In this week's edition of Jym Shorts, Terry Moore shares his experience on the Mexico mission trip.

In April, I was privileged to be part of a five-member team sent out on a short-term mission trip to Morelia, Mexico which is about 4 hours west of Mexico City. The team consisted of Tony Guinn and Terry Moore from Lifepoint Church, Luke Beasley (formerly of Lifepoint), and Ian Smith and Kasey Dillman from Southland Community Church. It was good to get back to Mexico where several of us had served back in September of last year. The purpose of these trips is twofold: one is to go out on the streets sharing the gospel with whoever is willing to listen, whether it be knocking on residential doors, going into shops, or just talking to people on the streets; the second purpose is to train and encourage the local body of believers to go out and do the same. We share the gospel by telling a short story about our own lives, sharing our testimony, and then by using the Evangicube, a pictorial device, to clearly explain the gospel to our listeners via a translator.

We arrived in Morelia on Saturday and had a great day touring the city square, culminating that evening in the lighting of the cathedral. This is a weekly celebration including a grand fireworks display, made more so due to the fact that they do not follow any safety standards that we are accustomed to here in the US.

During the church service Sunday morning, we were treated to true Mexican worship which was joyfully loud and lively, followed up by a great sermon by an OMS missionary. The rest of the day was a day of rest and getting prepared for the week ahead.

We spent Monday through Thursday partnering with different churches by going out into the surrounding neighborhoods speaking to people and sharing the gospel with them. Each of the days followed the same format. We went out in teams of 3 or more, depending on how many people from the local church are available. The teams consist of one person from our group, one translator, and one or more people from the local church. In the morning we train the local church member on how to use the Evangicube and we go through our testimony with the translator so that they are familiar with our story. We spend about 2-3 hours in the morning going through the neighborhoods and sharing our testimonies and the Evangicube, as the church member observes, with anyone who is willing to listen. After lunch we go out and do the same thing for another 2-3 hours except in the afternoon the local church member goes through the Evangicube. Each time we go through the cube with people we ask them if they are ready to accept Christ. If they say yes we pray with them and get their information so that the church can follow up with them. On this trip there were 109 decisions for Christ and many more gave their information so that the churches can follow up with them. This is fantastic and it is what makes us want to keep going back.

We also got incredible feedback from the churches in Mexico City where we visited last September. After we left the churches were so fired up that they have followed up with all of the people who gave contact information and a good number of them are attending church on a regular basis. And not only that, the churches also bought Evangicubes and the church members have been going out and talking to people and they have given out over 100 Bibles! This is really the main goal of these trips- to encourage the local churches to be sharing their faith with their communities and it is definitely working in Mexico.

-Terry Moore

‍