We had left Argentina in 2000 and moved back to the States, as Sergio began traveling to the nations with the message of holiness. Sergio felt the Lord calling him to plant a network of churches in Argentina, but NOT to move there! We had some friends who were gathering in a home, so we contacted them to begin our first church plant. Of course, one of the first things you do when “planting a church” is to get a building. A friend of ours helped us find a space in La Plata, Argentina; we rented it, then had it painted, bought chairs, a pulpit, etc., and set a launch date for our first internet church.
When launch day came, we were living in South Bend, Indiana. We had help from a contact in the Notre Dame University IT Department to make the connection. Our new group gathered in the new rented space in Argentina; we all gathered in excitement in our home. We tried to make the connection over the Internet, AND THE CONNECTION FAILED! Even though we had practiced and connected several times previously, we could NOT connect to Argentina that day. Sergio really struggled with that and he cried out to the Lord, “God, You would not let this connection fail on the day of our launch!”. Yes, He did. Sergio was heartbroken.
However, God had different plans! During that week following the (failed) launch, while we were re-grouping, we heard of more people in other places that wanted to connect with us. That meant that the original “point to point” connection we had tried the week before was not going to work. We needed to “broadcast” to several cities. We kindly begged the owner of the space we had rented to release us from the contract, as we realized we did not need a building, chairs and pulpit for this new endeavor. He kindly released us.
The next week, we had figured out how to do a broadcast. We began to meet weekly with people connecting from a few places and nations. Our online church was born. (BTW, almost nobody was broadcasting a service at that time; we were pioneers in online church services. . .and faced a lot of criticism, even from godly friends.) I just found this blurb in one of our newsletters back then:
WHY DO MINISTRY ON THE INTERNET? The New Testament preachers reached the public arenas–-synagogues, market places, public forums--where ideas were discussed and where the multitudes and crowds gathered. Today, people meet on the internet through chat rooms, web sites, messenger, email dialogues, video conferences, and other virtual means of communication. If we Christians do not invade the internet with the gospel, soon, we will live to regret it. The children of darkness are invading it; a recent statistic estimates that 30% of the internet content is pornographic. We as Christians must invade the internet and use it to make disciples.
Then in 2005, our youngest son, Miqueas, was injured by a compressed-air bb gun. We immediately asked for prayer around the world, and Sergio began to meet daily online with his father, some missionary friends and others who were willing to intercede with us for our son. The daily prayer groups were born out of that time of desperation. (We originally called the prayer groups ministry “Welogin”.) Today we have over 430 daily prayer groups registered on our website www.comunionet.com, with people praying from an estimated 20 nations.
These groups have been a blessing to our lives, as well as others, as they provide daily Christian fellowship, discipleship, people to help carry our burdens in prayer, and allow us to sharpen each other spiritually. To God be the glory for leading us to this new wineskin. We celebrate His faithfulness to us over these past 20 years.
