Tucked in a bay alongside desert and mountains along the Sea of Cortes, La Paz is a city that God has had on our hearts for many years.
4 years ago we had the chance to go scout out the land as a family to see why this city seemed to never leave my mind. What we found was a city of about 200,000 people with about 20 Christian churches and very few Christians. We realized that they need a church planting movement in that city, but also in surrounding towns and colonias where there are often very few, small churches or no churches at all! But we also came back thinking that God had confirmed to us our current path in Rosarito!
Fast forward a few years and Shar and I got the opportunity to go again a few weeks ago to visit our church's new 1 year old church plant in the city of La Paz. This is a remarkable little church. On their opening Wednesday service in July 2014, 40 people showed up practically uninvited. It was just supposed to be a bible study time for the church planting team, Word got out and many showed up!
A few weeks later they were launching Sunday services with regular attendance in the 30's and 40's. Now, about one year later I preached to 80+ adults and did a devotion for a solid leadership team of 10 men and women, with 7 being locals and only 3 coming from our original church planting team. Almost everything in the service is done by locals and they seem to be loving this balanced church that teaches God's Word verse by verse.
The church has a great vision of planting other churches in needy cities and neighbourhoods around "Baja Sur". They are a relatively close distance to southern mainland Mexico as well, by ferry, and could legitimately make an impact over there as well.
It is an intriguing work with a great vision of church planting, leader and pastoral training and mercy ministries- caring for the least of these.
Would you please pray about this work with us? God is doing great things there!
Thanks for praying!!
