María Córdoba is planting a new church in Santino, on the outskirts of Managua, Nicaragua. She is working as a result of the vision of her mother church, Ministerio Restauración (Restoration Ministry), to plant 500 new churches in 5 years.

For María, it is important to make the Kingdom of God known to distant communities and she believes planting healthy churches is the way to do it.

María completed the church planter training provided by you through Multiplication Network Ministries (MNM) and was challenged to determine where God was calling her to plant a church. At first María wasn’t sure where to go but she went out to observe the needs in her context. She prayed and asked God to guide her to the right place. That is how she arrived in Santino.

“When I first visited with my friend, we did not know anyone. We started asking questions and getting to know more about the community. We also started to evangelize and follow-up,” María says.

One of the challenges María faced was many people from other churches seeing her church planting work as competition. But she assures them more churches just mean more people who can be reached by the gospel and discipleship.

God has been supporting María’s work in the community and one of the first people to accept Christ was Elsa. She was going through a health problem and María prayed with her. They also prayed for Elsa’s son who was in jail. They rejoiced together when God healed Elsa and her son returned home. Now Elsa’s son is also part of this new community of believers.

María continues to disciple the members of this new church plant, sharing the love of Jesus with everyone who comes to visit.