Willians Alcala
The work among the Spanish speaking community and the ESL classes in Brisbane continue well, for the Lord's glory. For the last nine years, we have helped with a regular Gospel meeting in the Spanish language, and we have seen many people under the sound of the Word of God through these years. Although some have professed to be saved and added to some assemblies, we keep praying for more fruit.
Spanish meeting Brisbane, Australia
At the beginning of this work most of the contacts were from Colombia, and although we still have several Colombians attending, it has been a significant increase in the number of Venezuelans. The crisis in that country has forced thousands to seek other places to live in, and Australia has received a few. Some of these Spanish friends coming to the meetings have never had any direct contact with the gospel before, while we have been surprised by other cases of people that even knew about the assemblies in their homelands. Recently an unsaved couple invited some of their friends to the meetings, and one of them was a man who heard the gospel and got saved in Colombia 28 years ago, through the work of Mr. Geoff Thomson, the first Australian assembly missionary who went into that country. This man has been in Australia for many years, and now he is attending the meetings regularly with his wife and a sister-in-law.
There are some Spanish speaking contacts who professed to be born-again Christians and seem very genuine about their salvation, but they have been into different denominations. Some of them have expressed their appreciation for the way in which we preach the gospel and carry on our meetings, and even some of them have attended the regular assembly meetings in English. There is a couple from Colombia that, after observing the meetings for several weeks and asking a lot of questions, finally concluded that the assembly is the place where they should be. In the will of the Lord, they will be received into assembly fellowship this coming Lord's Day.
With the ESL classes, we have seen a good number of students from Taiwan coming regularly, along with some from other nationalities. They all learned a Bible verse every week and received gospel literature. We offer them a meal after the lesson and take advantage of that time to talk to them personally.It is very encouraging when we see some of them coming to the gospel meeting on Lord's Day evening. Several brethren and sisters come and help in different ways for which we are grateful.
We also visit the assemblies around us and beyond whenever we can. A few weeks ago, in July, we traveled south into New South Wales and visited three assemblies in that state, having meetings with the local believers. We also attended two conferences in August. At the end of one the conferences, our brother Clive Barber gave his testimony, and I translated it into Spanish. Around 30 Spanish speaking friends were present in that meeting, and after the meeting one of them professed to be saved.
Currently, we are in the second week of gospel meetings at Conference Hall, our home assembly in Brisbane, with our brother Bryan Stewart from Adelaide. We have been encouraged by several unsaved friends coming regularly, including some Spanish friends and students from the ESL class. We pray for souls to be saved!
Autumn 2017 Written by Willians and Kylie Alcala - Australia Alcalawkalcala@iprimus.com.au