Newsletter - Fall 2006

This past month, we sent out a note about one of the great stories in global missions: the phenomenal growth of missionaries from Latin America. There are now more than 8,000 missionaries from Latin America - - many of them are going to very difficult places -- what one of my colleagues calls the "church forsaken places" of the world. In mid-November, I was in Granada, Spain with nearly 2,000 Latin American mission and church leaders. They are seeking to mobilize even more people as well as work on how to be even more effective in their efforts.

We told the story of Enrique and his wife Angela as examples of these Latin American missionaries (for security reasons I did not use their real names or locations). They are in their late thirties with three children aged 12, 9 and 7. They are from Costa Rica but they have lived in North Africa for three years now. The language has been difficult for them to learn, but they are adapting fairly well into the Arab culture. Their integration into the culture has made them increasingly effective in their outreach for the Gospel. Latin culture and Arab culture are amazingly similar in a variety of different ways, especially in their relational style.

When I asked what the main challenges are that the family faces in their evangelism work, Enrique does not hesitate. "Learning how to work together with the rest of the believers," he states. "There are many opportunities we have to do things in the community and make a statement by our unity, but we have much work to do to build trust among ourselves. Often, I feel like we are spending too much time reconciling things with my brothers and sisters in Christ so that we could not spend more time building connections with my Muslim friends."

* We have been asked to organize and convene a group of key ministries serving the persecuted church around the world. They desire to be more effective through coordinating their work;