Tim and Christa Simmons Prayer Letter: Our First Service!Resurrection Sunday

We are working to build a faithful core of people before we officially plant our first church in a building. In the meantime, we are having services in our home. We held our first service in our home on March 17. We had 11 people attend that service. All of these people are excited about being a part of a new church plant. On Resurrection Sunday, the Garcia family from Virginia attended. They are here working at the U.S. Embassy. They have been in Uruguay for 3 months and have been looking for a Baptist church. María, whom Christa is discipling, brought her son’s girlfriend Viviana as well. That brought the total to 16 precious people in attendance. Afterwards, we celebrated Uruguayan style: with an asado (“barbecue”)! Praise the Lord for a great Resurrection Sunday! Please pray for the Lord’s leading in the Garcia family as they seek to get plugged into a good church. Please also pray for our services to grow.

Another Small Group

Christa has been continuing her weekly small group with Maria and her mom. Maria’s son’s girlfriend has been going as well when she’s able. Maria has a burden to reach her family and neighbors. Please pray for her family to be reached with the Gospel. A 30-year-old man named Alexis reached out to us through our church Facebook page. He had recently lost his job and needed some help. We have helped him a little with some food and work. He had previously gone to a church that is about an hour away. He told me he wanted to start going back to church and following God again. I have started discipling him, and he has been faithfully coming to church. He wants to serve in any way he can. We really appreciated his help in preparing the asado on Resurrection Sunday! Please pray for his spiritual growth and that we can start more small groups.

Outreach

We have started setting up a table with tracts and booklets at several street markets. We believe this could possibly be a good way to get the word out about our church. We are praying that, over time, we will have more opportunities to witness to people. We have also been strategically canvassing in the area where we plan to plant the church. Right now, our focus is on praying for God to prepare hearts to be ready to hear the Gospel and come to church. Uruguay is filled with much spiritual confusion and skepticism towards church. As we leave brochures in doors, we pray for the Lord to open the eyes of the spiritually blind (Acts 26:18). In March, we put 4,100 brochures in doors, which help to introduce us to the community. We are thankful for several people who have reached out to us as a result demonstrating an interest in church. We plan to follow up several more times in that same area with different brochures before finally knocking on the doors. Please pray for the Lord to open hearts.

Praise

• Good start to our services
• Several people we’ve reached in March
• Another small group started

Prayer

• Open hearts
• Souls to be saved
• Continued growth of Sunday services and small groups
• My mother-in-law to recover from pneumonia—my in-laws are planning to visit us in April.

Thank you for continuing to give and pray! We love you all so much.

Your missionaries to Uruguay,

Tim, Christa, Ethan, Evan, Emmalynn, and Elizabeth Simmons