“At first I wasn’t sure I could do it and then I questioned whether I would be able to do it well,” says Maritza Vélez about church planting. But she had more confidence when she began to participate in the church planter training modules with Multiplication Network Ministries (MNM) in Ecuador.

Maritza accepted Jesus as her Savior when she was a teenager but five years ago, she really got closer to God and became more involved in her church. It was through her work in the local church that motivated her to accept the call to plant a church.

MNM’s church planter training is made up of 12 modules, each adding a new topic and reinforcing what the church planters learned the month before. In the first module, Maritza was encouraged to visit the area where she was hoping to plant a church and assess it to better understand how to share the gospel.

Maritza visited Santa Elena and discovered that while the area did not have great material needs, she found the people were open to hearing the gospel. “It surprised me that various people asked us to keep visiting and share about God,” she says.

Before, Maritza hadn’t been sure of how to approach people to share the gospel with them. But the modules have given her direction and little by little, she is feeling that God is preparing her more every day.