Garcia Family Blog

Hey Friends!

After my last update, Amy and I received a ton of remarks from people concerning my comment about praying for God’s will whether He would have us move to Jordan or not. I mentioned it casually, as we are ALWAYS trying to remain open to what God has for us, but I realize that I should have been more clear that we have received no direction from the Lord about leaving the states full-time. I just know that God moves hearts on short-term trips, especially ones where we are praying specifically about a new work God is doing, so I wanted to make sure I didn’t bring any presuppositions into Jordan that would have kept me from clearly hearing God’s voice. But, for now at least, God still has us here ministering to His church in SoCal and supporting ministry all over the world through my work with SGWM.

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We had an amazing time in Israel! It was a very fast-paced trip, but because of the small size of our group there, we got just about as much done in 6 days as most groups do in 10+. I’m still digesting everything I saw and learned there, but I’m already noticing how it has affected the way I read, study, and teach Scripture.

Our time in Jordan required a huge mindset switch, as our group grew in size and the pace slowed significantly. While we did do some ministry (leading worship, refugee visits, and I got to teach at a church-planting conference we put on), our real mission was to slow down and listen to what God would speak to us about the ministry He’s laid on our hearts for that country, and who He may be calling to go live there.

The Jordan leg of the trip took on a unique flavor, as Pastor Trent and I were given the opportunity to give our young team a taste of what it’s like to minister in a culture so foreign to our own. We could tell that there was a big adjustment for some of our team there realizing that we cannot simply bring American discipleship tactics to that area of the world; we must contextualize our methods to reach people with the Gospel in a way that they can digest it. So our “vision tour” doubled as an on-the-ground training. The Lord had amazing things in mind that we never would have imagined, and I was honored to be a part of leading it.

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Thank you all so much for your prayers over me and my family during this trip, and for all of you who brought meals and supported Amy and the kids in my absence! Please keep us in prayer as we continue day-to-day life and ministry, and as I have an upcoming trip leading youth to Nepal this Summer, and prayerfully a trip to Africa to minister to our missionaries there in the Fall.

Please pray for our financial needs as we live largely off of financial support just like our international missionaries, and we are praying for the Lord to provide more financially to cover some increased costs of living. Please pray that the Lord may provide for us in His will, whatever amount of support He deems sufficient (Proverbs 30:7-9). If you feel led to partner with us financially, instructions are below.

If you would like to support us financially either on an ongoing basis or through a one-time donation, you can do so by clicking the “Become A Financial Partner” button below, OR you can mail a check written out to Saving Grace World Missions with “Joel Garcia support” in the memo section to Saving Grace World Missions, 17451 Bastanchury Rd., Suite 203, Yorba Linda, CA 92886-1873.

We also would love to keep you updated on our ministry via our newsletter email updates if you are interested. You can sign up for those by clicking the button below:

Email Updates

Love in Christ,
Joel, Amy, Maggie, Harrison, Jude, and Clara Garcia

Hello Family and Friends!

We pray you are doing well, and as always, we are so thankful that you’ve taken the time to read this update and see what the Lord is doing in and through our lives. We are so grateful for each and every one of you!

After a lot of traveling the first half of this year, I’m holding off on any more traveling until 2020 (but there are exciting trips in the works!). That means I’m settling down for work at the home office for the rest of this year. But that doesn’t mean things aren’t exciting!

Five of the students from SGWM’s Summer School of Missions have opted to join us at Saving Grace as interns, as well as three other missions-minded individuals. They’ve made a year-long commitment to serve in the office and at our church, while working to raise support, so that they can see all that goes on behind the scenes of the church. During this year, they will learn most of the basics of what it may look like for them to plant a church in another country, and each of them will be going on at least one international trip as a “vision tour” to see if it may be a country that the Lord is leading them to move to.

This intern program has really breathed some fresh life into the home office and our church, and it is exciting for me that I get to be a part of discipling these young potential church-planters and missionaries! One of my roles over the next couple of months is to teach some Bible courses for them to give them some additional Biblical training (and we’ve also opened up these classes to the rest of our church, which is a huge blessing!)

The family is doing great as well, and little Clara (5 months) is coming along just fine. Maggie (5) is doing a great job in school and a new venture for her, a literature class she goes to weekly that she loves! Harrison (4) is passionate about food, singing, basketball, and life in general. And Jude (2) is now potty-trained! As you can see in the pic above, we also had a fun little family camping trip this Summer.

Thank you all for your prayers and support! Please continue to pray for Joel as he works with Saving Grace’s new interns to train them for ministry and missions, as well as his accounting responsibilities with SGWM and his pastoral role with CCSG. And pray for Amy as she manages the family and household in the thick of life with little ones.

