MISSIONARY PROFILE
Clint
& Rhonda
Rardin
Missionary Update 07/05/2022
Dear Praying Friends, Happy July Fourth!! We are so thankful for the independence of our country that created a nation that would truly be a city on a hill to not only shine the light of freedom for the world, but more importantly the light of the glorious gospel. This Sunday we had a very solid attendance of 136 with a full auditorium of almost 180 adults and teens, It was not our plan when we started the mission we have on the other side of the city by the airport to have people come from there on Sunday, nor the group from the addictions program in the inner city of Tepito (we planned on them on going to the mission on Wednesday nights)), but it is great to see people from both the mission and the rescue mission sprinkled among the crowd every Sunday morning. I enjoy giving RU awards once in a while to the people of the rescue mission on Sunday mornings. It keeps that ministry in the eyes of our people.Every summer I preach a series of messages on the home, and this Sunday I taught/preached on Biblical Courting (as opposed to wordly dating); I gave a gospel message at the invitation and surprisingly, two people accepted Christ as their Savior. One was a man named Adolfo. A man around sixty, he has been attending our church for a few weeks or months. He lives near the church in the neighborhood I live in. Our assistant pastor dealt with him and said that Adolfo would like to get baptized. I will visit him this week. The other that trusted Christ was Homalin, a teenager, whose father, Vicente, one of our contracted bus drivers, was saved earlier this year and has been attending our services ever since.This last week was the last week of classes in our Bible Institute and today they take finals and turn in all their projects. This next Sunday night, we have our Bible Institute's graduation. We have only one graduate this year. Jose Davila came to our church fourteen year ago at age 11. Raised by his Christian grandmother who attends a charismatic church, Jose attended our church on his own. He helps in the mission I preach in and will be in charge of it in my absence on furlough. He will be taking turns with a couple of other preacher boys in our Institute preaching on Wednesdays there. Brother Oscar, our assistant pastor preaches in the other mission in Naucalpan that we hope will be an independent church in two years, Although we have finals today, fortunately we do not have to be here for that. Brother Oscar can give the tests and receive the projects. We are going out of town to a small colonial city that has a lot of American expatriates. They are having a fireworks display there, so we will spend the night there. Hope you have a great July Fourth, Clint Rardin
Missionary Update 05/02/2022
Dear Praying Friends, We had a good Holocaust Memorial service. I was seated next to the Isreali ambassador to Mexico for two hours. He was very cordial and open with the people who came to the event. Several Jewish families came including the faculty of a private Jewish school. Several Jews came up to me and said they appreciated the kind words I spoke about the Jewish people. We were giving out Hebrew/Spanish translations of the Jewish Old Testament Bible to the Jews on their way out of the amphitheater. My speech was the closing speech of th event, so I basically spoke of the great impact the Jewish Scriptures has had on the world quoting from Deuteronomy about a wise nation and just laws that have civilized and turned the word from paganism to the worship of the true God, and I was able to give my personal testimony of what the Hebrew Bible has meant to me personally since my childhood and how as a result I forsook my wicked ways and unrighteous thoughts and turned unto Adonai and Israel's God and how He had mercy on me and abundantly pardoned me (Isaiah 55:7) and how I called upon the name of Adonai and he saved me (Joel 2:32). I ended with a story of Corrie ten Boom and how the influence of the Jewish Scriptures gave her family the compassion to hide the Jews and that hope was given to them to endure the concentration camps by the same Scriptures that was handed to them down the centuries by the very people whom they risked their lives to save. I finally told them that, out of appreciation for how the Jewish Scriptures had impacted my life and the world, we had a gift for them of the same Scriptures that they could receive on their way out. (Most Jews do not have a copy of even the complete Old Testament in their home.) I hope and pray that the seed we sowed that day will build friendships with several Jews that attended and will result in the salvation of some of them. Thank you for your prayers, Clint Rardin
Missionary Update 03/14/2022
Dear Praying Friends,, We had a very good weekend, Mexico City is in the green having taken off all restrictions this Monday with the count of new omicron cases falling like a rock, but you would never have known there were restrictions in our church on Sunday. We had 236 in church with 181 taxing our auditorium's capacity just like in the good old pre-Covid days. Our routes had 116 and we had 120 drive-in. Only the kids' classes were down with just 55. We had three baptisms: Jorge, one of our faithful students from our RU recovery program in Tepito; Erica, a woman from one of the routes; and Constanza, a teenager from a family that has turned after eight years. In fact, she and her teenage brother, Jose, and her mother Edna were received as members in the evening as well as a new woman who has been coming for several months, Patricia. Only two families have never returned since Covid began and one of those families didn't return because they moved to another state. We had one death from Covid in the last two years: one of our charter members, ninety-two year old Sara de la Vega. We thank God for His gracious hand upon our church the last two years. The mission in Naucalpan has been running over 50 and we had over 20 in the mission in Carranza this last Wednesday. We had two visitors in our RU mission in Tepito and we pray that they continue to come. Thank you for your prayers, Clint Rardin
