September 2026 Newsletter
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Hi friends,
It's Aaron Kuchenski. Many of you know me and my family well, but you may not know what God has been doing in our lives lately. In February 2025, we began planning to plant a church, and in August 2025 I resigned from my position as an associate pastor to step out in faith. That church is Puente á Vida (Bridge to Life), a bilingual church here in Spokane reaching the Hispanic and immigrant community in our city. I wanted to share a quick update on what God's been doing, and then an invitation at the end.
A place to gather
Since the end of April, we've been gathering in homes, and God has been growing us. We're about 35 people and 8 children now, and our houses were bursting at the seams with people ready to hear the Word of God preached. We were burdened to contemplate how we would keep growing. God answered: our new gathering space is at 1108 N Argonne Rd in Spokane Valley. The space can facilitate 80 adults, and we have access to four children's classrooms. Praise the Lord! He has made room for us.
Here is the difference between starting and launching a church. We are a church now. We gather, we worship, we pray, and we serve. But when a church launches, it is committing to consistency: full engagement including outreach and regular discipling for new members, a commitment to engage the community regularly, and healthy ministries throughout the week. We offer some of those things, but the full-time commitment is constrained by the limitations of our time, working full-time jobs and pastoring full-time while we continue developing the ministry. We have not launched yet. We are still raising up enough leaders to help facilitate the ministry in a healthy way, and we are preparing the space to welcome people well.
A growing pastor team
Many of you haven't met Mario, my co-pastor. Mario, his wife, and several of their adult kids moved to Spokane last August to help us reach this community. Mario has been faithfully learning and leading alongside his wife, and as a pastor team we are about to begin pastoral training classes through the Evangelical Free Church as he enters the process for formal ordination and licensing. Please pray for him.
New partners
Puente á Vida has officially joined the Evangelical Free Church of America, the One Gospel Network, and the General Association of Regular Baptists (GARBC), three great partners who will walk with us through ongoing training, ministry development, pastoral care, support, and accountability. We're grateful to not be doing this alone.
A week at Puente á Vida
We gather every Tuesday night at 6:30 PM for prayer meetings, praying for our church, for our city, and for our partners. If there's one thing to know about this church, it's that prayer isn't a program here. It's the engine.
We continue gathering on Sunday afternoons for worship, teaching, and time together as a bilingual church family, with children's ministry so the whole family can participate.
And on Fridays we gather for discipleship. Every gathering has full translation, through in-person translation or technology tools, so our various cultures can all understand what is being spoken.
The bus is rolling
God has provided a bus for our church through the support of Heights Church in Airway Heights, and we are deeply grateful. This solves one of the real burdens in our church: many of our members were driving to people's homes to pick them up, because we serve an immigrant community in Spokane and several of our members don't have licenses or can't drive. Volunteers from the church drive the bus so nobody gets left behind. The bus also went in for scheduled mechanical maintenance to keep it safe and reliable.
How you can pray
- For our new gathering space, that it would be ready to welcome many
- For the bus ministry: provision for maintenance and fuel
- For our children and our leaders
- For the families in our community who don't yet know Jesus
A personal note
On a personal note: our son Gabriel is almost a year old. He wasn't even born when we started this process, and he will be walking any day now. His favorite word is "Appa", which happens to be the name of our dog.
Mia is a wonderful big sister. She is always wanting to dress up in her princess dress and play tea party with mom and dad. She is very kind to her baby brother and tells him how proud she is of him when he stands up on his own. Her best friend is her cousin Romi, and her other best friend is Bridget, one of the Hispanic immigrant little girls in our church.
And Gisselle just celebrated her 30th birthday. I could not be more blessed than I am just to have her as my bride, let alone my ministry partner and a leader in our church. I certainly could not have done this without her. She is the brains, the wisdom, and the encouragement for me and for all of us at Puente a Vida.
An invitation
Here's the honest part, friends: Gisselle and I have stepped into full-time mission work here in Spokane. For all intents and purposes, we are missionaries to the Hispanic community in this city. And missionaries need senders. We can't do this without partners who pray, give, and send us out.
Will you partner with God in what He's doing in Spokane and in the minority cultures? Your giving sends our family into this work full-time and provides additional support for Gisselle and me as we lead with the help of our team.
Partner with us monthly:
Give $25, $100, or $250/monthThank you for reading, for praying for our family, and for considering standing with us. It means more than you know.
With gratitude,
Aaron & Gisselle Kuchenski
Puente á Vida | Bridge to Life
One church. Many cultures. One vision: to love Jesus and make His name known.