Greetings from Mexico. This past month I had the privilege of celebrating three church plant anniversaries! The Rock Calvary Chapel in Florida and Calvary Maranatha in Mazatlan both celebrated their 8th anniversary. I was also blessed to travel to Culiacan to witness Calvary Culiacan North’s 9th anniversary! In this update, I wanted to tell you all about the great things God has done in Culiacan over the past nine years.
Hugo ended up sending out his first church plant Calvary Culiacan South after just three years in 2018! (That church became our first 2nd generation church plant). Calvary South sent out their first church plant, Calvary AguaRuto in 2021, which became our first 3rd generation church plant.
As you can see, there was a lot to celebrate, so I was blessed to jump on a plane and lead a team of six staffers from our church to Culiacan to join in on their celebration! For the Saturday event, we rented a large theater in the center of this city, where Hugo brought in all of his churches for a celebration. I was the featured speaker (in Spanish) and the title of my message was, “The Sending Hub of Culiacan!” We spent an amazing and joyous evening with six hundred friends celebrating all that the Lord has done.
One of the highlights for me personally, was to be called up to the stage with Hugo’s eleven other church planters. Hugo called me up along with my good friend Pastor Juan Domingo. If you haven’t heard Juan’s story, he was the first Calvary Chapel Missionary from the States to move to Mexico over forty years ago (at just 21 years of age) where he planted the first Calvary Chapel in the entire country. To stand with one of my spiritual hero’s (Pastor Juan), my church planter Hugo, and his eleven planters, brought me to tears.
At the celebration, we didn’t only celebrate God’s faithfulness, but together we sent out Hugo’s 11th church plant. Please keep this new church, Horizon Culiacan and their young Pastor Yael in your prayers. I have been blessed to send out many gifted pastors to church plant, but never have I seen a man plant churches faster than my friend Hugo!
God has used Hugo and his pastoral team to truly do far more than we could ever ask or imagine. Hugo has a funny saying that he often shares at our church planting conferences. Hugo tells us “I wants to plant churches in Mexico like OXXO’s!” (For those of you living in the USA, OXXO’s are our 7-Eleven’s and every city has at least 50 of them!) For a church to plant 11 churches in just 9 years is something that only God could do, but that’s exactly what we have witnessed in this key capital city of Culiacan!
I never tire of sharing these testimonies with you our precious ministry partners, because all of this is your spiritual fruit. I want to thank you once again for partnering with us in this great missions work here in Mexico. It is through your prayers that God meets our spiritual needs, and through your financial giving that God meets our physical needs. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
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 (2nd generation church plant) Horizonte Culiacan in Sinaloa.
#2- Pray that God will provide a job for our college graduate daughter Grace! (And if you know of any online businesses that are hiring, please reach out to me!)
Praise Reports!
#1- Praise God for a wonderful and safe trip to Culiacan Sinaloa for our mission’s team!
#2- Praise God for the 135 first time guests that visited our church last month, please pray that we can do a good job of plugging them in and discipling them.
