Dear Boys & Girls: P.S. Buddy Barrel is my best friend! Street evangelism. César (in the yellow shirt) A church service in the old building

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1 One of the greatest joys of being a missionary is seeing God create something out of nothing. Your BGMC offerings helped make this possible. A new church was started in the northern Spanish city of Santander. There was no Assembly of God church there, yet the city is large over 180,000 people. Julio and Zuny, along with their son César, moved to Santander by faith. They started a church in their home, and soon the number of people was too large to continue meeting there. They then rented a building that used to be a gym, where people would go to lift weights and get in shape. It was rather funny because one wall was covered with mirrors. Even during church people would be looking at themselves in the mirrors. The church continued to grow to where they needed to get into a bigger building. In September of last year, they found a building almost twice the size of the old gym. The great thing was that the building did not need much work on it before they started to have church there. For this new, larger building, the church in Santander a beautiful oceanside city needs more chairs, more material for the Sunday School rooms, and they also need to soundproof the ceiling. They have neighbors living right on top of the church building, and they don t want those people to be angry every Sunday morning when church starts. You and Buddy Barrel have made this possible. They have bought new chairs, more material for the Sunday School rooms, and even helped pay for the soundproofing of the ceiling. So from Pastor Julio, his wife Zuny, his eleven-year-old son César, and from us, Scott and Marisa Smith, we say thank you and God bless you. We love you, Street evangelism César (in the yellow shirt) A church service in the old building P.S. Buddy Barrel is my best friend! Pastor Julio and Zuni

2 One of the things we do as missionaries is teach others how do ministry. Your offerings helped me organize a seminar on how to use art in the church and in evangelism. People came to the seminar from all over Spain. There was a group of people who drove nine hours one way to be there, and then nine hours back to their home on the southern coast. Our special guests were from a church in New Jersey Hope Tabernacle in Jersey City. They did an excellent job for us. Most of them spoke Spanish. This was the first seminar that has ever been done in Spain about using arts in the church and in evangelism. I was expecting about 40 people, and 150 showed up! I was amazed! You can pray for us. I hope that this will one day develop into a Fine Arts Festival here in Spain. We have nothing like that now and would really like to see people who have talents use them in ministry, both in the churches and in our street witnessing. So your offerings helped people who are getting ready to take God s message to the Spaniards who really need to hear it. Thank you. God bless you. You have blessed us. We love you.

3 I love Buddy Barrel! He is one of my best friends! He helps us out here in Spain so much and in so many ways! Let me tell you about one of them. One of the most important things missionaries do all over the world is to teach young people about the Bible and get them ready for ministry. When we missionaries go to a foreign country, we start churches, witness to people, preach on the streets, and see people get saved. The very next thing we do as Assembly of God missionaries is that we start a Bible school to help the people that get saved to have a ministry of their own. We don t want to be the only ones in the country that are preachers or teachers, we want the local people to be trained to work alongside of us. The BGMC offerings you gave helped the Bible school here in Spain in two ways. One was to buy new books for the Bible school library. Another is to help pay the salary of one of the teachers. This is a very good thing. We need good, smart teachers to make class interesting for the students. (Nobody wants a boring teacher!) The Bible school here in Spain is packed out. There are more students than there is room! We had to rent apartments away from the Bible school to have a place for everyone who wants to study the Bible to be able to do so. Young people are excited to study God s Word. Your BGMC offerings helped young people who are getting ready to take God s message to the Spaniards who really need to hear it. Thank you. God bless you. You have blessed us. We love you. Missionaries to Spain

4 Marisa and I love BGMC, and we love Buddy Barrel! In November, we organized a school for grown-ups! This school was not to teach them to read or write; it was to teach them how to do things in their church. We made the adults sit in desks in a regular high school. Some of the adults were a little big for the desks (as you can see in the picture), so they had to sit in chairs brought from the cafeteria. People came from all over Spain. Some people even got up at 3:00 a.m. to catch an airplane. They were in school all day and then didn t get home until about 12:00 midnight. They were up for 21 hours without sleeping! They did all of this in order to come to a school where they could learn to teach Sunday School better or to learn to be a better usher in the church. We offered classes on how to have a good youth group meeting, how to communicate better with each other, what to do and what not to do when you disagree with someone in the church, and many other subjects as well. We wanted this school to be as practical as we could. We wanted the people that work as volunteers in the different churches in Spain to learn how to do their jobs better. God is pleased when we do our very best in our work for Him and His church. About 75 people came to this school. It was the first time we have ever had anything like this in Spain or even in Europe. Everybody really enjoyed their time in learning practical skills. One lady said, This has been a very enjoyable time. We have learned a lot of things that are going to be useful when we do our jobs in church. Another lady said I am very happy with this school. We have learned a lot of new things. The teachers have been the best we could have. Because this was the first school we have ever done like this, we had a lot of expenses in preparing and arranging for it. Even though we charged all the students that came, we still needed money from BGMC to help us make up the difference. We were able to give a good offering to all the teachers and pay for all the other expenses, thanks to BGMC. Thank you, BGMC, and thank you, Buddy Barrel! Scott Smith, missionary to Spain

5 An amazing thing happened in Spain this year! We were given a pavilion in the Expo 2008 (also known as the World s Fair)! This year the Expo was in Zaragoza, Spain. Zaragoza is a big city, and the Expo is a big event. Only countries can enter the World s Fair. The countries display their best products and try to outdo each other to make it sound like their country is the best place to go and visit. Colombia had free coffee because Colombia is known for their coffee. In the Uruguay pavilion, we had the best steaks ever. Uruguay is famous for their beef. The pavilion for Brazil was kind of like a rain forest because the Amazon jungle is mostly in Brazil. How were we as Christians (not a country) able to have a pavilion at the Expo? Our application should have been rejected. But we were allowed because we are a Holy Nation! God did a miracle and allowed us to have a place to let more people know about Jesus. We called it Living Waters Pavilion (Agua Viva). Our booth described the ways we are helping people in the world. There was a display telling about our work with orphans and another one telling about how we help out older people when they no longer have a place to live. There were several other displays like that. It showed that we Christians not only talk the talk but we walk the walk. More than 330,000 people visited our pavilion in the 93 days of the Expo. That means that over 3,500 people heard the gospel every day! Many people from all over the world visited the Living Waters Pavilion. We had literature in English, Spanish, French, and Arabic. (Quite a few Arabic-speaking people came and heard the Good News too). Over 1 million tracts were handed out. Our God is very good and very great by Gospel Publishing House, 1445 N. Boonville Ave., Springfield, Missouri

6 We gave away 30,000 DVDs of the movie Jesus. Just about everyone who came received a Gospel of John. About 70,000 kids got a children s magazine that was fun to read and told them about becoming a Christian. Everyone who prayed to accept Jesus got a free Bible. It was an amazing success. I want to say thank you. BGMC gave us a lot of money, especially to buy the Water that Quenches all Thirst tracts (shown below). To buy 1 million tracts takes a lot of money, and BGMC helped a lot! We are grateful and so are all the people who gave their lives to Jesus this summer. They are the most grateful of all. You made a difference. You contributed to a miracle that Jesus did here in Spain. Thank you. You have blessed Spain and the world. We love you, Missionaries to Spain 2010 by Gospel Publishing House, 1445 N. Boonville Ave., Springfield, Missouri