Fellowship Guatemala is a ministry of Iglesia Biblica run by pastor Daniel Bran. Daniel and his family spent last year in Little Rock going through FBC’s Residency Program and are now back in Guatemala city starting their own Church Planting Residency Program with a mission to “Equip, Plant, and Transform…”.
Monday was a big day for Fellowship Guatemala with two big meetings:
I) Back to School
We piled in Daniel’s van and headed across town to SETECA, the largest Spanish speaking seminary in Latin America, to meet with president Jim Adams. SECECA has a close association with Dallas Theological Seminary, which is where many of FBC’s pastors and Residents studied.
After catching up (Daniel and Teddy are SETECA graduates and former students of Jim’s), Daniel and David Watson pitched the vision for Fellowship Guatemala…. planting i2 Churches in Central America. Jim liked the idea and appreciated the progress made in the last months. Jim then agreed to help fill a needed component in the program - insuring the Residents had a Biblical understanding for the i2 vision (making a difference in the world). This is a great thing for both Fellowship Guatemala and SETECA. The former benefiting from the academic and teaching expertise of the seminary and the latter having a relationship with a good, externally focused, church who is planting churches. This gives SETECA an excellent place to refer students for the additional training needed to plant a church.
II) Lunch with the Prado Family
Eduardo’s family owns the Guatemala campus of Atlantic International University. They are Christ followers and a joy to be around. At the restaurant we ran into one of Eduardo’s former students who was celebrating a birthday. This man grew up very poor, acquiring his first pair of shoes when he was 14. Looking to be in his 50’s, he has earned an MBA and owns his own company. Watching the interaction between former student and teacher made me like Eduardo even more.
At lunch Daniel and David pitched the Church Planting vision and asked for Eduardo to join the cause. I captured the clip below after the interaction:
