Mike and Trisha Goddard Mobilizing local churches in Paraguay 
We praise the Lord for each of you who are a part of our ministry here in Paraguay, South America.
Posts Tagged ‘mobilization’
Praise and Prayer Requests (November 2009)
Friday, October 30th, 2009Goddard Grapevine – October 2009
Friday, October 30th, 2009
Praise & Prayer Requests (October 2009)
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
We praise the Lord for answered prayers and how He continues to work through us in Paraguay.
Below you can read the up-to-date Personal and Ministry Prayer Requests for October.
Goddard Family Update
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
Mike and Trisha praise the Lord for His faithfulness during their first 5 years of ministry together in Paraguay. Truly He is worthy to be served!
Mike has been very busy lately do to the Paraguayan church’s steady advance in the Great Commission. In the next 4 months, he has scheduled over 20 different church meetings, events, teaching seminars, and camps, where he enjoys challenging people to look beyond their borders to a world full of tribal people who have not yet heard even once the Good News of salvation in Christ Jesus.
Trisha loves taking care of her home and family, enjoys preparing a meal for any guest that stop by unannounced. She helps Mike by doing secretarial work and running errands downtown. Next year, she plans to home school Michael and Lea (starting in February 2010), so that they can travel more with Mike as well as be prepared for later in the year, when we will be in the USA for a few months to visit our support team and family during a Home Assignment.
Michael Dean loves people and recently asked: “When do I get to go visit my Ache tribal friends again? Because when I go back, they will know who I am and they will say, “Hola Michael!” For Michael, school isn’t easy, especially when he and Lea are trying to keep 4 languages straight. AMARILLO CAMPEÓN! The soccer tournament has begun at Michael and Lea’s school. They are on the yellow team, and Michael gets really excited when he makes a goal!
Lea is an A+ student, and she can’t get enough of languages. She is our grammar and pronunciation cop and helps Mom and Michael to conjugate their Spanish verbs correctly. She loves going to the park on the weekends, and then afterwards, she begs daddy to stop by the local ice cream parlor to buy a ½ kilo of 3 different flavors for $2.40. The dulce de leche (caramel) flavor is her favorite.
Kaleb is believed to be the cutest, little boy by all the Paraguayan ladies, and they try everything possible to get him to give kisses on both cheeks (a traditional greeting). Often he will accept a bribe of candy for the kisses. Kaleb enjoys riding his scooter and once he got it down, there was no stopping him from trying to go faster than his big brother and sister.
As our children grow older, we see each of them grasping truths from God’s Word and desiring to apply them to their lives. Michael loves to read the Bible during our story-time before bed. We are now on the life of King David.
The Pai give their input on mobilization
Friday, July 24th, 2009
“We can\’t always be begging our wives for their chickens!” was the comment of a Pai Tavytera community leader and faithful church member to my question about the funding of their church outreaches.
“We will either have to have outside funding or stick to outreaches that are within our budget.”
After returning from a 5-day trip to the bush in northern Paraguay and just a few kilometers from the Brazilian boarder, I\’m confronted with even more questions than when I first set out. What role are tribal churches and their members to play in the Great Commission in Paraguay and beyond? Does the completion of the Great Commission lie solely on the shoulders of wealthy and educated people groups? Are the poor exempt from the responsibility to take the Gospel to the “ends of the earth” because of their financial limitations and lack of education? (more…)
Mobilizing the national Paraguayan church continues
Monday, June 22nd, 2009
The ministry of mobilizing the national Paraguayan church continues to take more and more shape and steadily gets more exciting and interesting. Recently, we combined two trips into one by first visiting an Ache village and later attended a missions conference. Mike has been highly interested in the idea of mobilizing tribal churches simultaneously with the national church so that missions in Paraguay can take on a three-way partnership between the expatriates, nationals and tribal people. Imagine the Body of Christ putting aside cultural norms for the sake of the Gospel!
During the missions conference that was held not far from the Argentine border in southern Paraguay, Mike was given the opportunity to lead discussion at one of the tables during the forum as well as a 15-minute opportunity to challenge people to become involved in tribal church planting. Often Mike walks away from these meetings wondering why so few people are willing to join God’s Plan to see the nations hear Truth in their own mother tongue. One of the keys to unlocking this door in Paraguay is a clear-cut plan laid out to mobilize the Church.
Trisha and the children also traveled with Mike during this 4 day trip and met new friends as well as touched based with friends that they had met at other events. Michael Dean is the true social bug and was immediately out playing with the Ache children and later made friends with the Paraguayan teenagers.
The missions conference was a tremendous help to Mike and Trisha. It provided a context where they could interact with other mobilizers and compare strategies in the mobilizing, training and sending of Paraguayan missionaries.
Acercate a las tribus
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
What goes through your mind when you know of over a hundred young people living in your area (and many more in other cities) that love God and want to serve Him in missions, only to discover that their churches are not sufficiently prepared to take on the challenge.
Over and over these young people on fire for God and His heart for the world are welcomed with a cold splash into reality when their vision is not shared by perhaps the Pastor, church leadership, or the church members. Many of these young people become so overwhelmed by the magnitude of bringing along a non-missions minded church into that of a mobilized church, that they literally give up because they can\’t see the “light at the end of the tunnel.”
