News and Updates

Last Wednesday night I finished preaching to almost 500 college students from Argentina at the CIMA Conference in Buenos Aires at 11:15 pm (they didn’t start the service until after 9:00 pm).

They had asked me to speak on the subject of “Holy for God’s Mission”, when we gave the invitation, hundreds responded filling the alter and the isles, surrendering their lives to His Mission, but the most unusual thing about the service was not that almost everyone came forward, but that the young people stayed praying and weeping at the alter until after 12:30 am.

God’s Sprit was so present it was palpable as the young people were truly broken and yielding their lives to go out and live His Mission instead of their own, and take the Gospel to the unreached.

I praise God for how He is changing the perspective of Christians all over Latin America, challenging them to become a missions force instead of being the mission field.

Every January I am invited by CIMA to preach and teach about missions, unreached people groups to hundreds of young people in Peru, Bolivia and Argentina. Two years ago I met a group of young people from FBC Bariloche (the southern tip of Argentina), this was their first experience at CIMA. They went to all of the classes were I was teaching and preaching, hung around for hours talking, it was there that God called P. to His Mission. P. is a young engineer that had just purchased his new car.

He went back home, sold his car, resigned his job and went for 6 months to serve in Southeast Asia. As the CIMA team interviewed P. in the service, he told the story of how at his first CIMA he was confronted about the need of the unreached.

He said that in a conversation that we had, he had asked “what is the best ability for a missionary” and that I responded “the best ability is to make yourself available.”

P. has made himself available to God, and is now being sent out by his home church as a full time worker in Southeast Asia! Please pray for this 28 year old engineer as he serves among the unreached.

CIMA is an Urbana or Passion type conference in South America. Hundreds of college students and graduates come from all over South America and for an entire week are challenged and learn about missions.

For the last 5 years I have had the privilege of being one of the main missions speakers for these events. Last week I was able to participate in CIMA Bolivia and teach about unreached people groups, about the church’s response to ISIS, opportunities for Latin Americans in the Middle East and North Africa. During the free times, dozens of these young people would come up and spend hours asking questions, seeking opportunities to serve in difficult areas. Just this week here in Argentina, I met a young man that was part of a group that came to all my sessions 2 years ago, asked tons of questions. He told me this year, “you impacted my life and challenged me to use my career and passion for His mission among the unreached. I am leaving in 2 months to move to Southeast Asia to serve the Lord!”

The last night in Bolivia I was asked to give the main missions challenge and we had over 100 surrender their lives to God’s Global Mission. Please pray for these young people that are seeking to impact the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We met pastor Isai Morales and his wife Adriana almost 2 yrs ago, our immediate connection was missions. As president of the BCBC (Baja California Baptist Convention) and pastor of FBC Tecate, he has always wanted to mobilize his church and denomination to greater engagement in missions..

For the last year and a half we have been mentoring their church and several other churches of the BCBC. On Thanksgiving we launched the Global Celebration at FBC Tecate, (this is the next to the last step in our missional process). We had 12 missionaries from different parts of Mexico and from Central Asia and North Africa come and help personalize missions to every member in the church.

The church did everything wonderfully, the inaugural service, the home meetings, the missions fair, and on Sunday when we took up their first faith promise missions offering they went way over their goal and committed over half a million pesos to missions.

FBC Tecate is not a large church, they average about 200, and they are now giving more than all of the other churches of the BCBC put together for missions! We also had 15 more surrender to go personally to the mission field as the next wave of missionaries!

As you plan your end of the year giving, please prayerfully consider helping us to continue to raise up even more missionaries and take the Gospel to the hardest to reach people groups. We are trying to raise an additional $10,000.00 for several projects like providing Christmas for street children in Senegal, helping Latin American workers with funds to work with refugee’s, helping a Latin American family start a strategic business in Central Asia. If you feel led of the Lord to contribute, please send your tax deductible gift to Connect Global; P.O. Box 1028; Woodstock, GA 30188.
May God bless you and your family this Christmas,

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.