Religion

By CINDY MALLETTE
Staff Writer

When the church's air conditioning broke at the start of this long, hot summer, the members of Iglesia Nueva Vida took to the parking lot.

The membership comes to roughly 200 people, and the cost would more than $230,000 to replace the system. But the huge hurdle didn't intimidate the church family. For the past few months, they've held garage sales, pledge drives and food sales to pay the enormous bill.

"I felt blessed at how the church came together," said Pastor Juan de Dios Acuna. "It was so hot, but they continued to come. The members decided to get together to buy fans to put in the sanctuary, and to work to raise money for the air conditioning."

The church had planned to do major renovations, including adding a library and a fence around the church property, when the air conditioning system broke.

"The air conditioning just took us by surprise. It just broke down," Acuna said. "We didn't have any plans to buy a new air-conditioning system."

That's when the church family stepped in. They held two garage sales within two weeks of each other and raised $1,700. Members brought clothes, books, electronics and kitchen supplies and set them up under a tent in the church parking lot. They sat under the tent whenever possible, to escape the heat radiating from the asphalt, while some cooked tacos and tostadas on a grill to share with the group. They did all of this without having an air-conditioned building to run to for relief.

"I was really blessed, in how people responded to the garage sale even though we'd had a few garage sales close together," Acuna said. "The first one raised $1,000 and the second raised $700. It was still pretty good, but the air conditioning is still a lot more expensive than that."

The church plans to make the repairs in steps. The first step -- restoring cool air to the sanctuary -- is already done. The bill was $30,000, which the members paid for through proceeds from the garage sales and pledges. The next step is to restore air conditioning to the offices and Sunday school rooms, but the cost will be enormous. Acuna said he expects to spend another $200,000 to restore air conditioning to the rest of the building.

"There's three stages that we're working on with the air conditioning. It's really expensive," he said. "We're taking it one step at a time."

The church has another garage sale planned Sept. 12. And they hope to bring in a speaker or musical group to host a fundraising concert.

"It would be bilingual. That's the idea, so everybody could come," Acuna said.

The process of repairing the air conditioning is a long one, he said, and the remaining projects will have to be put on hold for a while. He said the library is still a top priority for the church, because he wants to have a place where younger members can study and receive encouragement to stay in school.

"One focus of the church is education, so the youth don't abandon it," Acuna said.

Too often, he's seen younger members drop out of school and join gangs. He said the teenagers are looking for a place to belong, and they find it in the gangs. He'd rather give them the chance to find belonging in church.

"The focus is that the church wants to be a place for the Spanish-speaking people to continue their culture," he said. "When people come from a different place, they want to meet people who are similar. They want to feel like they belong somewhere."

The church will soon bring in a youth minister to meet the needs of the students. The new minister will also introduce English-only services on Sunday mornings, because a number of families and younger members don't understand Spanish.

"The idea is that while we have Sunday school classes in Spanish, we will have English services in the sanctuary, and then we change. We go to the sanctuary for the Spanish service, and they go to Sunday school," he said. "We do want to open the service for the people outside the church who are English-speaking. But we have a few families who are only English-speaking. They do not understand Spanish. We don't know how they do it, but I feel responsible because they want to be here, even though they don't understand Spanish. I'm happy that they're here, but I would like to minister to them in their language."

Pastor Acuna has been with the church for two years, and he already has a vision of reaching out to the Hispanic community to show them God's will for their lives.

"Our motto is Dios piensa en ti, por eso estamos aqui. 'God thinks about you, and that's why we're here,'" Acuna said. "The idea is that God has a plan and nothing in this world is an accident. God wants that purpose to be a reality in each person. The new purpose is like the name of the church, "A new life."

Church Information:

Motto: Dios piensa en ti, por eso estamos aqui.

Service times: Sunday school 9:45 a.m., Worship 11 a.m.

Web address: www.nuevavidatyler.org

Physical Address: 102 W. Bow Street, Tyler.

UNITY THROUGH ADVERSITY: Pastor Juan de Dios Acuna stands in front of the Iglesia Nueva Vida, where its members have united to overcome a costly problem — the loss of its air-conditioning system. “When people come from a different place, they want to meet people who are similar. They want to feel like they belong somewhere,” Acuna said.
(Staff Photo By Tom Turner)