If you would like to support us financially either on an ongoing basis or through a one-time donation, you can do so by clicking the “Become A Financial Partner” button below, OR you can mail a check written out to Saving Grace World Missions with “Joel Garcia support” in the memo section to Saving Grace World Missions, 17451 Bastanchury Rd., Suite 203, Yorba Linda, CA 92886-1873.

We also would love to keep you updated on our ministry via our newsletter email updates if you are interested. You can sign up for those by clicking the button below:

Email Updates

Love in Christ,
Joel, Amy, Maggie, Harrison, Jude, and Clara Garcia

Hello Friends!

We are here in the middle of Summer, and this year has seen a lot of travel for Joel. On top of the 18-day trip to Peru and Brazil back in January/February, Joel got to go back to Peru in June/July with a bunch of youth and young adults from CCSG, and he also had the opportunity to go to CCSG’s 4-day youth camp in August to teach, lead worship, and minister to our church’s youth, including many who were on the Peru trip, and the children of one our SGWM missionary families.

That means that Joel by and large won’t be traveling for the rest of the year, but is looking forward and starting to already think ahead to getting out on the field next year. For now, he’s gotten to help support SGWM’s Calvary School of Missions in Mexico (a six-week program of intensive training for students for cross-cultural missions) by holding the fort at the home base in Yorba Linda. That means continuing his duties with the financial department, preaching periodically for Pastor Trent while he is on the field, and helping support trips like the School of Missions and a long trip to South Asia that a few of SGWM’s staff and interns will be taking in a few months.

One really cool thing Joel got to do this Summer was bless one of our affiliate missionaries, the Record Family, by representing SGWM at their home church for an update they were giving on their ministry. The Records have a focus on cross-cultural apologetics. It was great to meet them in person for the first time, and to help pass along our vision for sending missionaries well to their amazing home church.

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Keep our family in prayer as we prep for Maggie’s kindergarten year of homeschooling while raising our other three little ones. It is a challenge, but we are so blessed by our children and want to give our all in raising them in the ways of the Lord!

If you would like to support us financially either on an ongoing basis or through a one-time donation, you can do so by clicking the “Become A Financial Partner” button below, OR you can mail a check written out to Saving Grace World Missions with “Joel Garcia support” in the memo section to Saving Grace World Missions, 17451 Bastanchury Rd., Suite 203, Yorba Linda, CA 92886-1873.

We also would love to keep you updated on our ministry via our newsletter email updates if you are interested. You can sign up for those by clicking the button below:

Email Updates

Love in Christ,
Joel, Amy, Maggie, Harrison, Jude, and Clara Garcia

Hello Friends!

Thank you all for opening up this update so you can see what is going on in our ministry and keep us in your prayers. It really means the world to us to have people supporting us as home-base missionaries supporting international missions and missionaries. You are all an answer to our prayers!

I (Joel) just returned home from Huacho, Peru. Some of you remember that I went there a few months ago with some other pastors to scope out SGWM’s ministry there in preparation for this recent trip. We took almost 40 teenagers, young adults, and their parents to bless Pastor Craig Tippie’s church, Calvary Chapel Huacho. It was a fantastic trip full of twists and turns. Our entire team was amazing, holding to our mantra for short-term missions: “Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be broken.” Here is a short video update that I recorded in the middle of the trip explaining why I love short-term trips like these with young people. I wasn’t able to get it uploaded with spotty internet connection in Peru, but here it is!

Amy did great back at home with the four kids, especially with the help of our family and some of our awesome supporters. But, it was great for me to get back home, and great for the family to have me back. Keep us in prayer as I will be representing SGWM for one of our affiliate missionaries this week, and in a few weeks I’ll be heading to our church’s youth retreat with Pastor Mike, where I can hopefully use that time to follow up with our youth who were impacted by their trip to Huacho.

Here are some pics from the trip. Thank you all again for your prayers and support!

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If you would like to support us financially either on an ongoing basis or through a one-time donation, you can do so by clicking the “Become A Financial Partner” button below, OR you can mail a check written out to Saving Grace World Missions with “Joel Garcia support” in the memo section to Saving Grace World Missions, 17451 Bastanchury Rd., Suite 203, Yorba Linda, CA 92886-1873.

We also would love to keep you updated on our ministry via our newsletter email updates if you are interested. You can sign up for those by clicking the button below:

Email Updates

Love in Christ,
Joel, Amy, Maggie, Harrison, Jude, and Clara Garcia

Hello All!

