Church Planting: Idea to Reality
About five years ago, when I just moved to the United States from Russia, Bryte Church approached me with an offer to organize a youth missionary trip to Mexico. We went with a group of 70 people and began working with Pastor Flavio, who leads a church in Rosarito. After two years of working with Pastor Flavio, we also began working with another local pastor named Marcus, who had been referred to us through a good friend of mine. At that time, Pastor Marcus led a church of over 150 parishioners. His congregation had a desire to plant new churches in Mexico and purchased a plot of land in the city of Vicente Guerrero to build a church building there. We began supporting them and joined the ministry by making short trips to Vicente Guerrero and assisted with whatever we could. Eventually, Pastor Marcus’ church trained and sent a missionary named Pastor Alfonso to that city to lead the ministry there. The church in Vicente Guerrero has grown to approximately 50 people.
After that, pastor Marcus shared his desire to open up a new church going down south of Mexico. And at that moment, the Lord put it on my heart for my family and I to move to Mexico to support the missionary work. We originally planned to move there in October 2021, but when we found out that we were expecting another child, we decided to take our time and better prepare ourselves. We immediately applied for me to obtain American citizenship (so I could freely leave the country), began learning Spanish and saving money to live in Mexico.
In fall of 2021, we purchased a piece of land in the city of San Quentin in order to establish a new church there. In the meantime, Pastor Marcus and his church were preparing missionaries to go to that place and start working there. At this moment, we are 50% ready for the opening of the new church building there. All of this time, the Rosarito church has been making trips to San Quentin, doing outreach and recruiting people. Most of the people in that area are from the Mixtec tribe, who migrated to that part of Mexico for work. The Mixtec people have not been reached yet nor had an Evangelical church and a pastor who would speak their native language.
My family and I are planning to move to Mexico on September 12, 2022, to continue our ministry, and more specifically, planting and strengthening new churches. At San Quentin, we want to have a base that will allow us to accept brothers and sisters for long-term missions. The task of my family will be to provide for the new congregation and a missionary pastor (whom the church from Rosarito will send to San Quentin in the near future), and help start a small business that will provide solely for the development of the ministry. We are also very much looking forward to working with the Mixtec population and delivering the Gospel to them, so that in heaven the name of the Lord is glorified in one more language.
by David Slabodenko
