Hannah was 17 years old when she learned there were places where people had never heard about Jesus. She was shocked. “How can I reach these people, God? I want to be the person you use where people need you.” Hannah realized she had a calling to those who had never heard and asked God to show her the path to reach them. The year was 1994.
After high school she studied to become an obstetrician. Hannah reached out to many mission organizations but none of them knew how to send her. All doors seemed to be closed. Hannah worked for a faith-based NGO for several years in community health, but she still felt restless and anxious to live out her true calling.
While Natalia was at university, her church hosted a week of prayer and fasting, where they were worshiping together every night. One night, the worship leader read Psalms 2:8: “Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.” The leader challenged the congregation to ask the Lord if he was giving them a specific nation as their inheritance. Immediately, Natalia saw an image of the Afghan flag waving. “Lord, if this is really my inheritance, confirm it to me,” she prayed. She saw the flag while praying on three consecutive nights. It was confirmation that God was calling her to Afghanistan. She was overwhelmed, but a passion to follow that calling burned inside of her.
She started looking for opportunities to go. She tried to go through her church, through nonprofits, and even through the UN. All doors were closed. She realized God would have to make a way. Natlaia spent four years in the corporate world and starting a campus ministry. Finally she was given an opportunity to go to Uruguay. “But Lord, Uruguay is not Afghanistan,” she prayed. However it was the closest opportunity she’d had, so she went.
These stories occurred outside of the United States, in places where the infrastructure to send missionaries to hard-to-reach places isn’t there. Things we take for granted in the United States—that if we receive a calling we’ll find someone to send us—are not a reality in much of the world.
Latin America is one of those places. “Getting sent as a Latino is extremely hard,” Dave, a Novo missionary who is confronting this problem head-on, said. “It’s hard to get funding, you generally need to speak English to partner with an international organization, and just to get a visa somewhere will be very, very difficult.” For example, to get a visa to Afghanistan as a Latin American, you need to be in person in either Turkey or Dubai, just to apply.
The missions movement is still very young in Latin America. Whereas the US has been sending missionaries for over 200 years, the current wave of missions in Latin America began about 35 years ago. The organizations that exist are small, sending maybe just a couple of missionaries a year. And that’s usually to places that are “easier access”—nearby countries, or maybe Africa.
At the same time, there has been a surge of mission mobilization in Latin America, and many people are receiving a heart for missions and for those who have never heard of Jesus. They want to go! But those who feel called usually feel stuck. For example, there is a mega-church in Argentina that held a missions class with 600 people attending. An amazing 200 people felt a call to missions, and the church was financially prepared to send all of them. But there was no one to actually send them. Similarly, in Panama, there is a two-week missionary training intensive program that serves about 200 participants at a time. Out of the 200, about 3 will be able to go—and it’s all due to lack of sending structures.
As a Latin American himself, Dave set out to answer this sending problem. He felt called to help Latin Americans pursue their call to the hard-to-reach parts of the world by creating a sending structure that was capable of getting them there. And so in 2020, he formed Reflejo, a Latin American mission sending organization.
Reflejo specializes in sending Latin Americans to countries that are hard to access. If someone comes to them with a call to an easier place, they will send them on to a different organization. Reflejo has been working hard to develop training resources in Spanish and Portuguese. Many resources available to missionaries in English do not exist in Spanish. Even something as simple as being able to homeschool your children in another country is not accessible to Spanish speakers. Moving finances into another country is very complicated. Their security training has to be completely different, because the US embassy isn’t going to be there to rescue any missionaries they send. And their missionaries have extra skills to learn—like enough English to make it through visa interviews.
It’s still a long and daunting process to follow a call to the hard-to-reach places, but now, for the first time for many people, it’s possible. Reflejo has been able to send an average of five missionaries each year since their beginning, successfully sent eight people in 2023, and they are still ramping up.
Reflejo was the needed answer for each of the women whose stories were shared at the start of this article.
Hannah was still working for her NGO in Peru when some new pastors came into her church who said they would send her on a short-term medical mission trip to the Middle East. Finally, after decades of waiting, Hannah was able to take a step, interacting with Muslim women, and confirming the passion she had to reach those who had never heard about Jesus. When she returned to Peru, her church learned about Reflejo. Now, Hannah is following her calling long-term, in Asia with Reflejo.
After two years in Uruguay, Natalia was able to visit Indonesia for a short time, and learned a lot about working in a Muslim context. Her heart was still burning to reach Afghanistan. In January of 2021, eight years after first receiving her call, she was back at her church in the Philippines, participating in the same week of prayer and fasting. During that week she tried knocking on doors to Afghanistan again, reaching out to mission organizations and looking for ways to serve refugees. And things were different. She met Dave, and it was an open door. “When I realized I might just be two or three steps away from ministering in Afghanistan or an Afghan community I was overwhelmed and incredibly grateful,” she said. Just before she was able to complete her travel into Afghanistan with Reflejo, the Taliban uprising occurred, and the borders were closed. But after some time and prayer, Reflejo was able to successfully send her to a neighboring country to work with Afghan refugees.
Reflejo has seen God’s hand of favor on them, bringing them Latin American staff for the sending organization whose resumes are highly unique and a perfect fit for the work, as well as helping them find pathways to the hard-to-reach places.
“It’s an undertaking that’s bigger than us,” Dave said. “We’re doing our part, but our part is not the main part. We are deeply aware of that. And in our prayer meetings every week, it’s ‘Without you, God, we can’t do it this week. We can’t do the things we’re trying to do without your help.’”
ABOUT THIS STORY
If you’d like to get connected with Reflejo and receive their newsletters, you can contact dan.barry@novo.org