Church Planting in Colonia San Bosco, Hermosillo (Sonora, Mexico)

We’ve been holding annual dental clinics in the San Bosco neighborhood of Hermosillo for four years. Working each year with students from the Ebenezer Bible College (IPE in Spanish), a ministry of Mission Gospel Ministries International (MGMI) in Hermosillo, we set up our first clinic under a tarp in a park in the middle of San Bosco where students had been holding open-air evangelistic services. A product of that two-day clinic in the park was a stack of 60 contact sheets with names and addresses of patients seen and with whom the Gospel had been shared. Several received Christ during that clinic and Tap Hornor, MGMI missionary overseeing the work beamed when he held up the contact sheets and said, “We have months’ worth of contacts here to visit and share the Gospel with!”
Tap and students from IPE followed up with those initial contacts every Saturday and the following year there were believers from the neighborhood helping share the Gospel with more people who came out for the second dental clinic. They met on Saturdays in a small building for services led by IPE students. With another handful of new contacts from our clinic students headed off enthusiastically to meet in homes for more one-on-one evangelism and discipleship.
By the third year Pastor Manual Acedo, an Institute graduate, was pastor of the Living Hope Fundamental Baptist Church of San Bosco meeting in a converted house. People crowded the living room of the house while we conducted a third dental clinic and rejoiced to see so many people sharing the Gospel with patients and visitors.
This past year we held a fourth clinic in a larger house church in San Bosco with a tent in the side yard where 80 people gathered for a special service. What an opportunity to praise God for raising up His Body of believers in San Bosco and being part of this group’s faithful evangelism that led to a vibrant local church when four years earlier a few had met under a tarp in a park! Pastor Acedo relates that our annual dental clinics were instrumental in making so many contacts that allowed them to enter people’s homes and share the Gospel with them. That’s how God builds His Church – in Mexico or anywhere – one believer at a time. (Acts 2:47)