Re-Equip Spieler family for Ministry after a Fire

Friends of the Ken and Leah Spieler Family:

I'm Jake Hansen, a friend of the family from Minnesota.  I'm raising funds to help the Spielers resume their missionary ministry after a fire destroyed part of the property where they serve as missionaries in Mexico on February 15, 2021. For a detailed overview of the fire, see the summary from Leah at the bottom of this post.

The family was humbled and extremely thankful for the quick and abundant support you gave in helping to restore some of their personal items from the fire. 

For those who are still looking for ways to help, Ken and Leah have provided us an opportunity to give toward restoring some of the ministry losses from the fire as well.

Here is a note from them describing the need:

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Dear Brothers & Sisters in Christ, 

Thank you so much for your prayers for us, the Scripture spoken over us, and your words of comfort and encouragement regarding our loss of personal and ministry materials and space earlier this week due to the fire. 

Our hearts are encouraged by the support and unity that we feel from you. Many of you have asked how you can help, and we realize that we were not specific or clear in explaining the various practical ways that people can help us at this time, should God motivate you to do so.

If you would like to be a part of God's provision toward the above ministry needs, you can give quickly and safely through this GoFundMe page. While these gifts ARE for ministry, gifts given to us through GoFundMe will NOT be tax-deductible.

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If a tax deductible donation is important to you, you may give instead through our missions organization, CTEN, at our online giving page here: https://cten.org/kenspieler
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Here are our specific ministry needs related to the fire:
1) We will need to hire help to bulldoze the damaged building, clean up the cement and metal mess, and bring the material to the back side of the property to use as fill. We have gotten several quotes and it looks like this will cost roughly $3,650.

2) Next, we are hoping to replace the ministry space that we lost in the fire. We believe it would be wise to build a simple cement building (50 ft. x 20 ft.) in the back corner of our yard, backing up to our outside wall, which could include room for all of the spaces which we lost in the fire:

> An Office for Ken - where he can study, pray, keep pastoral resources, and meet with pastors and leaders.

> A Simple Guest Room/Apt. - so we can have a place to host the families and couples who come to serve, visit, and participate in the ministry here.

> Ministry and Material Storage - our house does not really have much storage or closet space, so we need a place for ministry and personal storage.
> This would be the first step in getting back on our ministry feet. The discounted quote we have received from a member of our local church that we love and trust is for the amount of $24,250. Praise God, nearly half of this amount has already been donated, so the remaining total is $12,250

3) Of course we also lost physical items for ministry that we used or stored in those areas including: Ken's entire library of books, Bibles, spiritual journals and Bible-based training resources, pastoral resources, boxes of large print Spanish Bibles (NTV), evangelism resources, camp ministry supplies, furniture like bunks and mattresses, tables & chairs, bookshelves and other heavy-duty shelving, 20 6 ft. folding tables & 300 folding chairs, paint & painting supplies, and much more. Many of those items we will need to replace in order to continue effectively in ministry here. Donations will be used toward replacing those items as we are able. (If you have connections that would allow you to access some of the above items second hand and you would like to help us in their acquisition, we welcome physical donations as well as monetary ones. Feel free to email us about this.) $13,670

4) Once we are back on our feet, ministry-wise, we will look to make the repairs to the damaged Shower House (which was an active project that we were working on when the fire hit). We will need to rebuild one wall and 1/3 of the roof, and the boiler room with its boilers and the huge storage tank for water will need to be removed and replaced. The estimated cost of this repair is $5,400.

5) The final and biggest step of rebuilding will be to raise up a new building in the place of what burned. However, we will not be trying to rebuild the building that was lost, which was built many years ago as an orphanage house, with many bedrooms and storage rooms, inadequate bathrooms, and a kitchen (which has not been usable for many years). Instead something much more tailored to the current needs of the church, camp, and ministry center could be constructed there. The process of deciding exactly what sort of building would best serve the current needs will involve others in the church convention. However, there is clearly a need for classroom space and dormitory style sleeping quarters, so a two-story cement structure that would meet those needs will be considered. This will need to be a future project, so we are not focusing on raising support for this effort just yet, and we trust that God will make it clear when it is time to begin.  

A week after the fire, we began taking what metal we could salvage from the ruins to bring to recycling.


