How Missionaries and Nationals Collaborated to Reach Unreached People Groups in Mexico

Jan 26, 2023

“There were 38 Unreached People Groups in Oaxaca, Mexico when we started and maybe 22 when we left, but missionaries and local churches were catching the vision to engage them all.”  

Founder Grant Haynes shares the inspiring story of missionaries and nationals collaborating on a unified mission to reach every last village in their area and the simultaneous birth of Global Frontier Missions.

 

As newlyweds with a passion for missions, Grant and Jenn Haynes started their missions journey by joining Youth With A Mission in Oaxaca City, Mexico for their first three years. These years provided training, ministry experience, and time for them to get their bearings in Mexican culture and way of life. But their hearts longed for the Mixteco people groups tucked away in mountain villages toward the west. Scoping out a central market town named Tlaxiaco, they soon moved there, joining what God was doing in the area with other ministries. Over the next ten years, their mission became three-fold: mobilize nationals, make disciples in unreached villages, and train more foreign missionaries.  

 

 

Tlaxiaco was a diverse city and a strategic place for mobilization, discipleship, and training. Villagers representing the many ethnicities and languages from the area would come to town on Saturdays to buy supplies. Some of the young or ambitious ones would move there in hopes of building a better life. Pastors and church leaders with a heart for evangelism recognized the opportunity and came in from other parts of Mexico. A pioneer named Alejandro started Sin Fronteras and diligently ministered in the villages, bringing in other Mexicans to train them as well as mentoring Grant and Jenn. They addressed local relations through discipleship and studying Scriptures on loving neighbors, enemies, and “Samaritans,” and urged believers to share the gospel in neighboring villages.

 

Grant and Jenn also recognized great potential among believers in the city of Tlaxiaco and presented churches with the need for more workers, urging members to consider going back to their hometowns to share the Good News. Grant shares their thought process, “They could probably do it better than we could, and we’re happy to see them do it… With all that, the work moved forward and advanced!

 

Meanwhile, Grant and Jenn prayerfully chose a village named Yucuañe and began visiting regularly. At first, the people were suspicious of them and their motives for coming. Speculations circulated about taking advantage of them or their unique language, taking their ancestors’ artifacts, or even stealing children. To build trust over time, Grant and Jenn would sit in a little store drinking soda. They slowly began to have conversations, were invited into peoples’ homes, and were taught the local techniques for planting beans. They were asked to teach English at a local school and were even invited to become “padrinos,” social godfathers with the honor and responsibility to help sponsor celebrations. After five years of building trust and sharing the gospel, Jenn baptized the very first believer from this people group. A few others became believers as well. After this, church members from Tlaxiaco and staff members from Sin Fronteras came, and Grant and Jenn passed the baton to them to continue discipleship and church planting. Joshua Project now lists the Mixtecos of Yucuañe as 95% Christian with 8% Evangelical.

 

 

During their ten years in Tlaxiaco, Grant’s heart was to mobilize more missionaries. He founded GFM and brought short-term teams to see first-hand the collaborative efforts among unreached peoples and invited them to consider their role in missions. For those who sought deeper involvement, GFM started an English Missionary Training School and trained 103 missionaries while based in the state of Oaxaca. After serving there for 10 years, Grant and Jenn felt led to shift the focus of GFM from Oaxacan people groups to the majority-unreached 10/40 Window on the other side of the world. With Sin Fronteras, local churches that had caught the vision, and a team of 6 missionaries brought from the US, Grant and Jenn felt the situation was in good hands. Through prayerfully seeking God’s will, they selected the diverse city of Clarkston, Georgia, USA to begin the next phase of GFM.

 

 

While it may play out differently in every corner of the world, God is at work to fulfill His promise in Revelation: “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language , standing before the throne and before the Lamb,” (Revelation 7:9, emphasis added). This year, we at GFM are praising God with all our hearts for this faithful pioneering work being done in the state of Oaxaca. What would it look like for more and more pockets across vastly-unreached South, Southeast, and Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa to have similar stories? We yearn and pray and keep plowing away, trusting that God will take our simple efforts of mobilizing, training, and multiplying, connect them with His broader story and body of believers, and fulfill His promise to complete this pioneering work… until all have heard.

 

Connect with Us to Learn More

Written by: A GFM Staff Member

Share by: