Mission to the Americas

Are you a Genesis 1 Christian?

September 10, 2013 by ecoach Leave a Comment

I listened to the testimony of an adult woman from Guatemala. While I was in Nicaragua with Vida Joven in August 2013, I found my evangelistic passion renewed as I listened to the story of transformation that the gospel brought in the life of a leader from Guatemala.

Her journey to faith brought me to tears (2nd from left), and once again aroused my desire to help other people share the good news of Jesus Christ and we need your help to do it.

As you read her story, ask yourself this question: [Read more…]

6 Years of Ministry in the Americas

July 17, 2013 by ecoach Leave a Comment

On July 19, the Walker family will celebrate their 6th anniversary of service in Latin America.

That day in 2007, we stepped off our plane late at night and started the adventure of getting to know our neighbors, praying in our connections, and living on faith that God would provide for us to fulfill our sense of call.

Is it worth it?

Over the years, we have served in various capacities in at least 9 different countries. But is it worth it?

Celebrate Baptisms in our new church.
Theological training for missionaries from 6 countries.
Equip pioneer mission workers with skills to reach at risk communities
Train church planters to reach cross culturally.
Personally lead people to Christ.
Providing Gospel centered crafts for VBS and Christmas community outreaches.
Train children’s workers to share the gospel via crafts.

You help us live out the calling God has upon our life.

Our whole mission is dedicated to helping the church and mission organizations be more effective in helping people become fully devoted followers of Jesus. To be able to participate in a person’s faith awakening process, sometimes in large ways, and sometimes in small ways, and sometimes as a fruit of this work, is what makes this effort worth it.

One recent example was helping street missionaries overcome their fear in open air evangelism. Read here as to how that worked.

Here is just a sample quote of the feedback we receive from our work:

Through your solid teaching, the Lord confirmed many things that I had experienced already in prayer. I believe the Lord brought me to you all to help me learn more about the Holy Spirit. I love the emotional and noisy side of our traditions, but I really loved your solid biblical and intellectual teaching. Plus, your methodical labtimes and guiding us to pray one at a time is confirming some other things I’ve been learning. It was worth the quietness to listen and learn deeply! I loved your teaching last fall, and glad that you returned to share more, particularly from leaders who have had experience and can teach.

The provision sustains us.

Gifts from generous supporters have been God’s provision to sustain this work of developing evangelists and churches in developing nations.

We have stories to tell of miraculous provision from God’s people that keep us here and keep sustaining us.

Your gifts will support our ongoing work this fall:

Church planting
Small Group development.
Training church planters to reach their community
Theological training in Jinotega and Matagalpa Nicaragua
Evangelism Conference in Panama.
Vida Joven theological training of leaders from 6 nations.
Discipling teachers within Vida Joven Central America to teach
Training a church planting church planting churches in other countries.
More as the Lord opens to the door

Make your donation via Paypal through PRMI

In honor of this milestone, would you prayerfully consider a special 6th anniversary gift in a multiple of 60?

That could be 60, 120, 180, 240 and so on.

PRMI will receive your anniversary donation via Paypal and forward it to us.

If you want to send a check or read about our connection with PRMI, read here.

Pioneer Leaders Need to Take Responsibility

July 11, 2013 by ecoach 1 Comment

Every pioneer is out on the edge. In our missions work in Latin America, we regularly are involved with pioneer missionaries:

Young Life Missionaries opening new clubs in new communities
Church planters seeking to reach people who need to meet Christ.
Missionaries in training to work cross culturally.

Recently, Young Life Panama invited me to share with their pioneer leaders about maintaining an active prayer life. They are pioneering new clubs in at least two new communities, sending out leaders they have been training for the last few years.

One of these leaders is working in a community where one of our church families lives and will be a great connection for their teen daughter.

Pioneer leaders are often away from their church community during that initial season of plowing new territory. In Young Life’s model, new leaders spend months making initial contact with new teens and young adults, spending time with them, listening for community needs and so one. It can be lonely work for a season, though awesomely fun.

Every leader needs to take responsibility for their own spiritual growth. In the teaching of day, I shared about the responsibility to maintain your own devotional time and allowing the Spirit of God to shape your character through the word and prayer.

