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Four years ago when I became the director of Global Focus Latin America, I started mobilizing churches and pastors. Today we have 10 pastors who are facilitators and we are mentoring over 100 churches, and are on schedule to mentor nearly 300 very soon. God has also allowed us to begin working with entire denominations like the Venezuelan, Brazilian, and Baja California Baptist Conventions, the Wesleyans of Mexico, Independent Baptist in Peru, the Panamericana Mission of Colombia and now we are in talks with the entire Baptist Convention of Mexico, and the Assemblies of God of Nicaragua. The transformation these churches are experiencing is dramatic and significant. Churches of several thousand and also small churches are for first time are sending out their own missionaries to unreached peoples. These churches are stepping up to the plate financially in a much bigger way; churches where they average salary is $500.00 a month are giving sacrificially. Now their members are engaged and personally participating in missions both locally and globally by praying, giving and going personally. These changes have been huge for Latin American churches.

This year God has allowed us to help send even more Latin American workers to North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. One Peruvian family now serving in North Africa is already seeing fruit, they are planting the church in a city in North Africa where there is no church. Another Venezuelan family we were able to help send to one of the most closed countries in Central Asia have connected with a group of Latin American woman that married mslm men and started working with them. Now have nearly 40 woman attending their Bible study and later this month in a Christmas service where they will be sharing with their husbands and children about Christ. Please pray for this family in one of the most strategic counties in the mslm world, where Christianity is illegal, and many Christians are imprisoned. Mentoring the churches of the BCBC (Baja California Baptist Convention) we were able to send a single lady to another Central Asian country where she is sharing Christ with her neighbors, and even started a Bible study with them. Two other Venezuelan units we were able to help send to Senegal have made incredible inroads for he Gospel in that mslm country. One couple has led a leader among the Fulani (one of the hardest people groups to reach) and now are discipling him and now two other Fulani’s have come to faith in Christ and the church of Jesus Christ is emerging in spite of persecution and difficulty. The other unit in the capital city is starting churches among the “Seres” and seeing great fruit. A Salvadorian couple that is working with refugee’s in Central Asia has already seen over 150 baptized and 8 new house churches started!

Just a few years ago, we were sending teams to Latin America, now they are sending their own members to plant the church among the least reached people groups where there is no church. God is mobilizing the Latin American church to raise up a new generation of missionaries, to some of the hardest and darkest areas of the word. Connect Global has now helped Latin American churches send 46 families to unreached peoples.

During the week of the Global Celebration, we had a simultaneous training event where we brought in pastors from all over Latin America to not only teach them about the Global Focus Missional Process, but to see how God has transformed a church through this process. We had 75 pastors and leaders from Peru, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico and El Salvador.

Luis Marti, Josue Villanueva, Dr. Jim O’Neil (who taught Global Focus at Liberty and Tennessee Temple Universities), Don Turner, president of Global Focus and myself taught 4 hours daily on this process that is transforming churches all over Latin America. Ministerios ELIM (Latin America’s largest church of nearly 100,000 members) was present every day, and is wanting to start the process themselves in oder to mobilize their members.

On Sunday the auditorium again was packed after 5 packed days of hearing of how God is working locally and all over the world. The challenge on Sunday was twofold; participate with what God is doing by sacrificially giving of our economic resources and participate with what God is doing with your “Life Commitment” by praying, going on a missions trip, by participating on one of the Global Teams, or surrendering you life to go out as a missionary.

What God did was incredible, the people of the church broke every giving record by committing nearly $120,000.00 to missions (the average monthly salary in El Salvador is less than $500.00 monthly). Then we had hundreds decide to go on their first missions trip, and 36 surrender to full time missions!

During the next several days almost every single member of the church was able to be in a small group with all of the different missionaries. One of the groups I attended, they were able to listen intently for 3 hours missionaries M. and S. from Central Asia as they spoke about when ISIS came close to the city where they worked, and all of the dangers they faced on a daily basis.

They heard them say, “we prayed about leaving like many others, but in the end, we decided to stay with the people God had called us to minister to”.