Saving a few burnt folding chairs for the campfire ring.


House 3, which burned, was the oldest and biggest building on the property (a former orphanage now serving as a ministry center and camp for area churches in Piedras Negras, Mexico.)

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Introduction to the Spieler Family

God has called the Spieler family to Piedras Negras, a Mexican border town, to partner with the believers there in God’s work, and to share Christ, their greatest treasure, with the Mexican people. They are there to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and extend His kingdom through strengthening the local church in Mexico, primarily by pouring into pastors and leaders, – teaching, encouraging, and providing resources for establishing healthy Bible-based churches and for growing mature, Christ-exalting, disciple-making disciples.

Ken seeks to minister to and disciple men and to encourage them to walk with God, love their wives and children, and become the spiritual leaders God intended them to be… disciples who make disciples. He looks for opportunities to build relationships with pastors and church leaders… asking questions, praying with them, offering them accountability and Biblical resources, providing teaching on foundational subjects like nurturing a culture of discipleship, expository preaching, active shepherding, and a right understanding of conversion, church membership, and biblical manhood and womanhood.

Leah’s passion is teaching and building close and transparent relationships with women. She invests in the women of the area through women’s ministry, home-schools their four boys, helps plan ministry events, and supports and works alongside Ken ministering through hospitality and acts of service.

The boys, Cam, Luke, Trey, and Timothy, also represent a crucial part of their ministry team and love to participate through music, translating for English-speaking teams, helping with kids’ programs, physical service projects, church outreaches, and family hospitality.

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The Fire at the Ministry Center (Monday, Feb. 15, 2021)

Piedras Negras, Mexico

On Monday morning a fire started in a storage room connected to House 3, the largest and oldest of the buildings of the former-orphanage-turned-ministry-center where we live. Since moving to this location 2 1/2 years ago, we have used rooms in this building for Ken’s office, our guest room, for ministry and personal storage, and so much more. The fire was already out of control when we discovered it. Water buckets and fire extinguishers made no dent in the flames. Praise God no one was inside the house.

While God was directing the wind away from our home, which is adjacent, it seemed that external circumstances were working against the saving of House 3. With the coldest temps in 30+ years and 3 inches of snow on the ground (unheard of in our area), the hoses were frozen, the faucets only gave a slow trickle, cell communication was down, and the roads had snow and ice on them. The fire department delayed over an hour in arriving. House 3 was connected to House 2 by the new Shower House (which has wooden rafters). By the time the fire department arrived and got their nozzles unfrozen, the whole of House 3 was in flames and the roof of the shower house that we have been working on since last winter was beginning to burn. Praise God, the fire was extinguished before it reached House 2 or destroyed the Shower House completely. 

We are infinitely thankful that all our family, and Dany and Rox (a missionary couple in training who are staying here with us) and their children, and the firefighters are ok! We know that what was lost were only material things that will eventually turn to dust. Nothing eternal was lost! And we absolutely believe and trust that God allowed it for a specific purpose - that He has things He wants to do in us and perhaps in this place through or because of this experience. 

Even so, there is a deep sense of loss… sadness for the loss of our guest room and Ken’s beautiful office (both of which we completely finished and decorated and organized just a month ago with all of Ken’s pastoral/ministry resources and books), and the loss of the hospitality, usefulness, and retreat which both offered. Along with much personal storage, we lost everything that we use for ministry with churches and the pastors, and in the camps and retreats that we do here, all of the chairs and tables that people recently donated, many of the beds and bunks, tons of construction stuff, the boiler room and big water tank of the new shower house and 1/3 of the shower house roof, ugh... the list goes on and quite frankly, it’s overwhelming and so disheartening. 

There is no insurance on the building. Insurance in Mexico is really rarely used because when there is a claim, the company looks for any reason not to pay out and the client almost never collects when there is a loss. As you can imagine, we feel the loss deeply for we have tried to be excellent stewards and caretakers here of the ministry supplies with which God has entrusted us, as well as of the buildings and location itself. Even so, we know that the circumstances were never out of God’s control. We trust His sovereign hand and His plans to sanctify and refine us and to shape our ministry and the effectiveness of this ministry location. We know that He will provide.