These leaders discussed their joys in prayer, as well as their difficulties in prayer. They did an exercise using sticky notes to brainstorm and work together to find ways to break through those challenges.

At then end, they wrapped up reviewing a possible structure for quiet times that I picked up out of a book called Transformative Prayer by Daniel Henderson.

At the end of the meeting, several leaders commented to me on how important this reminder was:

A helpful tool to help me spend time in the word.
A good reminder that I need to care for myself, not just the people I am reaching.
Thanks for sharing this awesome teaching to help me grow in my personal devotions.

A Thank you to Supporters

We get to serve in situations like this because of our faithful supporters.

Thank you for your financial gifts that enable this kind of work.

Most of these teaching moments focus on leaders of ministries that are doing on-the-ground evangelistic work. There is no way we could reach all these people alone. Rather, the Lord has us in networks of evangelism activity to reach more than we can possibly imagine.

Your support of us enable us to multiply that training to reach new networks for Christ. Contribute your support towards the next training events by making your gift online today.

The Celebration of Believer’s Baptism

June 7, 2013 by ecoach 1 Comment

The greatest joy in our ministry in Latin America is to watch believers take baptism. Last Saturday, our church family celebrated three of them. I’ve included a few pictures of the celebration and the folks taking the steps to baptism.

Several family members and guests turn out for the celebration that we thought would be cancelled due to heavy and persistent rains over the last few days.

We firmly believe that the public celebration of baptism can itself be a chance to proclaim the gospel to invited guests and friends who may not know the Lord.

Before the actual baptisms, our pastor and I spent some time praying a blessing over the candidates before they take to the waters of the pool that is in our social area on the roof our apartment buildling.

Just prior to that, he shared a short message about baptism that gives the candidates a chance to affirm their faith in Christ, as well as offer a public explanation of salvation to all who have gathered.

Baptism is a symbol of a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. It is a sign that one has decided to be a follower of Jesus.

The goal of of work

Our whole mission is dedicated to helping the church be more effective in helping people become fully devoted followers of Jesus, and baptism is the most public fruit of our teaching.

Celebrating baptisms is what “Done” looks like.

The journey to faith that each of these three people has taken is unique and different, and our church helped to shape that journey to faith. They are each on their own place in faith in Christ, but this public declaration is a sign of their commitment to follow Jesus.

One of the greatest joys I have in this ministry is participating in a believer’s baptism as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

To be able to participate in a person’s faith awakening process, sometimes in large ways, and sometimes in small ways, and sometimes as a fruit of this work, is what makes this effort worth it.

Celebrate with us!

Praying with kids in life changing moments

May 31, 2013 by ecoach Leave a Comment

Anakarina helps with a game during a Young Life Panama weekend retreat.

Imagine the fun of trying to move a cookie (that white spot on the forehead) to your mouth, using only your face muscles?!

If the cookie drops, you lose!

After a few attempts, she did it successfully!

Praying for Teens

Young Life Panama invited us to join them on a Saturday night to serve as an intercessory prayer team during a crucial night in their growth camp.

Many of those teenagers have made a commitment to Christ and have started walking with the Lord.

But many experience the trials, tribulations, and preoccupations of living in an environment that may not be conducive to growing in their new found faith.

It’s like the parable of the sower in Mark 4:

Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed.

As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.

Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.

Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain.

Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times. (Mark 4:3-8)

Growth camp is a place where these teenagers learn about how to walk with the Lord in the face of temptations and mental struggles.

On Saturday night, they do a group experience that cause many of them to wrestle with their new found identity in Christ.

Our role

Our role was to pray for the teacher that night, as well as for the teenagers who were wrestling with their faith.

Brenda and I stood along side many of these kids, praying for them one-by-one as they came out of their group experience.

There were plenty of tear filled moments as the Lord did a great work in many of the lives of these kids.

Some were visibly touched by the power of the Lord.

Others seemed to brush it off with a cold indifference.

But for those who took advantage of the prayer time, it appears to have been a solidifying decision to walk with the Lord.

As part of our partnership with Young Life Panama, we got to serve as prayer intercessors for their active ministry of reaching kids for Christ in some of the toughest areas of Panama.

Next up, we’ll be involved with some leadership development with Young Life Panama here in a few weeks.