On Thursday we started our three-day Conference On Grace in downtown La Ceiba.  Our team is providing this conference for local pastors and church leaders.  It is in an attempt to provide them with high quality, low price theological education that they would not otherwise receive.

After two days we have had over 40 attendees and anticipate additional participants on Saturday.  The group has been very engaging and has enjoyed the conference so far.  Saturday will be the final day of the conference.

For about $2.50 each participant receives a conference booklet in Spanish with lots of quality theology, three days of instruction and exercises, plus food and coffee.  We priced the conference so low to facilitate the attendance of poorer church leaders.

Mike has been acting as the director of the conference, Madison and Erin have been in charge of registration and the rest of our team has facilitated every move. Bill Yarbrough, the Latin America Director for MTW, has been providing all of the quality instruction in Spanish.

We are so pleased with this conference and pray for opportunities to provide similar events.

Today Mike, Erin and our teammate Andy completed the promotion of the Conference on Grace we will host in a week.  There are over 150 churches in La Ceiba.  There is no reliable phone or mail list.  We wanted to invite every church to attend.  A month ago our team set out to visit each church twice and personally invite the leadership to attend our conference.

Each teammate was given roughly 30 churches to find and visit.  In all, we visited over 150 churches two times each.  Each church was given a personal invitation (twice) and a verbal explanation about the conference.  This was a long and difficult process, but it was important to properly inform the Christian community about the conference.

We received responses varying from disinterest and mistrust to excitement and enthusiasm.  All the hard work is done now.  We have no idea if we will have 5 people or 200 people attend our Conference on Grace.  Pray that we have reached all that God wants in attendance.

In less then two weeks our team is hosting a conference on Grace for local Pastors and church leaders.  We are trying to invite leaders from the dozens of churches here in La Ceiba.  There is no yellow pages, no reliable mail system and no complete list of churches.  So, in order to promote this conference our team needs to go door to door to distribute invitations to all the church leaders.

Each member of our team is driving, biking or walking up and down every street and dirt road in town to find every little church hidden on back streets.  We are trying to personally invite every church leader in the community.

On Friday Mike took two of our friends from Armenia Bonito to help invite church leaders.  George and Walter drove with Mike up and down roads to find churches for five hours.  The boys had a great time talking with Pastors and sharing information about the upcoming conference.

Walter and George became great pitchmen and really enjoyed promoting the conference.  The three of them spent hours joking, laughing and talking about the conference.  It was important to promote the conference, but it was a great time to bond with some of friends from Armenia Bonito.

Our team is organizing an event here in La Ceiba, Honduras that has the potential to be a big deal.  We are putting on a three-day conference on “The Grace Of God”.  The event is May 28-30 here in La Ceiba.  We are trying to attract the Pastors and leaders of all the churches in La Ceiba.  We have rented a facility that can hold up to 200 people.

We have discovered that most of the churches in La Ceiba are lead by people who frequently have less then a sixth grade education.  They do the best with what they have, but often times lack a deep understanding of theology.  We are organizing this conference as a form of continuing theological education for church leaders.  If we can provide education to the leaders they will pass it on to their congregations.

The three day conference will cost each person $2.50 for quality Spanish language instruction, handouts and food.  We are bringing in Bill Yarbrough, the Latin American Director for MTW as the primary presenter.  Bill is fluent in Spanish, an experienced Latin American church planter and well versed in the topic of grace.

If this event goes well we hope to host additional conferences aimed at providing theological education to local church leaders.  We will keep you informed.  Please pray for us as we organize this conference.