Pastor Igor Dias Ramos
Lleida Bible Church, Spain
I am Igor Dias Ramos, born in 1986, in a German colony in southern Brazil. My parents raised me with Roman Catholic principles until I was 18 years old, when some friends invited me to join a Pentecostal church. My dream since childhood was to be a soccer player, and this was my passion until 2008, when I was hit by a truck and this accident was God's way of taking me out of a world of vanities to lead me to an eternal life. It was from this moment that I understood that God's calling for my life was to lead people not just to celebrate a game for a moment, but to rejoice in the eternal salvation that has been given to us in Jesus Christ.
In 2007 I married my beautiful wife Eliane Kochhann de Miranda, and we have been married for 17 years. For over 12 years of marriage the doctors had told us that we would not be able to have children, but our prayer to the Lord was to give us wisdom to rest in His will. Until 2020, in the midst of the Covid pandemic where many people died, the Lord granted our heart's request, we have been graced by Him with a son through IVF treatment and in this month of July 2024, our son Christopher will be three years old with great health, lots of love and desire to know God and our King Jesus Christ. Glory to God for his tremendous generosity and goodness to us.
After some years of theological training in seminaries and participation in Reformed churches, the Lord is sending us back to Spain to help strengthen the local church in this country. But in March 2022, on a mission trip to Paris, I met two Christian women, as in the book of Acts 16:9; "At night a vision was shown to Paul in which a man from Macedonia was standing praying to him and saying, "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" These two women told me that they had been praying for a Bible church in their city, Lleida, for more than 15 years. They begged me to help them get to know God in a way that the churches around them had not been doing for many years. So from that moment on, my wife and I began to pray and ask advice from our pastors about the possibility of starting a work in the city of Lleida.
Lleida is the capital of the region of Segrià, with 211.7 km², it is one of the largest municipalities in Catalonia. Founded in the 6th century BC, it is the largest city in the Principality outside the province of Barcelona, a modern and cosmopolitan capital, an AgroBiotech reference in southern Europe, with an important communications network, a pillar of its geostrategic position.
In September 2022 we moved to Lleida and started meeting in our house until we had no more space and moved to new premises in November 2022. I am pastoring this small group of brothers, which sometimes has grown due to the curiosity of the people. Curiosity to know a reformed church, but they do not want the commitment that God demands of them with Himself, with His Word and with the people of God, so very few stay to be part of the people that the Lord has called, justified, is sanctifying and one day will glorify Him.
Today we are a group of 8 members, five candidates for baptism and eight candidates for membership. On Sundays we gather about 25 people to read the Scriptures, sing the Scriptures, pray the Word of God, listen to the Word of God and see the living Word in the fellowship of the breaking of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper and in loving one another.
We have spent over a year studying the book of 1 Timothy in Sunday services. This summer we will study the marks of a Biblical church and in September we will begin the study of a book of the Old Testament. On Thursdays we study the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. And once a month, on Sunday afternoons we have our prayer meeting, in which we meditate briefly on the Word of the Lord (this meeting is an opportunity for new preachers), listen to two or three short testimonies and spend a lot of time praying for our church and for the churches around us and around the world, and also spend time seeking the Lord together as a church.
August 2024 Update:
Dear brothers and friends, we want to thank you for a your support with your prayers and love. We are grateful to the Lord for each one of you, for your solicitude in accompanying our walk as strangers on this earth, in the work of God in our midst until we reach the heavenly city.
We pray for each of you that the Lord may be your portion and that you may consider your ways to obey His Word.
DIAS FAMILY
Our family thanks to the Lord we are doing well, preparing for the challenge of Christopher's schooling, and the challenges we will face with a sense of values, friendships and philosophies that he will learn from his peers. We are also praying for his distance adjustment from his mother, especially in the early days. For it will be the first time that both will be distant, and that will not be easy for either of them.
We are even looking for a house in the town that Christopher will be studying in, so that we can have more friendships with the parents of the students, and the ease of taking him to school. But we also do not want to distance ourselves from the Church, because our work is to take care of the brothers who live around Lleida. Unfortunately we have not even found a good, cheap house that we could rent. But we are sure that the Lord is preparing a good home for us to establish ourselves as a family and also to be welcoming to the brothers who visit us.
As for my health, I am still waiting to be called by the pain clinic of the public hospital of Lleida, but they have already warned me that there are many patients ahead of me, and that I will have to wait a little longer. But in the meantime, the Lord continues to use the pains and my limitations to bring me to Christ and be molded to the same image of Him.
My wife will be starting the process of validation of her magisterial career, and thus, there will be possibilities of teaching in our son's school. We pray to the Lord that in spite of the long process of validation, the school will be able to accept her as a teacher's assistant.
BIBLICAL CHURCH OF LLEIDA
August is a month of rest and vacations in Spain. And so we have decreased the weekly activities of the church in this month, due to the heat and the vacation time of the families.
But the Lord who never gets tired, nor weary and who is always showing us His grace and His work in the midst of His church, impresses us with His action. We are finishing a series about the marks of a true Church by describing the biblical model of a church that worships the Lord not only in its activities but in its daily relationship of love and commitment of its members with God and with each other. Last Sunday, after the Lord's Supper, a young woman who has been in our church for a little over 6 months, who is already doing the membership course, after seeing the members reaffirming their commitment to each other in the membership covenant and remembering the work of Christ in the symbols of bread and wine, she with tears in her eyes, told me that she does not want to be a consumer of the Church of God, but she wants to be an active and committed member with God and his people and also to participate in the precious scene of the Lord's Supper together with the people of God. This is a joy that transcends our heart, to see the Lord answering our prayers by moving the hearts of those who are listening to His Word every Sunday.
We pray also for those people who during the time of studying the marks of a true church, were confronted with their salvation, and are examining their hearts to know if the Lord has really transformed them into true worshippers or just religious people who fear hell.
PRAYER REQUESTS
We ask that you continue to pray for us and support the ministry here in Lleida. Here are some ways to pray for us:
- For our son Christopher's adjustment in school.
- For the friendships he will have at school.
- We pray for the process of validation of Eliane's studies.
- For my health and for the waiting time for the next surgery to be shortened.
- For the Lord to open doors to find an accessible house or apartment close to Christopher's school and the church.
- We pray for the hearts of the brothers, that they may be strengthened by the Word of God and His Holy Spirit that their names are written in the book of life because of the life, death and resurrection of Christ for them.
- We pray that more hearts will want to be willing to commit to the local church, and that the church in this way may reflect God's character to this world fallen and desperate because of sin.
- We pray for this new school year that Christopher's school will be a means of reaching families for Christ.
- We pray for the political situation in Europe. The wars and conflicts around are causing fears in people and in others a cold and rebellious spirit.
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