Today's Request
The Lighthouse Campello (Spain)
Specific Requests
- For God to continue to expand His work and open up doors for the gospel in El Campello.
- That God would provide financially as the church continues to grow and moves into a new building.
- For Magaly's new ministries to the poor and vulnerable launching in 2020.
Pray God's Word
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. (2 Corinthians 4:7)
Pray for the Leaders: Joel and Magaly Villarroel
Joel was born to a family of church planters in the country of Venezuela, but spent his youth far from God, until at the age of 17 he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. He was forced to reckon with the deeper questions of life and wanted to be reconciled with God. He encountered God in a real way for the first time, and found perfect forgiveness for his sins. Added to this miracle, God also gave Joel the complete, supernatural healing of his body. At the age of 18, Joel was baptized and immediately became involved in ministry in his local church. It wasn't long before he felt the call on his life to become a church planter. He went to seminary, and after pastoring for two years met his wife Magaly, who had also come to the Lord as a result of witnessing her mother's healing at the age of 12.
Given such a history, it's not surprising that Joel and Magaly would end up ministering in the Amazon, where they opened their home to care for sick and dying children from among the Yanomani people.
While in the Amazon, they had one son (Joel Jr., 21 years old) and after several years of laboring faithfully in this trying work, they had a daughter named Raquel (12 years old). While Raquel was still in the womb, they learned that she had Down's Syndrome. Though it was incredibly difficult to leave a ministry they had loved and invested in for so long, it soon became clear that God was using Raquel to lead them to a new place, since she would need more specialized care than they could get for her in the Amazon. God eventually led them to the country of Spain, where they are now planting their eighth church, "The Lighthouse," in the city of El Campello.
