As a teenager, Henry Flores decided to leave behind his Christian roots and follow a different path. “I was always judging others and so I left the church. I began to get lost in alcohol. I let my friends carry me away. I was not okay. But every time I tried to quit the addiction, I couldn’t do it. Only Christ could help me defeat the addiction,” Henry shares.

Henry thought more about his life and about what would become of his children if something happened to him. “That’s when I came back to the ways of Jesus Christ. I told my wife that we were going to start attending church. I saw the need in my life, and I rested in God’s promise that He would finish the work He had begun in me.”

Back in a church family and reconciled with God, Henry found the freedom he had desired for so long. Since then his heart has been committed to serve God. When his denomination invited him to join their long-term plan of planting churches by taking part in the training with Multiplication Network Ministries (MNM), Henry accepted.

“[The training] has been very helpful and good because, thank God, we are reaching people with a different way of talking about the Word,” he says. “We want to always have more tools for the work of the Kingdom of God.”

When Henry needed to determine a place to plant a church, he was impacted by the hunger in the people of the neighborhood Berlín, located in the Guatemalan region of Retalhuleu. When he began working, one family joined him and after that, two more. Now, around 15 people are in discipleship and are part of the new church.

Henry continues to reach out to others in the community and found out that some were not really interested. But when he asks them if the church can pray for them, they accept.

“One day I was visiting a lady and she began to have a lot of pain in her stomach. We prayed for her and she received healing. She is now part of our group!” Henry shares, happy to see how God has been acting in unpredictable ways. Testimonies like this have allowed the people, little by little, to see that God is real and that they can reach out to Him.

For this church planter, the task has just started. But Henry is not discouraged because he knows there are many, just like him, who need to know the Word and be rescued and reconciled with God.