Serving Ministries and Missions in Latin America
In October of 2014, Pastor Oscar invited our Dunamis team to share some basic Dunamis teaching on the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
He was “beyond excited” about this opportunity to grow as a pastor and to receive this biblical and practical theological training. [Read more…]
Last month, you may have followed the story of my return to Nicaragua to work with Area Directors for Young Life Central America.
Nearly 50 leaders from six countries gathered for an intense time of skill development, ministry training, and encouragement.
Quick game: Find me in this picture! Go! [Read more…]
On Sunday morning, Chris will return to Nicaragua to continue investing in the leaders who work with Young Life Central America.
This week is their annual camp for Area Directors, a chance where they can receive ministry and ongoing education after spending the last year ministering to kids. It’s a time to seek renewed vision, refreshed passion, and some private time to deal with their own stuff before the Lord.
Mid July will mark 7 years since we bought those one way tickets to Panama. What will the next 3-6 years hold? [Read more…]
For over 10 years, many of you have given financially, prayed, and supported our work in Latin America.
Some of those gifts and prayers have supported the theological training of Young Life Leaders from 7 countries in Central America.
You’ve enabled me and a team of teachers from the Dunamis Institute to teach on the person and work of the Holy Spirit over the years and invest in many leaders from many countries who have received sound training to reach their peers for Christ.
As Young Life Central America stepped into missionary expansion over the last 3 years in particular, their leadership training camps have also grown exponentially.
Whereas there used to be one camp for everyone, there now at least 3 camps to cover all their leaders.
I praise God to have a part in in that training over the past 10 years, and praise God for our supporters that allow us to be there.
This week, this Semana Santa, you’ve helped us reach another milestone that we’ve been working on with Young Life Central America:
Teachers that we have been training and mentoring are teaching.
This week, these teachers have been raised up from within Young Life to provide the same theological training to their youngest and newest leaders.
These teachers have been with us since near the beginning of our investment in them and, like a proud leader – we get to stand back and let them teach.
These leaders were there when our class only numbered 30 people. Classes now regularly push 100 for us.
Part of the role of every cross cultural mission should be to raise up local leaders to do the work of the ministry, so that it can be self-sustaining and replicating
This week – we are seeing the fruit of the effort.
Pray for these teachers this week.
This week, Young Life Central America is having training camps all that the same time, in at least 3 different countries.
I wish I could attend all their camps when invited, but I can’t get to all those places on the same weekend.
We can’t spend $17,000 to send multiple short term teams when asked at the same time during Holy Week when most of our calendars do not permit mission travel at the high season of Easter and US public schools’ spring break.
Since Young Life Central America has grown so much in the last three years, our team is not able to be at all the camps where this training is wanted. We’ve had to turn down or postpone invitations.
Many of the camps are now at the same time in different countries.
The problem now is:
How can we help Young Life raise up teachers fast enough in multiple locations at the same time?
What if we could put a native speaker or two in a video format and allow Young Life to put this teaching in their hands of their entire network?
What if we could continue to teach our style of prayer ministry by video in bite sized chunks so that students don’t have to find 5 additional volunteer days without pay for training?
What if we could create a resource, done with native speaking teachers you’ve invested in, and release that resource to that organization for their use and distribution to leaders they’ve identified?
Those recordings could become
What if that resource could be done in such a professional manner that other major Latin American mission networks could use it, free of charge?
I get bubbly when I think about this. I can’t wait for that dream to become reality.
A future phase of our ministry may throw our efforts behind this and spearhead this project.
The Dunamis Institute already has the proven training material that has been used worldwide. We’ve spent 10 years translating a lot of it into Spanish. Much of the groundwork has already been done.
We’ve had teams, translators, financial supporters and prayer warriors make such an investment in these leaders, that this could be a logical next step to reach more people.
I’m still working on a budget for a project of this magnitude. My inexperience in budgeting for something like this is showing. If you have project budget setting experience, I could use your advice as I figure out how to make this a reality.
It’ll take your prayer, your provision, and your participation to help make this a reality.
I don’t have all the details yet, but I’d like to talk with you one to one about it.
I invite you to email me for a conversation.
Cork photo credit: tripleigrek via cc
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