Israel and Tonya Alvarez Prayer Letter: Summer Is Upon Us!

Summer is here! It is time to put the schoolbooks away and plan for all of our summer outreach activities. The last two months have been very busy, but we are looking forward to the summer. We are going over different ideas for how we can reach out to our community. Please pray with us.

In April, our second daughter Analea made the decision to follow the Lord in baptism. As parents, our hearts are full to see her trust Christ and begin to grow her faith. Our desire is that she would continue to follow the Lord in her decisions. Please pray that God would give us wisdom as we do our best to guide her in her new life with Christ.

In the middle of May, here at Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Orange Walk, we hosted our annual Missions Conference. Pastor Estevan Campa from Long Beach, California, came to preach for us. We rejoice that many people participated in Faith Promise giving for this coming year. The church currently supports 12 missionaries. Lord willing, we will adding one more to the list this year. It is great to see the people open their hearts and desire for the Gospel to go out around the world.

In May, we were blessed to host the senior class of Hammond Baptist High School, along with their principal and youth pastor. Their visit was such an encouragement to us. The spirit of the teens was uplifting. Everyone was so willing to help with anything that needed to be done. The whole group was a blessing to our ministry and especially to our family. During their visit, we were able to have three services in three different villages; we were able to have about 300 in attendance. Many received Christ during these services. A true blessing was that this group was able to bring us over 200 donated children’s books. We desire to start a neighborhood library for the local children. It would be a place where the children would have access to help with homework and school projects. Currently, there is only a small library on the other side of town. Access to good reading material is a great need here in our village. If you would like to donate books or help in any way with this project, please let us know.

We celebrated the fourth anniversary of Faith Baptist Church in Corozal on May 8. We broke a record high of 175 people, and many trusted Christ as their Saviour. This past two months, this church has seen 5 people trust Christ and get baptized. There is a wonderful group of core members who are growing in their faith. We are also looking to purchase land for this growing church. There is a specific lot we are looking at that is selling for US$16,000. This is a very reasonable price right now. The location is wonderful, as it is near town. My assistant, Oscar Pedroza, and his wife are soon to be taking over this church. We would love for the church to have their own land so they can begin to build. If anyone would like to help financially with this need, please let me know.

Thank you for your investment in God’s work here in Belize. We count it a blessing to be your missionaries.

In Christ,

The Alvarez Family