Word Planters

The Gower Family

April-May 2025

Shana and I recently returned from the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico where we had the privilege of putting on another missions conference for a group of pastors and church leaders. Just under one hundred people attended the two-day event. We shared about God’s heart for the nations and the great need for the Gospel in unreached parts of the world. In the final session of the conference, we asked the question, “What will you do with the reality that you’ve been presented with? How will you respond?” In the next few minutes, the altar was flooded with pastors and leaders, prayerfully responding to a call to action. Many were in tears as they made commitments to GO or to SEND. It was a privilege once again to see God move on people’s hearts and we wait with expectant hope that some will take intentional steps to bring the light of the Gospel to the darkest places in the world!  

 ​One of our favorite things about these conferences is the personal connections that God seems to orchestrate. While we were in Albania last year, we met a young lady from Mexico. We asked her to come to the Mexico conference to share her experience of serving in Albania. Her testimonies added richness to the conference as a whole. But what was truly heartwarming was the encouragement she provided to another Mexican young lady who has felt called to mission work and was blessed to have someone from her home country with first-hand experience answer her questions and speak to her doubts. There was also another lady we were able to pray with and encourage through our own experiences on the field. She had served in Peru, but was now back in Mexico, waiting on the Lord for direction. That time of waiting can be difficult and confusing; we have been there several times! We thank God for these special connections and for how He uses our experiences to reassure and inspire others.

In less than two weeks, we will leave for Dominican Republic where we will host a similar conference in a new city. This will be our third missions conference in the Dominican Republic, each in a different city. Over the past several months we have been working diligently to put together all the logistics to host this event. The local pastors and leaders tell us that we should expect between 200 and 300 people to attend. As we prepare, we want to share a need with you and invite you to partner with us in this vision to mobilize Latin American believers to the mission field. We agreed to do this conference in faith, even though we do not have the funds in hand to cover it. The total cost for these conferences is about $5,000 per conference. This investment of money and time is something we are most willing to continue to do as we have seen God deeply touch the lives of those who attend. We still need to raise the full amount to cover the cost of this upcoming conference in the DR. Would you consider partnering with us? If you have any questions, please reach out as we would be happy to share more details.

In addition to the conference, Shana will be giving a TBRI (trauma-informed) training to the members of "Comunidad Bernabe". This is the group from our Dominican church who started a lay counseling ministry a few years ago. You may remember that we started out doing some training with a group of about 5 people when the ministry was getting started. The members of "Comunidad Bernabe" have been very active in the community and we are excited for the opportunity to help further equip them as the ministry grows.

 

Dan, Shana, and Mikaela