April 2006

Dear Family in Jesus Christ.

We give thanks to God for this opportunity to send our warmest greeting to you, feeling at the same time in our hearts the deep impulse that Christ has set upon us to bear witness of his name on behalf of you who provide spiritual support for Presbyterian missionaries such as ourselves. Grace and peace to you from our merciful God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We have been wrestling with contradictory feelings in regard to the subject for this newsletter. On one hand, we’re eager to write about the good things that we witness in the mission field. At the same time, we hesitate to simplify or reduce the wealth and wideness of God’s mission in the African context.

As we were preparing this letter, two experiences came to mind. The first took place in Houston, Texas, back in 1989. Gloria and I were on interpretation assignment, and one day during a morning devotional a group of church staff shared their feelings regarding the overseas mission work of our church. One said, “It breaks my heart when I read the stories that our missionaries write. I’m tired of reading stories only about misery, poverty, and people with sad and dirty faces. Isn’t there anything beautiful of that part of the world?” The pastor’s concern made sense to us then, and we understood it as a powerful lesson for future mission interpretation work.

The second experience has to do with the music we hear while we ride the public taxi back and forth to our working place. There’s a very popular Christian song here that goes “Come and see what the Lord has done, what the Lord has done, what the Lord has done.”

Song, we know, is the whisper of the Holy Spirit, which blows in surprising ways, touching lives, healing and releasing people in times when oppressive powers and principalities of darkness are at work opposing the progress of the gospel. “Come and see what the Lord has done” is the voice of a great multitude of witnesses of Christ who are doing evangelism despite limited financial resources.

During a recent trip to Nairobi, Kenya, we worshiped on Sunday morning in a Protestant church. The attendance and the dynamic worship were impressive and touching. We have seen the same phenomenon in Cameroon and here in Equatorial Guinea. In our local church every Sunday morning, worship is a celebration of joy with music, singing, and dancing, where everyone gets involved in praising and hearing the word of God.

Yes, God’s Spirit is whispering among us. Nevertheless, it’s not just a story about triumph. There are also shadows around the signs of God. You may remember in one of our last newsletters, we shared the story of the fire in Presbyterian High School. The story did not finish there. On Monday morning a week later somebody put a dead animal on the podium where I address the students during devotions. The message was intimidating. People told us that it was related to evil practices meant to stop the ministry of the church. The disturbing thought is that members of Christian churches practice a religious syncretism where Jesus is only one more good guy amidst other deities from the unknown world. An interesting but not disregarded part in this story is the advice that Gloria and I received from a pastor-evangelist of our church. He told us categorically not to eat any food offered to us by unknown persons.

Yes, a new Pentecost is taking place here in the periphery of our world, but it is also true that millions and millions of persons need to get to know Jesus as the only and exclusive redeemer of personal and community human life. People here are hungry for God, and therefore you and we have the apostolic mandate to continue spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ with no fear and without delay.

Join us in prayer

• For the outreach program of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Equatorial Guinea. We are engaged in an ambitious plan to double the number or local congregations by 2007. We need your support to reproduce teaching materials and to mobilize an evangelistic team throughout the countryside.
• For our education ministry through five functioning schools, one in town and four in the interior of the country. These schools are self-sustaining, but the national church needs more financial support. Those five teaching centres urgently need better classrooms and proper school supplies.
• For the pastoral leadership of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Equatorial Guinea, that they may put aside personal agendas and set priorities for the unity and integrity of the national church.

In Jesus Christ’s love,

Andres & Gloria Garcia

The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 319