Hello All,

Let me introduce you to Pastor Carlos Casco. In this blog and in our Spain Chain letters, there are numerous references to he and his family, so I wanted to devote some space to the man himself. I first met Carlos over the phone about 3 years ago. Our church missions team was preparing to come to Spain, and after a series of emails, it was time for a phone call. Carlos struck me as such a patient man, so willing to help and serve. We came with the church team back in 2003 and discovered a man who was tireless in his service to us and to the Lord. He just never stopped! We were all amazed, but I have found that this was just the normal operation of this missionary.

Carlos has been in Spain for 8 years, originally sent out from Calvary Chapel in Albequergue. Prior to coming here, he had been in Mexico for several years, serving as a translator for a Bible College plant. He was literally trained by translation work, first at CC Albuquerque and then at the Bible College in Chiapas Mexico. Carlos was serving with a brother who was fresh out of Bible College himself. He felt a call to Mexico, and asked Carlos to join him as translator. Carlos agreed and formed a rather vigorous translation routine. Carlos would receive the message in English in advance, and have the message typed in Spanish by his older daughter. He would then check the message over and have it retyped. Then he would give that message back to the brother he was translating for. By the time he actually got to the first service, Carlos had already gone over the material 4 or 5 times. Then the services would be an additional 3 times! But Carlos did not stop there. Usually, after the Sunday morning services, Carlos would take the morning messages to various other churches around Chiapas in the evening and through the following week. When one does this for a few years, one really gets the hang of sermon preparation.

Today, Carlos is a dedicated teacher of the Word of God, and has been faithfully taking care of the flock of God assembled here in Jerez. And while this congregation locally has been small, the audience for Carlos’ teachings internationally have been much larger. At present, we are preparing teachings for an upcoming Bolivian conference that Carlos will be teaching at in the summer. He has also given permission for his mp3s to be broadcast on Latin American Spanish radio. And, I just finished digitizing the latest batch of mp3s that will be included on the Firefighters for Christ website where several teachings already exist! For those of you Spanish speakers, you can access these files at http://ffmp3.firefighters.org/casco.asp.

It has been a pleasure to work alongside Pastor Carlos. He is a truly dedicated servant of the Lord who has been a tremendous blessing to our family.