God's Work in Mexico and Latin America
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Benjamin Kreps:
Welcome to the Mark Prater podcast, where our aim is to connect our global family of churches with our Executive Director. Mark, a lot of the guys in Sovereign Grace have heard about the Fieles Conference in Mexico. You've mentioned it at the Pastors Conference and elsewhere. You actually had the opportunity to attend last week's Fieles Conference in Mexico. What was it like?
Mark Prater:
I did. It was in Juarez, Mexico at Iglesia Gracia Soberana, the church led by Carlos Contreras. Last Wednesday through Friday. It was an outstanding conference in just a number of ways. First of all Carlos actually had to close registration at 400 because they just ran out of space. That shows you the interest. And there are pastors that traveled from 23 different states in Mexico. Now to give some proportion to that, there's a total of 31 states in Mexico. So 23 tells you that the majority of Mexico was represented at this conference, which really encouraged Carlos and the Mexico leadership team. They were so encouraged by that. In addition to pastors traveling from Mexico, we had pastors there from Costa Rica, from Bolivia and from Columbia, just to name some nations.
And the theme really of the conference was really the grace of God. And I think sometimes we can forget about gospel-centered preaching that holds out the grace of God that we have in Christ. We can forget about that in Sovereign Grace, that it is actually a part of who we are, but for someone who's hearing that for the first time, it's transforming. And so I talked to people there where they had never heard gospel preaching like this. Never heard an emphasis on grace like this. And they were built up in Christ as a result of the preaching.
So it was a great conference. Carlos spoke, Miguel Nunez spoke, who's not a part of Sovereign Grace, but sort of the reformed voice in the Latin American world. A guy by the name of Kike Torres who is not a part of Sovereign Grace, but a really good friend of Sovereign Grace. Bryan Chapell was there. He was kind enough to accept the invitation and he spoke twice and did a breakout session. It was good to hear him preach, obviously. Jeff Purswell and Bob Kauflin they just did a great job of preaching as well. Those were just some of the speakers that spoke. So it was just a wonderful conference.
There's something that happened during the conference that was something I don't think I'll ever forget. So the conference was Wednesday through Friday. On Thursday afternoon, basically gang violence broke out in Juarez and eventually spilled into other cities in Mexico on Thursday and Friday. So in Juarez, there was a gang fight in a prison. Someone was shot. So obviously someone smuggled a gun in and that violence spilled over in the streets; members of those gangs. They just began to randomly kill people. So on Thursday evening, I believe 11 people died out on the street. They were also fire bombing retail establishments and restaurants. So basically the whole city had to shut down on Thursday evening and pretty much was that way on Friday as well. And so Carlos is working with his leadership team of Hellman Avila and Abelardo Munoz and Manolo Quintal and they wisely decided to continue with this conference and be careful, be wise, but let's just trust God.
And so after Miguel Nunez spoke on Thursday evening, he made that announcement and then he wisely, this was great leadership on Carlos' part, he had Kike Torres come up and just lead a time of prayer from Psalm 27. So he prayed. And then he said to the people, to the audience, just begin to share how God has answered prayers for you. And there would be some things you'd might expect like healing from cancer and a couple of folks mentioned things that really gripped my attention. There's just a couple right behind where I was seated. And she said, “when my brother was kidnapped by the gangs, we prayed and God had him released”. And then right after that followed a man who said, “when I was kidnapped by the gangs, I prayed and God was able to work in a way that I was released”. I learned later that man is a pastor who actually is leading a church that is interested in becoming a part of Sovereign Grace. So I just thought I've never been in a prayer meeting like this before.
And it's a reminder for us, especially here in the states of what our brothers face in doing gospel ministry in different parts of the world. And we not only need to pray for them but just be grateful for their faith. I was so grateful for Carlos' faith in leading so well. And the conference continued and we finished the entire conference as planned and everybody was safe and it was great. So I just thank God for him. And it was a wonderful way, not only in addition to the preaching of the grace of God, to actually experience the grace of God in his protection as the conference continued.
Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent, what a powerful story. And for my part, I'm grateful that you didn't get kidnapped Mark <laugh>, otherwise this podcast might be a little bit different. But a bunch of stuff was going on there. As you mentioned, there were a number of pastors from different parts not just Mexico, but even Costa Rica and you had a meeting with some of them, I believe. Tell us about that.
Mark Prater:
Yeah, first of all, there were four pastors there from Columbia, a church in Barranquilla and the pastors there have now expressed, actually have formally said, we want to be adopted by Sovereign Grace. And then Jacobis Aldana and his wife were there. Jacobis leads a church in Santa Marta, Columbia, and he has finished the Sovereign Grace ordination. Joselo will be there in December for the ordination service, and they will become a partner church in Sovereign Grace. So it was just great to see them and interact with them.
And then Joselo and Rich led a lunch for Costa Rica pastors that I was able to attend and participated in some. So a little bit of history on Costa Rica. We've had a church in Cartago for some time, a partner church led by Allan Monge. We've had two churches that have become candidate churches, one in San Jose and one in Playa Azul, Costa Rica. So we have three or four pastors down there and we go to this lunch. There are 15 pastors from Costa Rica, all of them interested in Sovereign Grace. And so we're like, whoa, what happened in Costa Rica? So there's a lot of interest in Costa Rica. So most of the interest is in Latin America. There are so many churches interested in Mexico, and now Costa Rica would be the next nation who has a large number of churches that are interested in and will begin to pursue partnership with Sovereign Grace. So that was just a very encouraging lunch to be a part of.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yes, that is encouraging. Well, thank you, Mark for the good update. It is gratifying as always to hear about how Jesus is building his church globally and how we get to participate in a small way in what God is doing across the globe. So thank you for your efforts, Mark. Thank you everyone for watching or reading. We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.