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

Christmas and January Fun

 We had a great time with our family over the holidays. Levi and Alanna were here for about 10 days and Jacob came for 2 weeks. Below are a lot of pics and not necesarily in order but I will try and give a few details about some of the pics.

Emma wanted "big ole snuggle bug hugs" from her bubbies.

Not sure how they did this pic but I like it. Girls always wanted to play with Levi and Jake!

Birthday lunch for Levi on December 31st.

Christmas with Ben's side of the family.

Aunt Brandi got a new basketball goal for the kids for Christmas. 

Christmas Morning Fun

More snuggles with bubby

Lukester opening some presents

More pics from Ben's side of the family Christmas

Celebration at Jennifer's side of the family celebration

More pics from Levi's bday. 22 already!

It was a fun following Notre Dame football with the boys all the way to the Championship game this year.

Fun in the snow.

Sledding. They love all things unicorn and this was a hit too.

Fun times with the family over the last month or so.

Ministry Trips and Advances with Red Nueva Vida (New Life Network) in the USA

 The last month has been a busy one with Red Nueva Vida. The Lord has been opening many doors for us to serve churches in discipling hispanics, planting churches and training leaders. We have 2 new churches that have come on board and we have helped with a retreat and launching our discipleship in a few other churches as well. There are other opportunities in the works as well. Thanks for praying and supporting us so we can help build God's kingdom amongst the Hispanics here in the US.

Did you know there are over 63 million hispanics here in the USA? There is still a great need for more disciplers and church planters to reach this group. We are excited to see what role the Lord has for us and New Life Network in this work. See some of the pics and more information below:

This was a retreat I helped with at one of our churches north of Chicago called, Jesus the Good Shepherd.

This is a new church that is becoming part of New Life Network.

This is a new discipeship group forming in one of our churches.

This is a discipleship group that I lead every Monday in which we are preparing pastors and leaders from 3 different churches.

Visit from Carlos

 We were grateful to have Carlos visit us last month. He was here in the US for about 3 weeks connecting with supporters, churches and friends. It was fun to have him here, catch up, share in a few churches here and just hang out. We miss him and his family greatly. It was healing for us to have him here for a bit. Check out some pics below from our funs times together.

We got to take him to his first pacers game. Still on the bucket list for next trip is a colt's game.

Here he is sharing at Iglesia Nueva Vida de Indy (New Life Church)

Here he is sharing at Indy Metro Church the church will helped launch Love Guatemala many years ago and still a big part of LG!

This is a new church that Ben is working with here in Indianapolis. Carlos shared his testimony with them and one young man gave his life to Jesus! This church will be joining the network soon.

2024 Ministry & Financial Update

Pastoral Retreat we had in early November

Ministry Update

Ben began this year in a new role as you know. He began serving as the national coordinator for New Life Network here in the USA. His role is supporting Hispanic Pastors to fullfill the mission we have in common which is: To form and reproduce disciples of Jesus, healthy churches and faithful and prepared servant-leaders, in the Hispanic communites in the USA. 

This was and is a big learning curve for him as it is a much different context in the USA than in Guatemala. He has learned a lot and has a lot yet to learn. There are many challenges facing the Hispanic Church in the USA. (Even the term hispanic is debated if it is the propert way to describe those from Latin American origins)

But despite the challenges, we have seen the Lord begin to work among the existing churches we have as a part of the network. We have also seen a few new churches join the network and we are in process of helping a couple more churches join. One of the biggest challenges and yet big opportunities is helping Anglo churches reach hispanics and plant churches within their exsisting churches. There has been a big interest in us helping these churches with this interest. Please pray the Lord will give us wisdom in helping them. Here are a few things we celebrated with our pastors a few weeks back in our pastoral retreat. We share them so you too can celebrate and praise the Lord with us:

• 13 Commissioned Disciplers at New Life Church in Indy
• 2 Churches Joined RNV in 2024
• A Monthly Prayer Time Together was started
• A Pastoral Retreat Together (pic above)
• A New discipleship group preparing 3 churches to start discipleship in their churches (see pic below)
• 3 New churches in the process of discernment if they should be a part of New Life Network

Thanks for your prayers for us in 2024! To God be the Glory!

Financial Update

Our role with New Life Network even though we are in the USA is still a role in which we have to raise %100 of our own financial support. We began the year in a good place financially with about 3 months of support in our account but that has been slowly eaten away at and is now just over one month of support. The reason is that our monthly budget is about a $1,000 a month more than we are receiving in support each month. We would like to end this year getting out of the "red" and raise $10,000 to get our support account where it needs to be.

Would you consider a year end gift to our family to help us get to a healthy spot financially?

You can give here or mail a check to: Red Nueva Vida, 7010 E Thompson Rd, Indpls, IN 46239 (memo as Ben Kunkel Support)

Thanks as always for your prayers and support!

The Kunkel Family

"And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others." 2 Timothy 2:2

Pastoral Retreat

 We had a great Pastoral Retreat a few weeks back with the pastors we have the priviledge of serving. The theme was united in the mission of God. We really wanted to help foster strong relationships between all of us and I think we took some good steps toward that goal. I had my friend from Colombia, Remberto and also Daniel Godbey another friend who serves with the network share with the Pastors. Check out some pics of our time together below.

At our first session Jonathan Morton our president shared with the pastors too.

We had a beautiful time of sharing and prayer around a campfire.

Pastor Remberto sharing with us on how to heal from ministry hurt and to last in ministry.

Ladies and guys had some prayer and sharing times together.

We did a workshop on creating a culture of discipleship in our churches.

Heres the whole group minus Daniel who was taking the picture.

Lots of time in prayer together!

Thanks for those who prayed and supported this retreat!