What a beautiful autumn! Beautiful not only for the colorful fall foliage, but for the launch of a new year of harvest ministry!
This past ministry year has been extraordinary. By the time we reach the end of 2024, we will have registered one of the highest-achieving years in our entire history. By God’s grace, and with the strong support of friends like you, the work keeps growing.
We are always doing more—together. This is not “my” ministry, it’s not just our staff, or people in the field. What’s truly thrilling about World Link Ministries is that we together are achieving so much. Your partnership in prayer and giving sets in motion the beautiful work of PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD being reached with the Gospel!
- This year, we have seen 150 churches planted in Central Asia.
- Hundreds of new churches have been launched in Venezuela and Cuba every month!
- Children are being mentored and led to Christ in East Asia in greater numbers. We’re preparing for 1,000 students in the program this school year!
- Churches launched in the Philippines: 146 and counting!
- The number of churches planted in Ukraine continues to multiply in spite of the harsh reality of war—maybe because of the war. As people cry out for hope in the midst of such seeming hopelessness, hundreds of new churches have been added during the three years of the war so far.
This list of milestones could go on and on! As I write these words, we are 90 days away from the culmination of this high-achieving year.
But there are finishing steps yet ahead, in these 90 days. My prayer is that you and all of our friends will be prompted by the Spirit to focus on closing out this year as one of our best ever for eternal gains.
One key priority remains a focus: Spain. We have acquired a new campus for the work in Spain, our flagship country. The property is nestled on a rocky butte called Honey-Comb Rock, half an hour outside of Madrid. (You must come visit!) This beautiful site has served for the past 30 years as home to a camp for churches in the Madrid metro area.
We were thrilled that the longtime owners offered it to us for sale—and donated their industrial kitchen to help us get underway. We will now go from the challenges of having no campus at all to having what must certainly be the loveliest seminary campus in Spain—but of course, far more important are the practical problems that this campus will solve.
This new permanent home campus will bring together a number of seminary functions that have been scattered far and wide all these years . . .
- A library!—Our library books have actually been in storage because of a lack of adequate space for a library.
- Student housing!—Our students have been housed in various apartments, wherever we could find space to rent. (What a joyous day when we finally surrendered those apartments this summer!)
- Housing for summer evangelistic campaigns, summer campers, and visitors from the U.S.!
- Parking! (This is not a joke. Parking is insanely difficult in Spain’s cities because most high-rise apartment buildings aren’t required to provide parking for their own residents. Everyone relies on street parking, which is in terribly short supply. Some who have worked in Madrid refuse to return simply because parking is so impossible!)
Renovations to the property have been our strong focus in recent weeks as we work to transform the building from a camp facility into an educational facility before the start of classes. Now, however, our attention must turn to finances . . .
By God’s grace and with the help of generous friends like you, we’ve already paid 40% of the purchase price. We must pay the remaining 60% by year-end. With your help, we need to raise $750,000 to purchase the building, remodel the space for our use, and finish this year in the black.
I wonder how God will meet the need. On one hand, it’s great that we’re not talking about climbing a multi-million-dollar mountain. On the other hand, we truly need God’s people to step up.
Could that be you? Maybe we have 15 friends who could give $50,000 each? Every gift—large or small—will be put to our harvest work. I ask you to pray about how God might use you to meet this important goal (also considering the tax advantages of giving by December 31).
(You realize, I’m sure, that I don’t typically focus on a fundraising need so directly. In fact, generous friends have already given this year to fund a number of smaller projects, like a vehicle for food distribution in Asia, a bus in Cuba, a van in Madrid, and others. I’m so grateful for every gift! But as we face such a significant year-end challenge, I feel sure you want to know our situation.)
It’s appropriate that we seize this God-given opportunity because our seminary in Madrid is the flagship of the work God has accomplished through us together over the past 30 years. It’s a living, breathing testimony to the power of your generosity and your faithful prayer support.
I first went to Spain in 1985, and before long I heard the question: Can you please start a seminary for Spain? God helped establish it in 1991; then we began setting up extensions around Spain . . . and then beyond Spain!
- First, we were called to Morocco, at the request of believers there. (That extension had to be conducted in Arabic, of course.)
