Mexico Update

Yes, 2020 has been the year of the Lord. It has been a year of challenging our faith, however, we have grew in the knowledge of God. Almost 10 months isolated, not being able to have face to face worship services or trainings and only having extremely little personal contact with my Latin America team, church and relatives. It is unbelievable for new churches to survive in these circumstances. It is now when all these scripture verses that I teach constantly, came to make deep sense to my life. Our dependency on God, his wisdom, his will, his care for my church and family have become more real in my life and the life of pastors and planters. Still in the midst of the pandemic, we are able to minister, to plant churches and to develop leaders in Monterrey and Latin America only because the church is Jesus’ church. We are not the Holy Spirit, I understood that before, however, I experienced this reality through the pandemic. We are not able to be side by side with my own people and family when they are suffering, however, the Holy Spirit has been with them. I could not walked 35 steps across the street to comfort my neighbour who lost her husband due to Covid, but I understood that the Holy Spirit, the real comforter, was there. I have been not able to hug my mom for 10 months, but I know that God is hugging her all the time. It is amazing how the Lord has been working through the pandemic to even make us to see how to be more missional. Most of the churches thought that without face to face worship services we lost our sense of being a church. At the end of April pastors and leaders were despair to come back to gatherings, and that is correct, however, when I asked the motivation to come back they gave me what I think are not correct motivations. Some of them were; “we are not worshiping the Lord”, “we are losing tithe and offerings”, “we are not able to disciple them,” etc, etc. After several months we realized that this situation will take longer and we started to reflect on our convictions about being a church. Face to face worship service does not define the church of Jesus Christ. We ought to have face to face worship, but like the persecuted church, we are not able to have it and we understand that it does not define us, but the very presence of Jesus in our lives and the unity in Christ and to each other through different means. We are united, we are worshiping together as one local church in many different places in the city. We understood that even though, face to face worship is very important to practice church, if we cannot, we still need to look for the essentials to continue being the church. Discipleship is growing, worship is going deeper in and from our houses and the mission of Christ has now more opportunities than ever. I have three couples in remarriage counseling, some individuals asking questions about Christianity, a couple of families asking when are we opening services to come, and all of them have come from our digital worship services. They started connecting in the midst of the pandemic and now they are a part of our church. The lord land of our rented building gets connected every Sunday and he is unbeliever. These are the experiences through out Latin America. Our CTC planters or pastors have had similar experiences and growth in Christ. We give thanks and the glory to God.

CHURCH PLANTING

Can we plant churches in the midst of a crisis? That was the question at the beginning of the pandemic. By the grace of the Lord as a CTC Latam, we helped to start 6 churches in Monterrey, Mexico City, Quito, Cartagena and Valparaiso. So, yes, it is possible only because Jesus is in charge to build his church, not us. We are instruments in his hands.

CITY MINISTRIES

The fact that we use online means of gatherings and communications, we were able to start 4 initiatives for the whole region; Faith and work, Catalytic leaders, Couches and Trainers. These initiatives for leaders gathered in 2020 around 85 key leaders from 18 cities and 12 countries in Latin America from Mexico to Argentina and Brazil.

TRAINING

One of the biggest challenges for our ministry has been the question of how to do an effective training online when one of our main blessings is to build a community of the gospel through that? Well, in line of our new reality we re-designed all our trainings for an online version. We created a couple of city labs and a new training in response to the pandemic. This new training was called “INDUCTION.” The purpose was to respond to many of the main problems for ministry that the pandemic brought. By the grace of the Lord, two incubators started and five induction program were developed. We had almost 300 leaders in training trough these programs.

PRAYER REQUEST

• For my family protection.

• For the 300 leaders in training. For them to be encourage by online services and trainings.

• For San Pedro Church, as this church deals with the pandemic. This is my church which is a flag ship church in Mexico.

• For the 6 new churches we started in 2020.

• For my team, in order to work in unity and wisdom facing the pandemic.

• For my support account in MTW. I lost some sponsors and has been a difficult year.

In Christ,

Adres