May 2015 Missions Letter
Blessings and Tragedy
It is amazing to me how we can get so caught up in our own lives that we forget the struggle and trials of others around us. God has increased our support to just over 50% this month! We have had churches partner with us this month in world evangelism. Each week seems to get more exciting! Leslie and I both have been amazed at how God has answered our prayers this month. In the midst of all of this blessing, we showed up at a church that we scheduled some months ago. We were there on Sunday night. The Friday before, the Assistant Pastor and his 20 month old daughter were in an accident. She was hurt badly, and at our arrival, she was at the hospital in a very uncertain condition. The church was heartbroken. I presented and preached and tried to be an encouragement to a hurting body of believers. We prayed together for about an hour after the service. Sadly, little Faith Lawrence passed away a few days later. We are always grateful to share in the blessings, but we are also to be thankful to share in the tragedies too! God can use us in both!
Who are the Mapuche?
Their name means Che = People – Mapu = of the land. These “people of the land” are an indigenous group in Argentina and Chile. I actually spent a few days with a specific group of Mapuche back in 2012. The Mapuche’s second language is Spanish (their first language is called “Mapudungdun”). I was in contact with a missionary this month who is working with the Mapuche in the Andes Mountains in Argentina. He is laboring to see this little-known people come to faith in Jesus. This reminds me
of how vast Argentina really is. There are cities, towns, and villages full of people that
need the Gospel. We need laborers proclaiming the Gospel and training men in every city.
What Do I Do Next?
Questions That I Am Asked: “I want to be a missionary what do I do next?”
“I want to be a missionary, what do I do next?” I have been asked this question from time to time. The answer to this question is totally dependent upon this person’s age, spiritual maturity, training, and experience. Usually, the first thing someone wants to do when they surrender to the foreign mission field is to figure out what country they will one day go to. I will tell you that the country you are going to go to at this point is of little importance. Here are some things that you should do when considering foreign missions.
- Get involved in your local church. You may already serve in your church, if so start trying to do more. Look for jobs to do. Try to anticipate what your pastor and church leadership needs. Arrive to church early and stay late. Volunteer to substitute as a teacher for Sunday School classes. Ask to become a teacher or an assistant teacher of a class. Get involved in the ministry!
- Spend time with your pastor. Let him know what you believe God is working in your heart to do. Ask him for counsel. Meet with him before services to pray. Serve him. Learn from him how he does ministry. Go with him to make visits, funerals, and weddings. Learn from him how to do the ministry!
- Get actively involved with the missionaries your church supports. Most of the missionaries your church supports have email addresses, contact them and let them know what God is doing in your heart. Communicate with them on a regular basis. Pray for them.
- Go on missions trips. There are few things that will light the fire in a man who is interested in missions like going to see a field where God is working. Don’t just go to the mission field, but go to visit a missionary on the field. We have Vision Tours lined up for 2015 around the world where God is using missionaries.
- Pray and learn about every country around the world. There are 195 countries around the world. All of them need the Gospel of Jesus. You can buy the book “Operation World”. It will educate you on the need of each country. A call to any country starts with a burden.
- Read books. There are great missionary biographies to read, there are also wonderful books on missions to read. “The Master’s Plan of Evangelism”, “The Challenge of Missions”, “Mentoring for Missions”, are the names of just a few. There are also great blogs. WorldEvangelism.net is a great example of a blog centered around missions. It is constantly updated and you can learn great things.
These are all good things that anyone can do who is interested in becoming a missionary. Missionaries should have training and experience. I pray that God use you at your home church and one day on the foreign mission field. If there is anything I can to do to assist you, please let me know. May God bless you as you continue to follow him.
Why Argentina?
A common question I am asked is “Why Argentina?” What a great question! There are almost 200 countries in the world (196 to be exact). Out of all the countries in the world, why Argentina? This is the question I will attempt to answer for this post. This question is not directly addressing why the foreign mission field. That is for another post (I might add, another post I have already published. Click Here for that post).
Jesus tells us to “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations…” Matthew 28:19. Argentina certainly qualifies as part of the “all nations”. This may be quite obvious to some but it is good to remember. The Great Commission Jesus gave is a global commission. It is to all nations!
God never spoke audibly to me. I never heard “Go to Argentina.” I have a friend that explains it best. He will tell you that it all starts with an interest. An interest becomes a burden. That burden, when explored and considered may then become a “call”. I think he is right. For me, I had 3-4 countries that I had (and have) an interest in. I had been praying for some of those countries each week for years. Argentina was actually not my first “choice”. The interest for one country became a burden that drove my wife and I to take a “survey trip”. We went to two countries, one of them being Argentina. I can tell you that the majority of my time was to be spent in another country, but the plane we were supposed to take never took off, causing us to miss a connecting flight, causing us to spend almost all of our time in Argentina. This is not at all what we planned. It seems God may have stopped my plans to take us on another route.
Seeing the incredible amount of need and the astonishing lack of laborers took me back. I remember being in the back of a car after seeing some of the things God has done and driving past places with millions of people with little or no Gospel preaching churches. It laid heavy on me. I couldn’t get passed it.
I knew that Argentina is where we were going. I was about to speak Leslie about it but didn’t need to. She saw what I saw. She knew Argentina was where will plant churches and train men. We were both excited about it (we both still are!).
This is how we came to surrender as church-planting missionaries to Argentina.
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