Just wanted to give you all a quick update to let you know that Garcia Baby #4 has arrived! Clara Jennifer Garcia came rushing into this world (I mean really, she was born within 25 minutes of us arriving at the hospital) early Tuesday morning, April 23. She is beautiful, healthy, and has quite the set of lungs! Amy is doing great as well. I am taking a week off of going into the office in order to take care of Maggie, Harrison, and Jude while Amy gets adjusted to caring for Clara and giving her a smooth transition into our home. Thank you all for your prayers and support, it means the world to us!

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If you would like to support us financially either on an ongoing basis or through a one-time donation, you can do so by clicking the “Become A Financial Partner” button below, OR you can mail a check written out to Saving Grace World Missions with “Joel Garcia support” in the memo section to Saving Grace World Missions, 17451 Bastanchury Rd., Suite 203, Yorba Linda, CA 92886-1873.

We also would love to keep you updated on our ministry via our newsletter email updates if you are interested. You can sign up for those by clicking the button below:

Email Updates

Love in Christ,
Joel, Amy, Maggie, Harrison, Jude, and Clara Garcia

Hello Friends!

Who knew that one missions trip would require three updates for me to scratch the surface of everything God did with our team in South America! But alas, here we are at update #3 to talk about my time in Brazil, the final leg of our South America trip.

While some of my greatest spiritual warfare happened in Peru, Brazil was the toughest portion of the trip for me both physically and emotionally, despite the fact that (praise God!) my sickness did not follow me into the Amazon jungle. Physically, the pounding heat and humidity of the jungle wore on me over the first two days there, and emotionally, due to the length of the trip, I was really missing my family the most in Brazil, especially in the jungle where I had zero contact with them.

But we’ll start with the good… the Miller family, our missionaries in Brazil, are amazing! The four of us pastors quickly bonded with their kids, and good thing, because we would all be in close quarters for our five days in the jungle! The Millers were super hospitable upon our arrival in their home city of Manaus, which is a sort of hub for missionaries who serve in the Amazon jungle of Brazil. We spent a day in Manaus just getting to know the Millers, and doing some shopping with Brad Miller in the city in preparation for our trip, which was an adventure in itself.

The next day, we took a 2 hour drive to Manacapuru (say that 10 times fast…), the port city where we boarded our speedboat. That little speedboat would take the nine of us to the Apurina people, the tribe that the Millers minister to, in 11 hours down the Amazon river. The view was beautiful, but between that and the return trip, I’m not looking to board any more boats any time soon…

The Apurina people are amazing, and the Lord is doing great things among them through the Miller family. Brad typically stays there in the village for three weeks at a time, sometimes alone and sometimes with his whole family, before going back to Manaus for a few weeks, and then doing it all over again. While there, he does a church service every evening on top of Sunday mornings, as well as Bible classes for a few of the men every morning, and a children’s ministry program on Saturdays. But perhaps the coolest thing is that some of the leaders Brad is raising up, who take over services for him while he is not in the jungle, are now preparing to go to other tribes to be missionaries there. It was amazing to watch God’s plans for unreached people groups unfolding before our eyes!

The brutal jungle environment did wear on me physically and mentally. Praise God He sent lots of rain while we were there, which did have the effect of cooling things down slightly, though the humidity was still overwhelming. One night, as I lay in the pitch black in my hammock, missing my family as all of the jungle noises made their best effort to lull me to sleep, the words of Martin Luther’s hymn played on repeat through my mind…

Let goods and kindred go
This mortal life also
The body they may kill
God’s truth will triumph still
His kingdom is forever

While I certainly wasn’t facing death, I realized in a deeper way than ever all of the comforts of home and family and friends and hot water and A/C and the English language, etc., that missionaries give up, because they count lost souls as worth that sacrifice. They care so much about God’s glory, about the eternal state of the souls of the lost and unreached, that they are willing to leave everything familiar to them. And believe me, in the jungle, there is very little that is familiar to us! I praise God for this insight, and that night in my hammock, He began the process of dealing with some of the idols in my own heart.

As seems to be typical in foreign countries, the locals love English worship, so I played plenty of songs for them. I also had the privilege of teaching their children’s program Saturday afternoon, as well as teaching their Sunday morning service! I will always treasure those special blessings.

When our time in the jungle was over, we went back to Manaus, where Pastor Trent got to share some ministry vision with Brad, and we got to bless the kids with some fun times, including a trip to see pink dolphins!

All in all, this whole trip was an amazing experience. I was so happy to go home to be with my family again, but I also came home a changed person, with the many things the Lord taught me and ways He showed me I need to grow. Most of all, I saw the importance of trips like these. SGWM is committed to not just making decisions from a desk in Yorba Linda about what is going on in the nations, but actually being willing to get our hands dirty, so to speak, and actually connect with the work the Lord is doing through our missionaries. That way, our partnership with them is more informed, our fellowship with them is all the sweeter, and we can carry back the great news of how the Lord is using them in order to stir up the church in America for missions. And that was more than worth it for a few days of me letting goods and kindred go.

