Greetings from Mexico. As you are reading this update, we have just finished hosting our 10th annual international church planting conference!
The theme of this year’s conference was “Church Planting Essentials” and we had close to 600 people in attendance at this free event. In this monthly update I want to tell you about the great things God is doing.
We had an amazing and gifted lineup of speakers this year, and each one of these men are not only Pastors, but they Pastor churches that have planted other churches as well! (The idea of the local church being a “Sending Hub”! ) This year’s line-up included three church planters we have sent out, and four pastors from out of state that are experienced church planters.
Our speaker lineup included three of our church planters; Aaron Smith from The Rock Church in Punta Gorda Florida, Tony Carranza from Maranatha Calvary in Mazatlan, and Hugo Limon from Calvary Culiacan in Sinaloa. We were also blessed this year to have four Pastors traveling to Mexico for our conference which included my good friends, Pastors Bruce Zackary, Trent Douglas, Al Pittman (from Colorado) and Juan Domingo, who planted the very first Calvary Chapel church in Mexico over 40 years ago!
This year we are offering eighteen workshops over the two-day conference that cover a wide area of church planting and ministry. This year these workshops included a special women’s track (three teachings taught by women), a church ministries track, and a Bible teaching track.
The highlight of the conference each year is the blessing we have of sending out church planters at the conference. And this year’s batch of new churches did not disappoint. To start off the conference, our church sent out a church planting team to the large border city of Tecate! (50 miles East of Rosarito). Our 2nd church plant from the conference was a 2nd generation church plant from our 3-year old church in Michoacan. (Camino Viviente Quirga)
We will also be making Calvary Rosarito church planting history as we plant our first fourth generation church plant together. This new church will be located in a city called Santa Rocio Sinaloa, and I want to tell you the exciting testimony of how God brought these four generations of church planters together.
First off, our family planted Calvary Rosarito back in 2002. We then sent out Pastor Hugo Limon and his family to plant Calvary Culiacan North in 2015! Hugo sent out his assistant, Pastor Valerio, to plant a church called Calvary Culiacan South (2nd generation) in 2018. Valerio sent out Pastor Antonio to plant Calvary AguaRuto (3rd generation) in 2021. And now Pastor Antonio is sending out Pastor Cruz to Santa Rocio Culiacan to plant Calvary Caminando Por Fe! (Our first 4th generation church plant, “Walking by Faith”) What a great church planting heritage God has given us, and precious friends, this is your spiritual fruit!
Also in July we unfortunately faced a defeat in our ongoing court battles over the land we legally own and purchased. Sadly, this defeat was in criminal court, and because of the corruption in the legal system here, there is now a local warrant out for my arrest! (Please don’t panic, but trust God with me!) I don’t believe that the police will follow up on this warrant, as it would not be in their best interests to have the Pastor of the largest Christian church in the state get arrested over a phony criminal case. I share this bad news with you to ask you to pray for my protection, which I know you have been doing.
We also have a couple of pieces of really good news on the church side of things! First off, our church has been growing rapidly recently, and we have been averaging over 100 first time local guests every month. To facilitate this growth, our church is going to four weekend services at the start of August, so please keep that in your prayers!
Also in regards to the building, we are moving close to making an offer to purchase our church facility. (We own the two parking lots, but not the church building yet!) We believe our future agreement will be well north of one million dollars for the beautiful 15,000 plus square foot facility that we use for the church. YES, that is a lot of money for a church in Mexico, but NO, that is not a lot of money to our God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Please pray that we can come to a fair purchase agreement with the owner, and then pray for God’s favor and blessing as we begin a fund-raising campaign with our church family and ministry partners.
Finally, I want to thank you once again for your partnership with our family here in the ripe mission fields of Mexico. It is through your prayers, that God meet’s our spiritual needs, and through your financial giving that God meet’s our physical needs. We love you and are praying for you.
Con mucho amor de Mexico, (with much love from Mexico)
Mike, Sarah, Grace, and Daniel
Prayer Requests!
#1- Pray that God will provide a financial miracle and allow us to purchase our church facility.
#2- Pray that God will bless our church planting conference coming up on August 1-2.
Praise Reports!
#1- Praise God for the growth He has brought to our church, and our move to four services!
#2- Praise God for the blessing of sending out three new church plants at our church planting conference!
For our personal support, checks should be made out to Saving Grace World Missions with “Vincent support” in the memo section. For special projects, checks should also be made out to Saving Grace World Missions or SGWM, with the project name in the comments section. Use the enclosed envelope or mail directly to Saving Grace World Missions, 17451 Bastanchury Rd., Suite 203, Yorba Linda, CA 92886-1873