Argentina | Sending Latin Americans to Hard-to-Reach Places
Hannah (name changed) was 17 years old when she learned there were places where people had never heard about Jesus. “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.
But Hannah was from Latin America, a place without infrastructure to send missionaries to hard-to-reach places. The missions movement is only about 35 years old in Latin America, and the mission organizations that exist are small, sending just a couple of missionaries per year. And that’s usually to places that are “easier access”—nearby countries, or maybe Africa.
There has been a surge of people in Latin America receiving a heart for missions and those who have never heard of Jesus in recent years, 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.
Novo staff Dave, a Latino himself, has sought to address 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, that specializes in sending them to countries that are hard to access (i.e. closed countries). They’ve been working hard to develop mission training resources in Spanish and Portuguese, and help to equip candidates in all the skills they will need to flourish overseas (including things folks in the States might take for granted, like enough English to complete foreign visa interviews, driving training, and what to do in a dangerous situation with no embassy set to evacuate them).
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 consistently sent five or more missionaries each year since their founding (eight last year!). One of the people Reflejo successfully sent was Hannah, who is thrilled to be living out her calling to the unreached in Asia!