If you would like to support us financially either on an ongoing basis or through a one-time donation, you can do so by clicking the “Become A Financial Partner” button below, OR you can mail a check written out to Saving Grace World Missions with “Joel Garcia support” in the memo section to Saving Grace World Missions, 17451 Bastanchury Rd., Suite 203, Yorba Linda, CA 92886-1873.

We also would love to keep you updated on our ministry via our newsletter email updates if you are interested. You can sign up for those by clicking the button below:

Email Updates

Love in Christ,
Joel, Amy, Maggie, Harrison, Jude, and Clara Garcia

Hello Friends!

I’m excited to bring you all part two of my South America trip update. Our time with the Tippie family in Huacho, Peru, was the shortest of the trip, only covering a couple of days. But boy, were they packed days!

Upon arriving back in Lima via a short flight out of Cajamarca with the Tippies, we took a three hour drive that got us into Huacho (pronounced “Watch-Oh”) near 11pm. I observed that Peruvians seem to be night-owls, and they eat late! We were tired, but Pastor Craig didn’t want to send us to bed with empty bellies. I was glad for that after a delicious meal of roasted chicken, aji sauce (think Chick-Fil-A sauce with a little south-of-the-border kick), and french fries. Peru LOVES their french fries, with their almost 4,000 varieties of potatoes that grow there! I could definitely have gotten used to that.

The four of us stayed at a hotel in the city just a couple of blocks from Pastor Craig’s house. Accommodations were so cheap that we each got our own room and bathroom! This should have made for some good sleep, but Huacho was where I experienced some of my greatest spiritual warfare of the trip, including some spiritually dark dreams and a pretty bad stomach bug that plagued me the entire time there. Huacho is the witchcraft capitol of Peru, and we were there to do some work for God’s kingdom, so these kinds of things are to be expected, especially after our focus on the armor of God at our prayer retreat in Cajamarca!

Our first morning in Huacho consisted of a four-hour meeting planning our upcoming youth group trip to Huacho in June, on which Pastor Mike, Pastor Tim, and myself will return to Huacho with 40 people for various outreaches including a surf camp, VBS, music, soccer, and more! It was eye-opening to see the necessity of traveling so far for such planning, as all that we accomplished could never have been done over phone or Skype. I gained valuable experience for planning future trips as Pastor Mike led the way with his expertise in this area.

That night, I was radically blessed with the opportunity to preach the gospel to a few dozen youth at a youth outreach at Pastor Craig’s church! I taught on the woman at the well from John 4, and showed them that Christ is the only one who can fulfill our longing for joy and satisfaction in life.

The next morning I had another amazing opportunity to lead a little “Gringo Worship” (as Pastor Craig calls it) for his church’s Sunday morning service! (You can check out video of that here on Facebook) One of my favorite parts of international travel is to worship with people of other cultures and languages. English worship was cool for them, but I really love the fun, lively, community-driven worship of the Peruvian people!

In the midst of all this activity, we also had the opportunity to check out a beach similar to the one we’ll run our surf camp at in June, as well as tour around and work through some other logistics for the trip in Pastor Craig’s super cool bright orange VW Bus! The trip ended with a sweet get-together at the Tippies’ house, a surprise party for Pastor Craig where seemingly the whole community came out to celebrate the life of this man who’s done so much for the Gospel in Huacho.

Huacho may have not been the hardest part of our trip, but between the spiritual warfare and my stomach illness, I really wanted to give up and go home, especially when I considered the possibility of carrying my stomach illness into the jungle. But the Lord was really teaching me a lesson on endurance, and the fact that missionaries endure this kind of spiritual warfare on a regular basis. Part of being a missionary is learning to endure through that and fight the good fight of bringing the Gospel to the nations. The Lord was teaching me what our missionaries go through, and was preparing me for a deeper level of that on the next leg of our journey in Brazil…

If you would like to support us financially either on an ongoing basis or through a one-time donation, you can do so by clicking the “Become A Financial Partner” button below, OR you can mail a check written out to Saving Grace World Missions with “Joel Garcia support” in the memo section to Saving Grace World Missions, 17451 Bastanchury Rd., Suite 203, Yorba Linda, CA 92886-1873.

We also would love to keep you updated on our ministry via our newsletter email updates if you are interested. You can sign up for those by clicking the button below:

Email Updates

Love in Christ,
Joel, Amy, Maggie, Harrison, Jude, and Clara Garcia