Greetings from Mexico. February was a blessed but busy month in our ministry, and in this update I want to tell you all about it. The foundation of our church’s missions program is our church planting program, and that all begins with our weekly church planting class. At the start of February we started our new class of church planting and we were surprised with nearly 50 students including 12 first timers.
The requirements to be in our class are that you #1- Are a faithful servant in the church, and #2- You are open to being sent out as a church planter or part of a church planting team. Over the years, each one of our 41 church planters have completed this course, and our 25 2nd and 3rd generation church planters have also completed the church planting class which was begun by their pastors in their local churches.
As I looked around at this years class, I reminded each one to believe that God can use them to do a great work. Because of the fruit of our program, many of our rookies begin the program wide eyed with hearts full of fear. I encourage them to work hard and to (even more importantly) trust in the work that the Lord wants to do through them. I also had two of our final semester students share a testimony of how God called them during their time in the class to be sent out to do the church planting work that God has called them to do.
I do have some breaking news to share with you about our church planting program! The final words that Jesus shared in Acts 1:8 were “you shall be my witnesses, in Jerusalem and Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth!” Our church has done a great job of reaching our city (Jerusalem) our surrounding cities (Judea) and the other states that are close to us. (Samaria) But we have found it a challenge to send church planters to the ends of the earth!
As the word has gotten out about our church plants, I have had many men from other countries reach out to me and ask me to train them to church plant in their respective countries. Over the past couple years I’ve been praying about how we could do that, and in February I’m happy to announce that we started our very first Online International church planting class!
In this years class we have four students that live in the Philippines, Kenya, and Uganda. Each one of these men have been contacting me for over a year and we even attempted (unsucesfully) to get two of them over here to Mexico to train at our church in person. After much prayer, God showed us a way that we could do our church planting program 100% online, with our online participants receiving the same training that our local students receive. Were only three weeks into this new class, but so far it’s been fantastic. Please pray that this new online program bears much fruit.
In February, I was also interviewed by my good friend Pastor Hugo Limon for his SPOTIFY church planting podcast! Though mostly in Spanish, this podcast is one of the highest rated mission’s podcasts on Spotify. Hugo and I had a great time chatting together and reminiscing about the great things that God has done through his church and the 11 church plant’s he has sent out in just 10 years. You can listen to my bilingual interview by searching “Plantacion de Iglesias con Hugo Limon”! (I am on episode 26)
We ended the month with a Vincent Family Reunion! My brother Matt brought out his six children (all adults now) and I brought up Grace and Daniel, who hadn’t seen their Kentucky cousins in over five years. We had a wonderful time eating, fellowship, singing, and eating some more, and as always my mom was a great host! Our time together reminded me how blessed I am by the Lord to have been raised by a mom and dad that honored the Lord and taught us to do the same.
We had a spiritually fruitful month, but we could not have done any of this without you, our generous ministry partners. Our family could have never lived here in the ripe mission fields of Mexico for the past 23 years if it weren’t for precious friends like you that choose to partner with us through your financial support and prayers! 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 bless our new church planting students!
#2- Pray that God will bless my two missions trips in March to visit our church plants. (Mazatlan and Morelia)
Praise Reports!
#1- Praise God that three of our church plants are planting their first churches in the next few months.
#2- Praise God for a blessed family reunion and a quick vacation with Sarah to celebrate Valentines Day together.
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
For your convenience, you may consider giving through electronic funds transfer or direct deposit. Simply click on this link to directly support our family as your missionaries.
https://www.egsnetwork.com/gift2/?giftid=DFA990CC09D942B
Or, you can go to our mission’s website, click on the “become a financial partner” button and fill out the information. Please remember to type in “Vincent” in the “purpose of gift” section.