Hundreds saved in western El Salvador

By Allen Palmeri

Associate Editor

AHUACHAPAN, El Salvador—Missouri Baptists who went on mission trips to El Salvador from April to August of this year were blessed to be a part of seeing more than 1,000 people coming to know Christ as Savior, according to the partnership missions specialist of the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC).

Norm Howell said there are pockets of the tiny Central American nation that are crackling with Holy Spirit fire.

“This is just incredible to see how God is working,” he said.

One of those spiritually alive places is Ahuachapan, which is the westernmost department (state) of El Salvador that borders Guatemala. Missouri Baptists from three Missouri associations based out of Kirksville have been working with seven churches in El Salvador. Their most recent point of contact came when Larry Gibson, pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church in Kirksville, led a team of six from the church to work with their partner congregation, Caleb Baptist of Ahuachapan, Aug. 1-9. A total of 387 people prayed to receive Christ during that time.

“It’s neat to see how the Holy Spirit’s working there,” Gibson said. “They’d just announce, ‘We’re going to announce and do some soul winning,’ and young people and old people, just hordes of people would show up to go out, just hungering to see people saved.”

Gibson was a part of two trips to El Salvador last year, with 110 receiving Christ as Savior in November, he said. He returned in March of this year and was part of a Kirksville team that saw 268 decisions for Christ.

“In one day we had 113, so we saw more in one day than we saw the whole trip before,” he said.

The Fellowship pastor was so excited at this point that he returned to America wanting to get his family involved. When he put together the church’s mission team for the August trip, it consisted of five family members—himself, his wife, Sue, his sons, Matthew and Daniel, and his daughter, Michelle—and a church member named Tamara Gardner.

They were able to do some creative things like witnessing inside the school system in spots where the Gospel had never been proclaimed. For Michelle, a junior at Hannibal-LaGrange College, it was her second trip to El Salvador; her twin brother Matthew is a junior at Southwest Baptist University. Gibson estimated that Daniel, 16, may have gotten to lead as many as 80 people to Christ; in one day alone the team saw 278 salvations, Gibson said.

Caleb Baptist Church is only a year old. It has grown “like crazy” from around 20 charter members to 160, which is the same size as Fellowship. Gibson estimated that as many as 1,000 people in a city of perhaps 50,000 have come to know Christ as Savior through Caleb’s ministry.

“The Caleb church is into aggressive evangelism,” Gibson said. “They want their city to come to know Christ, and they are actively, every week, going out and telling people about the Lord. Every week they’re seeing people saved.”

This is typical of what Howell, Gibson and others are seeing on the ground in certain parts of El Salvador.

“The people have a hunger for God,” Gibson said. “I see people who want to please God. If there’s something going on at church, they want to be there. The churches are very, very active—very involved.”

Gibson, who mentioned that the Kirksville-based associations are putting together another mission trip to El Salvador in November, said he would recommend getting involved in the El Salvador partnership because “I think it gives you an opportunity to connect with other people for the good of God’s kingdom. God has blessed our church for being involved in this. We have seen 181 people right here in Kirksville that we’ve gotten to lead to the Lord since Jan. 1. We’ve never had a year like this before. There’s not been a week go by that we’ve not seen somebody saved.

“There’s something special about what God’s doing in El Salvador, and I think it’s a privilege for Missouri Baptists to be involved in that.”