After talking with Harvest’s Mexico City Senior Pastor Antonio Munoz, you’ll begin to see the significance of God’s perfect timing. Years before Harvest Mexico City was even a thought in anyone’s mind, God was laying a foundation for Antonio’s family as well as a trust in the Lord’s amazing timing. In 1989, Antonio was planning on becoming a Catholic priest, but just before he could start seminary, his brother invited him to a men's Bible study, and Antonio was saved.

Years later, Antonio’s wife, Becky, was the only Spanish-speaking volunteer at a crisis pregnancy center in Dallas. In the summer of 2003, a young Hispanic woman came in who had saved just enough money to have an abortion. Becky explained that their center was not an abortion clinic and gave her encouragement and information on adoption, and then offered for the woman to have a sonogram. The young woman discovered that her baby was already 13 weeks along, and the type of abortion required at 13 weeks was more costly than what she had saved. She left with Becky’s information on adoption. Antonio and Becky prayed for several months that she would choose life and were surprised to hear from her again in January. With much praise to the Lord, Becky learned that this woman had not had an abortion! However, she also had not contacted an adoption agency, and her due date was less than two weeks away. Becky recalls, “At that moment, she asked a question that my heart will never forget, ‘Will you and your husband adopt my baby?”

Approval for adoption in Texas often takes three to five months, yet God's perfect timing and almighty hand was evident. “What usually takes months, took ten days,” Becky recalls, “And when our birth mom went into labor on February 4, 2004, I got to be in the delivery room, and we brought our sweet Jessica home two days later. Jessica means ‘God beholds.’ And we know God saw Jessica in the womb and knew our great desire to have a baby and set us apart for each other.”

After the adoption, the Lord drew Antonio and Becky’s hearts back to their hometown of Mexico City—thus beginning their path to Harvest. They moved back to Mexico to pastor a church that had recently endured a church split. After shepherding that church for six years, the group of people that had originally split from the church came to Antonio demanding the building back. While the courts could have settled it legally, Antonio and his church felt the high road was to give back the property and walk away. “We felt like the Lord was saying, ‘If someone asks for your tunic, give them your robe also,’” Antonio says. “We had invested a lot of money in that building, but we felt like God was saying, ‘Do not worry, I will take care of you, this is my church.’”

During that time, they were praying about establishing a church that looked like Harvest. Antonio was familiar with Harvest from his days at Moody Bible Institute, and Becky’s brother was on staff at Harvest. Unbeknownst to them, Becky’s brother had talked to Kirk Vanmaanen in the Fellowship about his brother-in-law’s situation, and Kirk asked if there would be any interest in them becoming a Harvest. Antonio was thrilled with the offer and again, in the Lord’s timing, just weeks after the decision was made, he left for Illinois to be a part of the training center.

After a few months of training, Antonio, Kirk, and John Cochran, an elder at Harvest Davenport (a HBF sending-base church that directly supports HBC Mexico City), went to Mexico to find a place for Antonio’s church to meet. There was an unattractive, old storefront that they were considering because the options and finances were limited, but in God’s perfect timing, that very week another church vacated it’s building and offered to rent their property. “It has two levels for ministry,” says Antonio, “and another level for parking, which is a miracle in Mexico City!”

Launching their church on September 4, 2011, Antonio had the privilege of baptizing 31 people three months later! They average 200 attendees on a given weekend. Regarding the challenge of planting the first Harvest in Latin America in one of the largest cities in the world, Antonio jokes, “There is a saying in Mexico, ‘Too much gravy for such a little turkey.’ I feel like that little turkey! But we look forward to seeing what the Lord will accomplish through us at Harvest Mexico City!”

Special Speakers, Prayer, Encouragement plus a delicious breakfast - the first Saturday of every month.  Men of all ages welcome.

During one of my first conversations with my then-preschool- aged daughter about Christ and her need for salvation, she was lying in my lap looking up at me. The perfect scenario for my precious little girl to learn about the Gospel, I thought. But soon after I started explaining in my very best kid-friendly theology, she became distracted. Still looking up at me from my lap, she announced,"Mom? Did you know that you have tiny hairs inside your nose?"

The second time she brought up questions about salvation, we were only a couple sentences into the conversation, when she noticed, "Look Mom -- I have lines on my toe!"

Talking to kids with short attention spans about these somewhat abstract ideas can be challenging. So one way we tried to help our little girls understand the Gospel was to create a gulf of sin right in our family room. Here's how you can do the same.

Item(s) Needed:
Colored Tape

Preparation:
Place one long line of colored tape on one side of a room representing God and another line of tape at the opposite end of the room representing "me." Then using the tape again, spell out the word, "sin" in the middle to illustrate how our sin separates us from God.



Lesson:
Next allow your children to try and cross from one line to the other -- they can hop, jump, skip or dive. Ours even tried cheating by shimmying along the couch. One word of caution, don't underestimate how far little legs can jump -- put the lines far apart to avoid their actually making it across to God!

Talk to your kids about ways people might try and get to God on their own. Then read Romans 3:23 together to explain how even with our very best efforts, we still fall short of God.

Next read Romans 5:8 and 6:23 together to show them how Christ died for us to make a way for us to be with God. Use the tape to make a cross from one side of the "divide" to the other to help them see how only Jesus can take away our sin and make a way to God. Kids will enjoy helping you mark the cross with tape and balancing on the narrow lines to make their way over to the other side.



If your children are still following, you can spend some time talking about how we receive this gift by admitting that we have sinned and deserve death and and about how we can receive God's gift of salvation in Christ. We can do this by repenting or turning away from our sin and trusting in Him for salvation.

Closing Prayer: If your child understands and is ready, guide him or her through a prayer to place their faith in Christ. However if they are not ready to respond, don't push the decision. Instead pray for the Spirit to continue whispering Truth to their hearts in ways they will understand. Then be ready to continue taking opportunities to respond to questions. Even if you only get a few sentences of simple explanation into them before they trail off to random notions such as nose hairs or toe lines, you can still know that you are laying an important foundation for their growing faith!

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Do you have a practical way of helping children understand the Gospel? If so, please share it by commenting below.