This past week Xochitl and I were able to continue mentoring Getsemani Baptist Church of Puebla. We are half way through the Global Focus process with this wonderful church. Not only are they aligning their church around God’s Global Mission, now we are teaching them how to develop missional projects in their local area (Puebla) and all the way to the ends of the earth. I wish you could have felt the electric enthusiasm as they nearly 120 leaders of the church presented different missional projects of which they are going to be personally involved in.
One of the projects was to help woman and young girls that have been victims of sex-trafficking; another project had identified a Pakistani community of more than 250 families in Puebla! They are developing a missional project to build bridges of connection in order to take the Gospel to and unreached people group living in their won community!
There were many other projects presented, but I want to mention 2 more; Last year Xochitl and I were able to take a doctor from the church to work with Syrian refugee’s in the Middle East, a country where we are sending Latin American workers. This year, that same doctor is taking another 8 doctors and dentists with us to continue to work with the refugee’s in Sept! Another “Ends of the Earth” project is that now Getsemani is financially supporting one of our families serving in one of the most closed countries in Central Asia. A group of 5 -6 university students from the church are planning on visiting them in Central Asia this Nov. to do a special project.
The churches that we mentor in Global Focus are not only sending their own missionaries to the field and financially supporting them, but church members are getting personally involved developing their own missional projects and participating with missionaries on their special projects! They are reaching the nations locally, and they are reaching the nations globally; they are on the move with God and what He is doing. These churches are truly becoming missional communities.
Also I was able to be with Pastors Luis Marti (from El Salvador) and Pastor Victor Velazquez (from Mexico City), both Global Focus facilitators in Latin America. The three of us were able to attend and participate in the annual meeting of COMIMEX (which is a large yearly missions congress in Mexico). Not only did we have a stand at the congress, we were able to teach some of the principals of Global Focus and show how our process is mobilizing churches all over Latin America.
Each one of our facilitators is a pastor that has implemented Global Focus in their own church, and they have mobilized their own people to the nations. It was wonderful to see both Luis and Victor teach pastors in our breakout session, but also interact with them personally and share how Global Focus helped them to mobilize their own people to the nations.
Because of their testimonies we are now going to start the GF process with several new churches in Mexico, and participate teaching on the OM ship! Please pray for both of them as they mentor other churches in Latin America in the same process that mobilized their churches. Also pray that God continues to multiply our number of facilitators to mentor even more churches.