Sowing the Seed

Into the Field

Mission in Mexico is a relatively new missions endeavour. My family and I have been on the field for a mere four years and our current ministry in the Santa Barbara neighbourhood was started less than two years ago. Much of our work is focused on sowing the seed – outreach and evangelism. If a metaphor is useful, we’ve just stepped into a field of dry, crumbly dirt, dotted by weeds and rocks (kind of like the actual fields we see around here). Taking a handful of seed, we scatter it about, not knowing what will happen to it. 

As you know, plants typically don’t grow overnight and fruit doesn’t burst forth instantaneously. That is true on the mission field as well. So, we’ve had to learn patience as we look out over the dusty field, praying the few dots of green might be the beginning of a harvest. We’ve had to learn firsthand what the true definition of “success” looks like. 

The Exciting Part

It’s exciting work, thinking five, ten, fifty years ahead and not knowing what God will do. It is exciting to see how God has allowed us to start a ministry from the ground up. Ministerios La Fuente (The Fount Ministries), as we have called it, has an outreach centre in town where we hold Sunday services, a kids’ Bible club, English classes and other events. We also run a sports club every Thursday, host a bible study in our home, and organize a Vacation Bible School twice a year. 

It is exciting to stand before a group of young boys and tell them things about God they never knew. It is exciting to study the Word of God with women who have only a thin sliver of Bible knowledge. It is exciting when someone new steps into the Sunday service and hears the gospel for the first time. 

The Hard Part 

Sowing seeds can be a sweaty, tiresome job. Dust blows in the eyes; seeds get carried away by the wind and the sun scorches from above. In the same way, our work of sowing gospel seeds has had its challenges. 

Every time we start a new outreach we wonder if anyone will show up, and then when only a few do, we have to trust that God knows what he is doing. The Sunday service we started has not grown much and we have not had a consistent group each Sunday. Young people we want to disciple are not as eager as we are. 

These are the hard things – the dust, the wind, and the sun. But our confidence is in the seed we are spreading. We are spreading good news of Christ and we have his faithful presence every step of the way. 

Seedlings

Since starting Ministerios La Fuente in the community of Santa Barbara, we have seen the “fruit” of investing in a place and its people. Our number of contacts has grown and more people know who we are or at least a bit of what we are doing. A few people have come to us seeking help or counsel, evidence that we are gaining their trust. 

Last Easter we ran a week-long kids club and many of the moms came and stayed throughout, including the gospel message at the end. From that group of moms, three have started attending a bible study in our home. Their bible knowledge is minimal and what they do know is skewed by the teaching of the Roman Catholic church. 

Watering

There are also several Christian ladies who attend the Sunday service, coming from Baptist and Pentecostal backgrounds. This means we have the opportunity to minister to them and introduce them to a theology that is perhaps a bit more robust and exhaustive than that which they have been taught. 

We’ve discussed the topics of prayer and healing, demons, the Trinity, and whether Adam was a historical man. In the preaching, we are able to demonstrate how to interpret the Bible and introduce themes such as covenant and election. 

Pan de Vida

I mentioned earlier that Mission in Mexico is a new endeavour and while that is true, it is also true that in a way it stands on the shoulders of work being done by Children of Hope and the various children’s homes they support in our area. 

We continue to stay involved in Pan de Vida especially, located just ten minutes from our house, and benefit from being part of the Christian community there. We help with the Sunday School program and Scott has been teaching English classes to the high school students for several years now. 

Our hope is that over time we would be able to foster relationships with the kids and have the opportunity to disciple some of them when they age-out of the children’s home. 

1 Corinthians 3:7

An apt way to close out this article is to quote the wise, inspired words of the Apostle Paul: “So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” Amen indeed. May God bless all our planting and watering with abundant gospel growth, whether in Mexico or Canada or elsewhere.

this post was first published as a Clarion article in December of 2024