Nikki's 1st Visit to Colombia The Free Methodist vision for Latin America is to fuel and sustain a biblical movement to reach Latin Americans for Christ through developing and empowering leaders and planting churches". The main strategy that many of our FM churches are adopting is Community Church Planting (CCP). In our last newsletter, we explained what exactly this is. Check it out here: A great team of leaders, pastors, and missionaries have worked hard to adapt CCP into the Latin American context while also giving it FM roots. In this system, which they call PIC (Plantación de Iglesias Comunitarias), churches are planted and multiplied through the discipling of new believers who become leaders and future pastors who then go on to plant more churches!
At the end of July, I (Nikki) had the opportunity to go to a PIC training with fellow leaders, pastors, and missionaries in Medellin, Colombia. About 40 people came from several areas in Latin America including Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador and Brazil. Many of these leaders and pastors are already in various stages of planting churches and multiplying disciples. The training was beneficial on so many levels. Leaders and pastors not only learned more about the strategy, but were also able to further develop their plans while learning and collaborating with colleagues from different countries.
I was especially grateful for time with the leaders who we will be working with in Bogotá, Colombia. Pastor Libni (who also oversees the FM work in Colombia) and Youth Pastor Esteven have been working hard in the last several months developing leaders and church plants (which usually meet in homes). Hearing their stories and learning more about the work that is happening in Bogotá furthered increased my excitement to be a part of this movement. I am especially looking forward to how much growth there will be in this year to come before we move there. There has been an explosion of faith among many youth who are coming to Jesus, being transformed, and becoming church planters! It was exciting to hear how so many young people are doing big things for the Kingdom. One of the key factors that Pastor Libni said time and again has been their commitment to prayer and fasting. As they seek God, he is blessing the work! For partnership building, we are visiting many churches to share about the work in Bogotá and how we will be involved as missionaries. To hear more stories of transformation, we invite you to come to a church near you that we are planning to visit in the months to come. See below for our speaking schedule.
So who pays for it? It s a fair question. And one that gets asked fairly often as we share with people about our call to Colombia. Now maybe you know exactly how this works - you ve got inside experience with missions, and if so - congrats! You earn a gold star and can skip to the next article! But for the rest of us, it might be helpful to break down the basics of how missions gets funded, and what the plan is to make sure that when we move to Colombia we will have the resources needed for effective ministry. Here's how it works: Read More Beaumont, FMC On July 22nd, we had our first speaking engagement in our partnership building process. Beaumont FMC in White Haven, PA generously opened their doors to invite us to speak about the FM work in Colombia and our role as missionaries. We were so grateful to get to know Pastor Joe Gandia and his lovely wife Lillian (pictured above) as well as many of the people in their church. Their kindness, love, and hospital
ity were noteworthy. Thanks again for your prayer, encouragement, and support. See below for contact info, and keep an eye peeled for our next newsletter. Until then, Bendiciones! - Thad, Nikki, Lily & Evie Roller