Prayer Items – August 2011

• Praise God for the miraculous upturn in Leonardo’s life — Praise Him once more with us that Leonardo has still not resorted to any violence in order to take revenge on those who have been violent towards him and his family, though at times he has threatened to do so.  Please continue praying that Leonardo would turn his life totally over to Jesus…  We know that until he makes a real decision to give his life over, we have nothing.
• Praise God for some recent news that we’ve received about Mario… We cannot give details, but we do know that he is still o.k.  Keep praying for God to preserve his life… and for him to be released as soon as possible.
• Please continue to pray for Leonardo and Mario’s family.  Their mother, now having lost a nephew who was like a son to her and two of her own sons, has shown herself strong at times and yet in other moments she seems to be just barely surviving.
• Praise God for a small wave of “healthy” young people who have started to gravitate towards our church.  Pray that if it is God’s will we would be able to retain them in our congregation, and that He would enable us to equip them in helping us minister to more troubled youth.
• Praise God for the ties He has enabled us to develop with some local drug rehabilitation centers who have interest in working in our neighborhood.  Please pray that God’s will would be done in these ministry relationships… If it is God’s will, we could certainly use some help.
• Praise God and please continue to pray for Kim’s health.  She is fighting hard to stay well, and is slowly recovering from a series of issues that plagued her.
• Pray for time for us:  We are still only spending about 20 percent of our time in ministry working with youth, and we would like it to be more like 60 or 70 percent…  Our prayer is that God would raise up the pastors and the people that we are working with quickly.
• And in general, please keep praying for us:  We are discouraged.  Again, working with gang youth is hard.  We apologize for not having written to you sooner about the last death incident, but we didn’t know how to tell you.

…Most of all, please pray that we, along with the youth, would somehow find the courage to live, to laugh, and even to dare to love… yet again.

“I have become all things to all men so that by all means possible I might save… some.”    1 Cor. 9:22 – emphasis added

Thank you.

… The some are worth it.