Every 40 seconds someone in the world dies by suicide; every 41 seconds someone is left to make sense of it…

SUICIDE is a permanent solution for a temporary problem. Suicide ends a temporary pain and can leaves a heart ache in those who love us for the rest of their lives. 

Joseph is on the leadership of LA Reaching LA, a network of pastors and church planters. This network provides training and coaching in the areas of leadership development, church planting strategy and evangelism. One morning, at a monthly training breakfast with LA Reaching LA, a pastor from a Spanish speaking bilingual church nearby, Celebración Latina, came to speak with Joseph.

“Can I meet with you, and can you help me with evangelism?” asked Pastor Marco.

Marco began conducting quarterly outreaches and encouraging the people from his church to bring their friends. He had a former gang member share his testimony, and 8 people came to faith and have been baptized. At this last outreach, 17 people came to faith after hearing the difference Christ had made for a suicide survivor! As the outreaches continue, the church has formed an outreach team. Our partnership helped to provide the motivation for evangelism and testimony speakers that this church body needed and it is so exciting to see many people from the community come to know Jesus, be baptized and become involved in the church!

To see a clip of the testimony shared at the outreach

check out this link: https://youtu.be/j0BlURpqjV4

A New National Role

This past February Joseph was invited to share at our National Cru City Conference, for those working within cities, about the ministry God is doing here in Los Angeles.  It is our desire to see churches multiply through evangelism, discipleship and through raising up leaders within the church. Joseph shared at the conference about one church we had helped form in Claremont that is now starting a Sinhalese speaking Sri Lankan Church, the first in LA ! 

During the conference Joseph was asked to be a part of Cru’s Church Movements National Team.  He will help shape the direction in which Cru partners with hundreds of churches, denominations, seminaries and church planting networks.  He is excited to be a part of this team as he enjoys seeing “the big picture” and visions for the future of churches and Cru partnering together to spread the gospel and the love of Christ beyond Los Angeles to cities throughout the United States.  This new role will still allow Joseph to continue to minister and live in Los Angeles, but will require a little more traveling.

FAMILY UPDATE:

Our girl, Jessica, just celebrated her 13th Birthday!  It is so hard to believe she is already a teenager.  We spent the day with her drinking tea, seeing horses and going to a play her friends were in.  Then dinner and cake as a family that evening. She is a beautiful girl, inside and out, and we are so thankful for her.

Aleeya is loving her jazz dance classes and preparing for a recital in June. Luke just finished playing his last season of basketball for our city league—it was so sad to see this season come to an end as it is his last now that he is graduating.  Daniel continues to bring joy to our home through his music and continues to be stretched on the track team running long distance!

Thank you for your continual prayers and support to us. We thank the Lord for each one of you.