North Houston Amigos | A Friends’ Church-Planting Project
Each of us has learned over the past months how hard it is to maintain a local church ministry during a pandemic, but what if the church is just getting started? What if there are no boards or support teams and your primary task is evangelism during a time of social distancing and political divisiveness? That is the case for Pastor Arnoldo García who is working in North Houston, Texas to start a new church.
The project had only been underway for about 8 months when the pandemic hit in March of 2020. At that time the group was about to enter a rental agreement for worship space. We are thankful to the Lord that the agreement did not work out, because it would have been useless space and a financial burden during a time when they could mostly not even meet together physically.
A few of the gathered families drifted away to other locations to be closer to family or to find work, but Arnoldo along with his wife Delmy continued in contact with a core group and worked to follow up on leads for people who have come to Houston from California and Central America where they had worked in pastoral ministry previously. Through outdoor meetings, video streaming and phone calls, Arnoldo and Delmy have brought the encouragement of Christ’s love to their community during this difficult time. COVID-19 has had a big impact on the families of the church with a number of people passing away from the disease in the extended families, including Arnoldo’s brother in California.
These are extraordinary times and we are thankful for extraordinary people like the Garcias who are working so hard (he also works full-time as an Uber driver), who sacrifice so much, and who patiently await and work toward the fruit that they know the Lord will bring.
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