Greetings from Mexico. In this update I wanted to tell you about our upcoming church plant. (It will be #40) I met my good friend Humberto Ambriz over 5 years ago and I want to share his testimony with you. Humberto immigrated to the United States from Michoacan when he was just 8 years old with his family! He later married, worked, raised three children, and retired, all while serving in Christian churches for the past 25 years. And throughout that time, Humberto felt a burning desire to return to his home-state to church plant, even though he had no idea how that could ever happen.
Five years ago I invited Humberto to our church planting conference where God spoke to him clearly that this was God’s retirement plan for him and his wife Miriam. Fast forward four years later, and Humberto moved down to Rosarito to join up with our church staff and church planting program. He has plans to plant his church, Calvary Del Lago (Calvary of the Lake) in August of this year.
Besides learning to teach the Bible creatively verse by verse, our church planting program also includes serving in all of the different ministries we have at the church! Humberto has thrived in every area that I have assigned him. It is wonderful to see Humberto working side by side with our 20 something year old interns all serving the Lord together joyfully.
Humberto was born in the beautiful Mexican state of Michoacan! And God has placed on his heart to church plant in a historic city called Patzcuaro! This city is the ancient Mexican capital of this state and has a mostly unreached population of over 100,000 inhabitants. In April, I was blessed to visit this city along with my church planting assistant Super Mario Medrano, our Morelia church planter Tony, (Who church planted one hour away) and my good friend Humberto! God blessed us in a powerful way on this church planting vision tour.
We spent three days in Patzcuaro seeking the Lord, getting vision for this church plant, and (of course) sampling the delicious cuisine! Humberto has already purchased a home there in that city, so we were blessed to stay in his home on this trip. We quickly learned that Patzcuaro is surrounded by many towns that have populations of around 10,000. Sadly some of these cities don’t have any Christian churches! (YET!) Because Patzcuaro is the central city in this region, Humberto has a vision to use Patzcuaro as a sending hub of church planting to train up and send out church planters to reach those other cities.
During our vision tour, we took a 1 ½ hour road trip to visit the small town that Humberto grew up in. (He still has a family home there!) On this visit, we ran into at least ten different people that knew and loved Humberto! (He is so loved and recognized there, he reminded me of the town mayor!) Humberto plans to visit his hometown once a week from Patzcuaro to start a home Bible study in his ancestral family home.
When I travel on these church planting journeys, I do not travel alone. I take you in my heart, my precious friends and ministry partners. I want to thank you once again for partnering with us in this great missions work in Mexico. It is through your prayers that God meet’s our spiritual needs, and through your financial support that God meet’s our physical needs. We love you and give thanks for you!
Con mucho amor de Mexico, (with much love from Mexico)
Mike, Sarah, Grace, and Daniel
Prayer Requests!
#1- Pray for the two lawsuits against me and our church! Please ask God to defeat this thief that is attempting to steal our south property! (Where our new sports center is located)
#2- Pray that God will bless our church plant that we will be sending out this summer to Patzcuaro with Humberto and Miriam Ambriz!
Praise Reports!
#1- Praise God for a wonderful month at the church! We had over 50 first time professions of faith in April! (A post-covid record!)
#2- Praise God for a wonderful church planting vision tour, where God gave us vision about the future church plant.
For our personal support, checks should be made out to Saving Grace World Missions with “Vincent support” in the memo section. For special projects, checks should also be made out to Saving Grace World Missions or SGWM, with the project name in the comments section. Use the enclosed envelope or mail directly to Saving Grace World Missions, 17451 Bastanchury Rd., Suite 203, Yorba Linda, CA 92886-1873
For your convenience, you may consider giving through electronic funds transfer or direct deposit. Simply click on this link to directly support our family as your missionaries.
Or, you can go to our mission’s website, click on the “become a financial partner” button and fill out the information. Please remember to type in “Vincent” in the “purpose of gift” section.