They heard them speak of how God has been working in spite of the Syrian refugee crisis, and the 8 house churches that have been started and the 34 that had come to faith in Christ and followed in baptism. One lady said with tears in her eyes at 11:00 pm when they finished their stories, “I had no idea there were people willing to pay such a high price for the sake of the Gospel, I will never pray for missionaries in the same way.”

Every member was profuondly impacted at their exposure to what God is doing both locally and globally with those who have answered the call, and said, we are ready to go.

On Saturday I was able to speak to about 300 teenagers on the subject of “A life that Glorifies God” and we had 36 teens and single adults surrender their lives to go personally and take the Gospel to those who have never heard.

Each one of the children were exposed to missions as they boarded the “Missionary Plane” that took them to a personal visit to each one of the missionaries at the missions fair. I wish you could have seen each one of the missionaries sitting on the floor with the children in their booths at the missions fair, showing them what God is doing in other parts of the world. At a Global Celebration, the main speaker is important, but the presence of missionaries is paramount in order to personalize missions for every single member of the church.

As you walked in you could see the flight board in the back announcing departures to very exotic places like; India, Turkey, Iraq, Peru, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. You could see signs above different doors that said “Departures for Jerusalem”, “Departures for Judea”, “Departures for Samaria”, “Departures for the Ends of the Earth”, and each person was given a credit card and a boarding pass, flight attendants greeted you at the doors.

But this time I was not at an airport as I usually am every week, this was Global Celebration at Miramonte Baptist Church in San Salvador, and their theme was “Yo Voy” “Get Ready to Go”.
As the Wednesday pm service started, the 1200 seat auditorium was packet and people were sitting on the floor in the back, you could feel the electricity in the air, and you knew something big was happening. As the very upbeat music started we were singing about God and His glory among all nations. We all sang the song that the musicians wrote and was a great theme song for their Celebration that said,
“how shall they hear, unless we are ready to go and take the Gospel to our neighbors and to the nations”.

Then the lights went out, and a Hollywood type spot light lit up a certain area of the back and the MC announced the entrance of the missionaries; for the next 20 minutes, not only the missionaries, but their missional champions and teams from the church made their way into the auditorium, as everyone cheered and applauded as they took their places on the platform.

It was impressive to see almost 300 people standing on the platform, teams representing not only the 28 missionaries and missional projects present, but even the missional teams representing the missionaries from the church not present at this years Global Celebration.

Dr. Jim O’Neil (past president of Crossword, and ABWE, and current director of Perspectives) was our invited speaker for the Celebration, he did an outstanding job speaking on the subject of presenting a gift (the nations) to Jesus, and many were moved and challenged. This was just the first night of the Global Celebration.

It is really much more about what God has been doing throughout this entire process, but God did do an incredible work this week at Senda. This church in the inner city of Mexico City, in a very challenging neighborhood, a church with nearly 500 members, and no roof (yes you heard me correctly, they have no roof, they have to put up tarps every Sunday), raised nearly $1,300.00 pesos (nearly $70,000 U.S. dollars) for mission, and had nearly 40 of their members surrender to become missionaries!

Because Senda de Vida is the larges Wesleyan church in Mexico, they invited several pastors from their own denomination. It was joy as I sat and watched pastors Victor Velazques (pastor of Iglesia Cristiana Biblica, who had their Global Celebration a week before) and pastor Alejandro Sicilia of Senda de Vida teach the other pastors about the process that made an indelible impact in their own conjurations.

The pastors that came were not only able to learn how to mobilize their churches, they were able to see the impact in a local church, and members living their lives intentionally on mission for God.

One of the activities we suggest is a time with all of the missionaries and all of the church leadership together, to see how we can better partner together for the Kingdom of God. Before the meeting, pastor Alejandro told all of the missionaries, “These are 150 of my best leaders, recruit them to the mission field. I don’t want to build a church full of leaders, I want to impact the Kingdom of God with my leaders!”

One of my friends from Bolivia who was with me visiting, who smuggles Bibles into totally closed countries was so overwhelmed by this pastors attitude of recruiting his leaders for the mission field, said “I have never seen that attitude of a Kingdom mentality so prevalent in a pastor”. I told him; “this is what God is doing all over Latin America in churches that are implementing a new paradigm in missions.”