- Next, we were invited into Cuba. By the time the Cuban government discovered we were an American ministry operating a seminary in Spain and reaching out into Cuba, the Cuban people had already embraced the work, and we were already hugely productive for the Lord!
- Because of what God did through us in Cuba, we were invited, of all places, to Ukraine, 6,000 miles away! We’ve been serving there for 25 years, and we’ve seen thousands of churches planted there.
- Our work in Ukraine inspired believers in neighboring Romania to invite us to train workers—so we’ve planted 160 churches there as well!
But still God wasn’t finished. Invitations kept coming in from other countries, some of them located just across the border from a successful work, some because their culture would require local leaders, not foreigners, to reach their people—and some simply desperate for churches to be planted, because nothing else had worked.
Until today . . . this work, to which God has called us together, is ongoing on every inhabited continent on the planet. And we continue to hear the heart’s cry of believers in faraway places: in Iran, in Kenya, in Peru—these three just in the past 90 days!
To what do we owe the honor? To the greatness of the Great Commission. We train and deploy people, in their own countries, to train and deploy local leaders . . . to saturate their own regions with the Gospel, and to plant churches.
And in this way, by the power of God’s love, you have a personal hand in changing the topography of Christianity in nation after nation.
This is what Christ has called us to do until He comes back!
“Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20a).
Just as you have heard me say before: The Great Commission is the ministry of reconciliation—into which God has enrolled every single person who has been reconciled to Him—which means you and me too!
And I’m so grateful that our evangelism and church-planting strategy has found favor with the Lord. So many people have come to faith in Christ! It is working. Your seed-sowing is reaping an abundant harvest, in field after field after field!
- Now, we face a year-end test. We are so close! Can we cross the finish line in victory? I ask you, humbly but also boldly, to join me in giving generously—and following your gift with fervent prayer.
Pray first of all for the lost souls in the harvest fields that God has opened to us. Pray also for the workers, for strength and for wisdom. Pray too that God by His Spirit will speak to the hearts of others like you, to join us in praying and giving for the sake of this work around the world.
Together, as we close 2024 strong, we have the potential to accomplish still more for the cause of Christ in 2025. I honestly believe, after the great, strenuous achievement of this final quarter of the year, it will be a joy—it will almost feel “easy”—to take on next year’s opportunities and challenges!
Ultimately, even if we “sacrifice” toward our current financial need, it’s not the kind of sacrifice that others, in other lands, are making every day. I think of a church planter in Asia, high in the mountains. He joined our work in April. He and his family live in deep poverty. Yet they are so happy to be serving the Lord!
When I look at them, I think of Les Miserables. Sad stories abound. The church-planter’s brother and the brother’s wife died in a tragic accident. The church planter took in the couple’s two young children. Last year, they had a baby of their own.
Then tragedy struck again. A colossal landslide buried the church planter’s humble house, along with their entire winter’s food supply.
You could hardly blame him if he quit, if he gave up—yet through his tears, he is resolute. His attitude is faith-fueled: Give me the tools, and I will plant a church.
We have rushed emergency funds to help him build a basic house. (The “fanciest” detail: a metal roof, to resist corrosion.)
And he works on. He doesn’t have much, but he works on. He regards himself as blessed to be serving the Lord!
In comparison to this precious brother, many of us have “needs” that are just mere inconveniences. Our world is a world of terrible need. In the United States, we live lives of financial privilege. We already “walk in green pastures” and “beside still waters.” Others like the church planter can only envision green pastures and still waters, by faith.
- For the sake of a waiting world, I urge you to give whatever you can today. Join us as we join the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Let us reach out to our world in the name of the One who became poor for our sake. Let us become His hands and His feet, to bring a grand finale to a powerfully fruitful year. Let us trust that God will lead us to victory. And the eternal return on investment will be yours forever!
Thank you for your faith, and thank you for your friendship. I look forward to receiving your God-inspired, prophetically enthusiastic gift, to help finish 2024 with a great victory. God bless you!
With the Lord of the Harvest,
Dr. Manny Fernandez
P.S. Proverbs 4:18 says, “But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day.” Today, we only see the dawning. The best is yet to come!