Newsletter - March to August 2023

Dear beloved partners in Christ,
It is our great joy to once again to share what our Lord Jesus has been doing in and through La Zona. We take advantage of this to send you the acknowledgment you deserve, which carries our gratitude for your love, prayers, and support for this ministry.

During the months that have gone by between our last newsletter (March 2023) up to now,

• The Family Development Holistic Program that was launched kept running and attendance has been steady. The families have become solid members of the church and they are being discipled in different life areas:  
  • Emotional area: by means of Celebrate Recovery and the Emotional Intelligence sessions.
  • Academic area: the children who are part of these families (10) have been tutored and have attended English classes throughout the school year.
  • Spiritual area: these families have joined church little by little and now all of them attend the Sunday worship meeting and small group meetings 
  • Art area: kids and parents have taken acting classes and kids are attending music lessons 

Their development has been noticeable during their participation in the Summer Kids Club, which opened the door to this program. Now almost all of them are active participants, except for the two youngest children.

• Our soup kitchen, The Lord's Mana, has continued its service with an average of 45 inexpensive meals sold every day.
• School tutoring to support junior high and high school students took place and we were able to serve close to 50 students from the Fuego Nuevo surrounding neighborhoods. The tutors are college students and professionals from La Zona.

• Baptisms have been celebrated in Fuego Nuevo and Xalatlaco: 8 in total.

• Visitors from two U.S. partner churches visited us during this period and we were blessed and had fun serving the Lord alongside them: thank you Antioch CC (Marion, Iowa) and Broadway CC (Mesa, Arizona)!

• Summer Kids Clubs have taken place in Fuego Nuevo and Pepes, in Mexico City and in Xalatlaco (60 km from Mexico City) and in Guadalajara (550 km from Mexico City). New Family Development Holistic Program groups should sprout as a result of these programs.

PLEASE PRAY:

• For the ongoing and growing fellowship of the church and its labor for the Kingdom of God 
• For DBS groups, that they would continue sparking 
• For good health, especially for my daughter Esli 
• For healthy finances in every La Zona family 
• For the people actively involved in church planting in Guadalajara City and the La Zona leaders 
• For the Fuego Nuevo construction project, that it would get factually started by the end of the year 
• For a dentist and a doctor that can serve at the La Zona dentist and doctor offices
• For coming baptisms in Fuego Nuevo and in Xalatlaco

I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now...

Philippians 1:3-5

In the love of Jesus Christ,
isael and Yola Cruz, and all the La Zona family