Missionaries Follow God's Leading to Uruguay
The Message
Jesus is indeed the way, the truth, and the life. His words have been translated into over five hundred languages since He first spoke them two millennia ago. Jesus paid the death penalty required for sin, and His death and resurrection are necessary for salvation. Jesus is the only way to eternal life and a relationship with God. What better way to share the message of Jesus than in the “heart language”—the native tongue—of people?
Missions requires a sacrifice of self and often of one’s own culture and language. It requires that a missionary become vulnerable in another culture, speaking another language, for the sake of the gospel.
Uruguay is statistically the most biblically unreached country in South America. This fact first attracted Jon Rehfeldt (’06, ’08, ’11) to the country while he was completing his Master of Divinity degree at Maranatha. Desiring to be involved in a “grass-roots” ministry to unreached people groups, he researched the different countries in South America. “I found that Uruguay is very atheistic, and that they have a high suicide rate,” said Jon.
The Calling
Five years after he surrendered to God to be a missionary, Jon decided to follow God’s leading in his life: reaching the people of Uruguay with the gospel. He worked part-time at Maranatha teaching first-year Greek and substitute teaching for several Bible classes while traveling to churches on the weekends to raise financial support. He also began taking Spanish classes and getting involved in a Spanish Sunday School class at his local church.
The Preparation for Uruguay
While Jon was preparing to go to Uruguay, God was working in the heart of another student about ministry in a Spanish-speaking country. Michelle (“Micki”) Kibler, a Marketing Management major and daughter of two of Maranatha’s staff members, spent a summer in Peru completing the language immersion trip requirement for her Spanish minor. Upon returning to school in the fall, she gave testimony in chapel that God had used the trip to reveal His desire for her to be involved in missions to a Spanish-speaking country. Although she had originally planned to go into the business world, Micki surrendered to go to the mission field.
With a little help from their local church pastor, Jon and Micki got to know each other better, got engaged, and were married in June 2013. Together they finished deputation and preparations to move to Uruguay. “From the beginning of our marriage, we knew Watertown would not be our home,” Jon shared. “We never really got settled in, and that made the transition to Uruguay easier. When we arrived, we met lots of new people and visited churches in Montevideo, the captial-a ministry that was similar to deputation. We learned to be flexible and enjoy new experiences on deputation, and we currently are applying that learning to Uruguay.”
God prepared Jon and Micki in a number of ways for the ministry in which they have been serving since September 2014. Jon’s experience teaching on the undergraduate level at Maranatha prepared him to take over the Instituto Bíblico Bautista del Uruguay, a Bible Institute in the city of Colonia. “Previously, the institute used instructional videos,” Jon explained. “We have started the process of replacing the videos with both face-to-face and online courses in the institute to strengthen local church leadership. Our first online class, Biblical Greek, has already started with nine students.
Jon also noted that Micki’s marketing degree gave her “many tools for organization, and she learned how to effectively present ideas. Already she has designed some very nice literature for our outreach activities!”
Both Jon and Micki are forming relationships for the purpose of sharing the greatest news of God’s love. “Not many churches in Uruguay go door-to-door, but we do and have seen the Lord bless that effort,” Jon said. “We are also involved in regular visitation and recently met a family that lives across the street from us. As we were inviting people to the Easter services, they invited us in; and we talked for nearly an hour. They were very interested in the gospel and said their doors are open to us whenever we may want to come back and talk more. We will be visiting them regularly in hopes of winning them to Christ.”