MARIANO ROQUE ALONSO, PARAGUAY — Profitable souls for Christ in Nicaragua was powerful, César Gadea stated.
“Nevertheless it’s harder right here,” he added.
The 45-year-old minister from Managua spoke to The Christian Chronicle within the one-room church constructing the place he and his spouse, Sonia, have served for a yr within the South American nation of Paraguay. Enoch Rinks, a former missionary to Paraguay, translated his phrases from Spanish.
Associated: 20 years, 16 souls, one nation
Somewhat greater than 20 years in the past, Rinks and his teammates moved right here from Tennessee to plant a church within the capital, Asunción.
Now, the church they planted is planting new church buildings within the metropolis’s suburbs, together with Mariano Roque Alonso. The city, named for a former president and recognized domestically as MRA, is an industrial business hub with a rising inhabitants.
Most of that inhabitants claims Catholicism as its religion, as do 88 p.c of Paraguay’s 6.8 million souls. Some surveys check with the South American nation as some of the non secular on this planet. In a latest research by the Pew Analysis Heart, 82 p.c of grownup Paraguayan respondents stated they pray day by day.
César Gadea stands exterior the assembly place of the MRA Church of Christ.
However in a rustic the place religion is sort of an assumption, church membership and attendance doesn’t appear to be a precedence — not less than in comparison with his homeland, Gadea stated. Political oppression, or lack thereof, might play a job. In Nicaragua, the Sandinista regime and the Contra Conflict of the Eighties was a golden period for Church buildings of Christ, which skilled speedy progress as distressed souls turned to Jesus. Paraguay, like a lot of its South American neighbors, has endured political and financial turmoil in latest a long time, however not on the dimensions of some Central American republics.
Gadea served the Rene Polanco Church of Christ in Managua and labored briefly with medical mission Well being Abilities Worldwide earlier than he enrolled in Baxter Institute, a ministry coaching faculty in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. After graduating in 2010, he returned to Nicaragua and studied psychology. He joined a mission workforce in Mexico Metropolis in 2016.
Gadea served in Mexico’s monstrous capital with assist from Nice Cities Missions. Chris Fry, the ministry’s director of Latin groups, had served on the U.S. mission workforce with Rinks that planted the Iglesia de Cristo Sacramento in Asunción.
Fry advisable Gadea for the Sacramento church’s new effort in MRA. The Nicaraguan minister and his household moved south with assist from the Austin Avenue Church of Christ in Brownwood, Texas. The Gadeas served for a yr with the Sacramento church and bought to know its members as they settled into life in South America.
César Gadea with spouse Sonia and their kids.
The Gadeas and their kids, ages 8 and three, spent the previous yr assembly neighbors — at college, on the gymnasium, in a mom’s group that Sonia attends. They’ve invited households to occasions on the MRA church constructing, even utilizing their cultural variations as a energy. A Nicaraguan-style piñata social gathering drew greater than 60 youngsters and their mother and father, César Gadea stated.
The friendships are glimpses of hope in a tricky mission subject, the minister stated. He is aware of there are religious seekers right here.
To seek out them, “it’s a course of.”
The Gospel in Guaraní
Whereas practically 90 p.c of Paraguay’s inhabitants identifies as Catholic, a fair bigger share speaks the nation’s indigenous tongue, Guaraní, along with Spanish. Each are nationwide languages of Paraguay, although Guaraní didn’t turn out to be a language of instruction in faculties right here till 1996.
The language is experiencing a renaissance as part of Paraguayan cultural identification. Talking and understanding it’s critical to win souls to Jesus, stated Eliezer Pérez, who works with one other congregation planted by the Sacramento church.
Pérez and his spouse, Raquel, spoke with the Chronicle at a restaurant in a shopping center sandwiched between the long-lasting blue, wavy towers of Paseo Galleria in Asunción.
The wavy towers of Paseo Galleria stand out in Asunción’s skyline.
The menu included tereré — a drink of brewed herbs just like the recent beverage referred to as mate that’s consumed throughout South America, however served chilly. Most Paraguayans put together tereré, which comes from a Guaraní phrase, at dwelling and carry it in leather-bound jugs nearly all over the place they go, sipping it all through the day utilizing metallic, spoon-like straws.
Pérez, a local of Panama, studied ministry at Theological Institute of Latin America in Guatemala Metropolis, the place he first encountered guests from Paraguay. He traveled to Asunción to check advertising and marketing and publicity.
He fell in love with the Sacramento church — and with Raquel, a local Paraguayan. A couple of years earlier she had discovered the Sacramento church via a newspaper advert and studied the Bible with the workforce of missionaries from the U.S.
Church planters Racquel and Eliezar Pérez take pleasure in dinner with their daughter.
“One thing like scales fell from my eyes,” she stated, and he or she requested to be baptized. Now she and her husband have a 5-year-old daughter.
Eliezer Pérez constructed an internet site for Church buildings of Christ in Paraguay and uploaded sources congregations can use for Bible research and evangelism. When he realized that the Sacramento church wished to plant new church buildings, he volunteered.
The brand new congregation first met in Ñemby, a southern suburb of Asunción that takes its identify from Guaraní.
Phrases in Guaraní, with small labels bearing their Spanish translations, line the partitions of a restaurant within the Paseo Galleria.
Now the church, which has about 12 members, meets in one other suburb, San Larenzo. The Sacramento church supported the congregation because it started. In 2021, the Margaret Road Church of Christ in Milton, Fla., took over assist.
“Sacramento, they have been by our facet,” Pérez stated. “The prayers of all of the church buildings in Paraguay have been with us.”
“The prayers of all of the church buildings in Paraguay have been with us.”
For the church to develop, Christians should have the ability to converse within the individuals’s coronary heart language, Pérez stated. He’s studying Guaraní and is seeking to prepare different evangelists who’re fluent within the language. Though most Paraguayans in Asunción know some Guaraní, many church members within the capital should not capable of preach in it.
“Language is probably the most invaluable factor an individual has,” Pérez stated. “In order that’s the technique.”
A supply driver makes his method down a avenue in historic downtown Asunción, Paraguay.
ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact [email protected]. Comply with him on X @eriktryggestad.
