On mission: One border at a time

Pastor Gary Derbyshire and his team invite a member of the community to VBS at IBBA.

On Sunday, July 14, 2024, five vans and two trailers carrying a 43-member team from Apollo Baptist Church in Glendale and First Southern Baptist Church of Tucson crossed the U.S. border to Nogales, Sonora, in Mexico. For the next five days, the team spent all morning in evangelism visits around the neighborhood of Buenos Aires and all evening executing a three-hour VBS program for their host church of Iglesia Bautista Buenos Aires (IBBA).

Pastor David Baltazar of IBBA has had a long-standing relationship with the missions committee at First Southern, Tucson, and we were so excited to bring him a team of laborers for the harvest.

On the first day, so much time was needed for set up, there was not much time for evangelism and outreach, but 32 kids still showed up for VBS that night. The next day, though, we went to work in evangelism and outreach, inviting people to VBS and to have gospel conversations.

The Lord had blessed both Apollo and First Southern with many Spanish-speaking believers, so all eight of our outreach teams could walk the neighborhoods with at least one interpreter. Seventeen of our 43 team members were children, so whole families walked the streets telling people of the great gospel of Jesus Christ and the VBS program where children could hear more.

They mission team splits up into 8 outreach teams and goes out into the community to share the gospel.

My team consisted of me, my four children, my wife, and one of our bilingual church members. What an amazing way to spend a morning in service to the King as a family! On our way back to the hotel to cool off for the afternoon, we prayed that God would compel people we met to go to VBS that night.

That night, 63 kids showed up. Furthermore, seven adults came for an adult, gospel class with the pastor.

A man named Javier came and heard the gospel for the first time. When I greeted him, he told me that my family had visited his home and spoken to his girlfriend, Terri.

Ten days before we arrived, Javier and Terri said they had become so desperately convicted by addictions and relational dysfunction that they had resolved to find God, though they didn’t know much about church. They had tried to find churches but had been unsuccessful.

They had no idea until my 4-year-old shouted “Buenos dios!” at their door that there was a church just 200 feet from them.

The mission team also included children, who joined their parents in sharing the gospel and serving in VBS.

I turned to the IBBA pastor and said, “I know his girlfriend!” The pastor smiled and told me Javier had heard the gospel presentation and wanted to accept Christ right there. Javier and five other adults made professions of faith that night.

The next day, Javier and Terri both came together, along with three grandkids for the VBS program. Terri accepted Christ with the IBBA pastor as well.

As Terri was an English-speaker, I spent more than an hour with them in discipleship, challenging them to learn the Bible, teaching them of biblical marriage, and charging them to go to church at IBBA under the discipleship of the pastor and his ministry team.

Two days later, Uriel Velez, a deacon at Apollo (scheduled to be ordained as a pastor Sept. 1) shared the gospel with all the VBS kids, and 32 made professions of faith. Half of them were teenagers. We were overwhelmed at the response.

Our final day was spent in worship with the members of IBBA. There were far more kids who came to church that day than adults. The pastor’s son, their youth band and several singers from our team led a wonderful worship set for all the people in attendance.

Apollo Baptist Church in Glendale and First Southern Baptist Church of Tucson send a 43 member team to assist IABB in doing VBS and reaching out to their community.

During a time of testimonies and praises, our new friend Javier stood up — on his first day in church — and praised God in the presence of all that God had called people from the United States to knock on his door and tell him and Terri about how to find Jesus.

The line at the border to return to the U.S. was long and hot that day, but we sweated out droplets of joy that God had done so much in so little time.

Pray for our church members returning home, that they would be on mission at their home churches. Pray for our host church of IBBA, that the pastor and his son would disciple all these new believers faithfully. Above all, praise God that He continues to use us in His mission to save souls of every tribe and tongue, one border at a time!

Gary Derbyshire is senior pastor of Apollo Baptist Church in Glendale.