we are all to feel as followers of Jesus since we are citizens of heaven. 

One book I was recently reviewing was comparing re-entry of  spacecrafts to that of missionaries re-entering there countries of birth. It is more dangerous for spacecrafts to re-enter then it is "to be orbiting 135 miles above earth at 118,00 miles per hour." This is often the case for missionaries. The entering into mission field and re-entering into passport country is most difficult. This might be a little overstated, but it definetly is challenging.

I write all this so you can be praying as we continue to "re-enter". There are lots of uncertains, decisions to be made, funds to be raised etc. In one sense, we are moving from one field to another as we will continue to minister in a culture that is not our own while living in a culture that is at least somewhat our own. That does not even seem correct as I write it because so much has changed in the last 11 years.

Thanks for praying and supporting us in this time of transition!

Trip to Virginia Nov 2023

 We were able to take a little trip out east to see friends, share about the work the Lord has us doing and have a little family fun. It was a pretty long trip but the kids did well. We are grateful to everyone who hosted us, fed us, took us out to eat, gave us hugs and loved on our kids. A special big thanks to Tom and Cindy Denome who spoiled us again when we stayed with them. Anyone who can host 8 people is amazing but they not only host but spoil us with special food and times together and bend over backwards to bless us. They are family and we are forever grateful. 

This was a fun gathering with a bunch of people who came down on teams from Virginia to Guatemala over the years. It was fun to catch up with everyone.

They girls had fun painting with Miss Kim.

Snuggle time

This was on the way we stayed at a hotel to break up trip thanks to Tom giving us hotel points to use.

Emma got tired while daddy was talking at church ;-) We shared at a church called Warehouse Church which meets at a missions organization.

There is a park always nearby. Weather was great while we were there.

Kim even taught Emma

Miss Cindy made all the kids custom t-shirts and of course the girls picked unicorns.

We got to celebrate Tom's bday a little early.

Kids adopted grandparents. 

The girls love the dogs. Daddy not so much ;-)

It was great to be united with Kim and Glen after almost 4 years! 

Family!

Our Calling to Serve back in the USA

 

Calling to Serve through New Life Network in the United States:

It has been quite a year. We came back in December of last year for a year long home assignment, with the full intention of returning to Guatemala at the end of this year. But God is redirecting our steps. (In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps. Proverbs 16:9) We were invited by the president of our network to consider taking a role here in the USA of Country Coordinator. This is the same role I had in Guatemala. After much prayer, fasting and counsel, we decided that this was the direction that the Lord was leading us as a family. This was not an easy decision and still there are days in which we struggle with this, but we know that ultimately in this season the USA is where God wants us to serve.

Work in Guatemala:

What does this mean for the work in Guatemala? Last year, I completely transitioned out of Love Guatemala as director and that work has been going amazing under the leadership of Katy Lopez. They are going to have the largest graduating class ever this year and have a goal of 400 students next year. They finished up this year with just under 300 students. Ben is continuing to serve on the Board of Directors and giving ongoing coaching/suppport to Katy.

The work in the network has been led by Carlos Lopez in our absence and he has done a great job in leading and continuing the work and even improving it in our absence. He and the team have planted our first daughter church this year, and are preparing 3 more communities for church plants in the next couple of years. His leadership and development has helped in making the decision to stay here in the U.S. possible. Ben will continue to travel back and forth for a while to Guatemala as we take a year to transition Guatemala to the leadership of Carlos Lopez. Please pray for both Carlos and Katy and their teams and ministries!

Our New Role:

As mentioned above, Ben will continue to serve with New Life Network as a Country Coordinator. What does this mean? He will serve the existing 4 churches that we have in the USA through support and coaching. He will look for new church planters and opportunties to plant churches amongst the Latino Population. There are over 60 million Hispanics in the USA so the opportunities are enormous. The goal is to expand the work to 150 disciples in our discipleship route,  20 leaders/church planters trained, and 10 churches in the network in the USA over the next 3 years.

Ben will also serve as director of global missions for new life network. He will work to mobilize and train those within New Life Network Global. The goal is to mobilize and train 100 missionaries over the next 10 years. We hope to start at least 1 missionary training center in the next 3 years.

Family Transition:

As you can imagine this transition to live here in the USA is a challenging one, after living abroad for over 10 years. We still need to find permanent housing, vehicles, decide on education for kids etc. Please pray for these decisions and for our family as we process this big change.

Support Raising:

The role Ben has in the USA is still a role in which we will need to raise our own financial support. The cost of living in the USA is significanly higher so please pray and consider supporting our family if you can. We need to raise an additional $2500 per month for housing, insurance, vehicles, food and other ongoing monthly needs. You can set up a monthly gift here if you desire: www.rednuevavida.org/ourteam/ben or mail checks to this address: Red Nueva Vida Inc., 7010 East Thompson Rd., Indianapolis, IN 46239 (Attn: Ben Kunkel Support) 

Thank you so much for your ongoing prayers and support for our family! Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions: benjamin@rednuevavida.org

October Family Activities

 We have a couple of birthdays in October and we did a few fun things together as a family over fall break too. Below are some pics.

Caleb turned 14 on the 9th of October. Hard to believe our youngest boy is 14.

Jacob turned 18 which is even harder to accept. 3 adult kids for us now. We can't be that old ;-)

Jake has grown into a fine young man.

New monitor for the computer. He is our tech guy and loves working on computers and other tech stuff.

We visited an apple orchard close to us here.

Petting farm.

Our beautiful girls!

The whole crew minus Dad.

Date with Dad. We went to a ballet (Cinderella) with Sofia's school.

Luke loves his mamaw.

We also went to the zoo over fall break but this is the only picture we took apparently.

We are enjoying the fall colors and activities that come with them. It has been 12 years since we have been able to do this. There is no fall in Guatemala.