Greetings from Mexico,
One of the most amazing aspects of our church is to witness lives being transformed by the Lord right before our eyes. In this update, I wanted to share with you one of the most amazing testimonies that I have ever witnessed in our church. This is the story of my good friend Uriel Gonzalez!
Nearly 9 years ago, I got a letter addressed from an inmate in a California prison named Uriel. In his letter, Uriel mentioned that he had spent most of his life in prison, and that while in prison, he had met a man that used to go to our church. Since Uriel was about to be deported to Mexico for life, he asked if we could give him a place to stay. Not thinking that Uriel would actually ever show up, I wrote him back and said “Sure, when you show up we will have a place for you!”
6 months later a man that looked like a gangster walked up to our church covered in muscles and tattoos. This man gruffly told one of our staff members that some guy named Pastor Mike had said that he would “hook him up” That was my introduction to Uriel.
After sitting Uriel down and hearing his story, with much trepidation I allowed him to enroll in our intern program and move into our church apartment. In those early days, Uriel was so raw and hardened that there were times I wanted to give up hope. (Uriel had spent over 80% of his adult life in prison)
Over those early years, Uriel amazed me and he came to become one of our most beloved interns and servants in the entire church. Unfortunately, Uriel’s story did involve some bumps along the way. Those bumps included an all-out brawl with another one of our staff interns (Uriel was at fault) that forced us to send Uriel to a local discipleship home that we work with for 9 months.
Over the next 3 years, Uriel not only completed the discipleship program, but he then enrolled in and graduated from a local Bible college. During his time in Bible College, Uriel would attend and serve at our church, where he met his future wife (and missionary) Jody. After graduating and getting married, Uriel returned full time to the church where he worked in our church’s new celebrate recovery ministry and completed our church’s one year church planting program. During this time Uriel also began serving at a new men’s discipleship home called Liberty Ranch that we support.
Eventually, Uriel felt called to move his growing family out to an area called La Mision to work full time with the men in this discipleship program. And this men’s home (located just 30 minutes south of us) is going to be our next church plant. Just last month I had the privilege and honor of ordaining Uriel as the Assistant Pastor of this future church plant!
Uriel is just one of the 100s of changed lives that God is transforming through the church and ministry here. God not only saved Uriel, but he is now using him and his family in powerful ways to bring the light and life of Jesus to hurting people.
I hope that you take joy in reading about Uriel’s story of redemption, because as our ministry partner, you are an important part of this story too. For without your prayers and support, we would not be able to do the ministry that we do here in the ripe mission fields of Mexico. We are honored to serve as your missionaries!
Con mucho amor de Mexico, (with much love from Mexico)
Mike, Sarah, Grace, and Daniel
Prayer Requests:
- Please pray that God will continue to bless Uriel as a husband, father, and Pastor.
- Please pray that God will bless and provide for the bilingual church plant in La Mision (headed by the Liberty Ranch Men’s discipleship home)
- Please pray that God would provide for the needs of our family.