Missionary Update 12/09/2021
Dear Praying Friends, The Sunday before last it was great to see several people return to church. Some I hadn't seen in almost two years and others in more than 8 years. Darlene, the diplomat from Haití , who was saved and baptized in our church, came without her daughters (one has asthma). She hadn't come to church in almost two years because of Covid. Teresa, a school teacher (saved years ago in our church as well), hadn't been in our church since the breakout of Covid. She brought her grandkids the last three weeks and one of them is Maria in our Christmas play. Lucia, a military nurse, who hadn't attended in our church in nine years, came after her daughter, who was eight when she had last attended, came the week before with her Christian grandparents and aunt. Aketzali, her daughter, now seventeen, was bought to camp with her uncle, a Pastor, last summer. She was in Kellie's cabin where Kellie was a counselor. Since then, she had been praying to come back to our church. Edna, a one woman who hadn't been in our church for eight years also came back with her kids who are now teenagers. They had been going to a convention Baptist church, but the kids are so glad that they are back with us. With them all coming back we had 227 in church that week, but this week we had even more with 240. The auditorium was packed again with 179 adults. That is pretty good for December. Hector, our most faithful student of our RU program in the street mission in Tepito, came to church. We pray that he will be the first of many. We had a teenager, Isaac, saved as I preached on the Second Coming. Isabela, the eleven-year old daughter of our faithful Venezuelan family, was baptized. All-in-all, we had a very blessed Sunday. Thank you for your prayers, Pastor Clinton
Missionary Update 11/08/2021
Dear Praying Friends, Our fall evangelistic campaign goal for our bus attendance was 140. The last two Sundays we passed those goals with 154 and 155. They resulted in overall attendances of around 260 for which I was very grateful while stiil at the tail end of a pandemic. This past Sunday we had an unexplicable surge of 207 on the buses as every route well exceeded their goals. We had 211 adults filling our already taxed capacity in our auditorium. I knew we had used every chair and space when the ushers put the iron bench from our church's recepcton area on the far end of the platform and quickly filled it. I took me chair I was sitting on and put it next to the bench and our music director followed suit. Our ushers stood at the back of the auditorium during the entire service. The kids classes were packed with 105 children, with many sitting on our school's desks. Needless to say, I am going to have to rent chairs for our church's 17th anniversary next week. God blessed us with four saved in the services and a grandmother and her granddaughter, who were previously saved this year, getting baptized. What a unexpected day! God is good! In the evening, a visting Mexican missionary to Cuba preached on the necessity of prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit in missions.I can only attribute our success in our ministry to the faithful, powerful prayers on the part of our sending and supporting churches. Thank you so much for your prayers, Clint Rardin P,S A coronvirus upate on Mexico: Mexico has only about 3,200 new cases a day compared to about 65,000 a day in the States. Since Mexico City gets about half the new cases and is divided into 16 mayorships, that is only an average of about 100 daily new cases in our mayorship of 385,000 (and our mayorship has one of the least amount of new cases) -- an average of one new case per day for every almost 4,000 people,(clearly not epidemic proportions); and yet, 99% of the people still go around with masks outside, and many churches including Baptist convention churches are still having church by zoom or only allowing people attend by appointment to mantain 30% capacity for their services.
Missionary Update 11/04/2021
Dear Praying Friends, This last Sunday was our second Sunday of our fall evangelistic campaign. Our routes brought in 155. We had 179 adults packing out the auditorium and 83 children. Thirteen were brought in from our new mission by the airport as Moises and his wife with his two teenage girls were all baptized and brought eight of their relatives to see them get baptized. A soldier also was baptized. Jose Abel and a widow of a policeman who was killed in the line of duty were living together. Isela is a mother of several boys who had been attending church for years. In the last few months she and Jose had been attending church and even were coming to the RU program and Jose accepted Christ. Isela wanted to get baptized for months, but I had told her that I wouldn't baptize them while they were living together. A few weeks ago, she told Jose had to move out as she wanted to be right with God (which He did) and then I baptized her. Now they are both getting married today by the justice of the peace.. In December, Carlos and Veronica, another couple with children but living together and were saved this year, are getting married on the 18. They will then be baptized. They will be the fifth couple in the last year that will have gotten married after years of living together until they started attending or were saved in our church. In our RU program in Tepito, eighteen new students have attended the last three weeks. We just need them to all come at the same time. Thank you for your prayers, Clint Rardin