We’re starting to get into the groove of life here in El Salvador, we’ve established what a routine looks like for us and we now understand what ministry will look like for us here. Allow me to share that with you.
About La Red
La Red is a church in the beach town of El Tunco, El Salvador. The name means “The Net”. They got started when one of the members of the Castellano family started using his surfing as a platform to share Jesus. The whole family was eventually led to move to the coast from San Salvador to start ministry here full time. The little church offers a casual service on Saturdays where all are welcome. They wanted the locals and surfers to feel free to come as they are. The small service for adults takes place in an open air pavilion while there are two Sunday School classes for children are happening in the two small classrooms on site. The youth classes, led by our host Andrea, for ages 10 and up in one room. The younger children with Mrs. Castellanos in the other classroom — yep, babies to 9 year olds in one room. The main service is led by the patriarch of the family.
Our team helps with either the youth or the kids during the service, leading ice breakers, playing games and eventually teaching a lesson.
La Red also hosts a women’s ministry on Tuesday afternoons. So far our team has been responsible for helping watch all the childcare at this time. This has become one of the best times for us to practice our Spanish skills, and if all else fails a hand shake and a big smile usually get us by. Tuesday mornings Mr. Castellanos hosts a discipleship time for some of the men of the church.
Throughout the year La Red is also host to English classes for youth that show an interest and demonstrate a level of responsibility. This past week our team was able to jump in and help the students with some basic conversation skills and practice some of our Spanish skills at the same time.
In addition to these weekly activities they host a “Summer Camp” in the months of November and December for students when they are out of school, various community outreach programs, mentoring at the local orphanage, and surf outreach and camps. They also host several short term mission teams throughout the year.
Our responsibilities
As a team we help out with the scheduled ministries on Tuesdays and Saturdays. We will also be going to the orphanage once a week and leading bible study there. Ongoing throughout the month we all have individual projects that we are working on. Kelley, Will and Rachael are creating social media content for all of the ministries here to keep pushing the ministry forward. Courtney is putting her education degree to work by helping to create lessons for the “Summer Camp” program. While Caleb and I are helping with administrative tasks related to a relaunching of the Surfing Missions ministry. This ministry will be responsible for organizing all of the short term missions for the ministries in the future.
In addition to specific roles with La Red we are also striving to connect with the locals and have meaningful conversations with them inviting them to church on Saturday and sharing the gospel. In all aspects of ministry our team is struggling with the language barrier. We’ve had a good attitude about it and we are picking up more and more language everyday. We are extremely grateful we are in an area that is used to travelers that don’t speak the language and are extremely gracious with us.
We are hopeful for the impact that we are having here as we love on children, talk about Jesus and create time and space for our hosts to accomplish more as well. Our special projects should create a lasting impact on the ministry to help them more effectively reach people of El Salvador.
Please pray with us for:
- Active faith in the community
- For us to find opportunities to serve everywhere we go
- For us to be reminded that this is not about us, but about the people we serve and God’s glory
- Pray for our mind set as our ministry this month doesn’t look like what we expected
- That the language barrier not be a faith barrier
