Mission enlists new believers after partnership visits

I feel new. I feel new. Since Jesus came into my heart, I feel new.” 
   
That is the testimony of 76-year-old Senovia Zerpa, one of the newer members of Miranda Baptist Mission, located about halfway between Valencia and Barquisimeto in Venezuela.
   
“I may be a newer member, but I am the oldest member of the church,” Zerpa asserted. 
   
With eyes dancing and a smile on her face, she said she felt strong, like a young woman. “Not even the wrinkles on my face weigh me down anymore.” 
   
Zerpa is one of more than 20 people who have made professions of faith in Jesus Christ during Alabama Baptist partnership projects and have been incorporated into the membership of the Miranda Mission. 
   
“We have been praying to reach our neighbors,” said Jimmy Fornino, an orthopedic surgeon who serves as bivocational pastor of the mission. “Senovia lives right across the street.”
   
Zerpa had seen the people gather at the storefront church, had even heard their singing but never visited the service.  
   
In March 2005, a team from Willowbrook Baptist Church, Huntsville, in Madison Baptist Association visited with Zerpa in her home. 
   
“She was too sick to come to the service, so we took the service to her,” Fornino recalled. 
   
Zerpa prayed to receive Christ, and Dec. 10, 2005, she was baptized along with several others.
   
One of the changes in Zerpa’s life since her profession of faith was overcoming an addiction to tobacco. 
   
“I didn’t think I could ever give up my tobacco,” she said. But after Fornino and others prayed for her, tobacco began to look like evil, and she put it down never to pick it up again.
   
“It was like a miracle,” Zerpa said. 
   
Joining her in the baptismal waters was 68-year-old Celestina Villega. Her life had been difficult. Two of Villega’s children — a son and a daughter — were in prison at the time of her conversion.
   
“Pastor John (Stone, associate pastor of Willowbrook Baptist) visited my home and told me that God loved me,” she said. “He invited me to come to church, and that is when I heard the gospel. I prayed to receive Jesus and was baptized.” 
   
Villega said she has found a woman in the church who has become a spiritual mother to her, helping her learn the Bible and rely on God’s presence. 
   
Recently Villega needed money to help complete her daughter’s release from prison. 
   
“I was going to rent out half of my house to get the money,” she said. “But the Lord sent a family to me who was willing to provide the funds to complete my daughter’s release.” 
   
Yasmil Henriquez’s decision to accept Christ was more of a process. Henriquez’s wife was a Christian, active in the Miranda Mission. Many times, the church prayed for him, but he remained hostile to the gospel. 
  
In fact, Henriquez was hostile to the Willowbrook group when they first met. His wife had invited team members for a meal, and he openly communicated that he did not want them there. 
   
“It was the insistence of the Willowbrook group that softened my heart,” Henriquez recounted. “One of the members told me he expected me to be a Christian the next time he was here.” 
   
Henriquez said the love he saw in the Alabama group caused him to reconsider Jesus Christ. 
   
“I came to know that the only way to make it in life is with Jesus Christ as Savior,” he said. 
   
Now every volunteer team working at the Miranda Mission stays in Henriquez’s home. “I would leave my home in order for others to stay there,” he said. “It is that important to me.” 
   
Fornino acknowledged that not everyone who prayed the sinner’s prayer during the Alabama partnership ended up in a local church. 
   
“Sometimes people made decisions of the mouth and not decisions of the heart,” he said. “Here we take every name and try to enlist them in the church.” 
   
On the morning of Feb. 26, four people who prayed to receive Jesus Christ the night before — following the viewing of the “Jesus” film — came forward during the mission’s service. 
   
That afternoon, the mission contacted the one man who had viewed the film but did not attend the service. 
   
Fornino said he hoped Alabama Baptists realized something permanent was left behind from every partnership project. 
   
“Even if our mission is able to disciple only one of those who prays to accept Jesus, that is worthwhile,” he declared. 
   
“You (Alabama Baptists) are doing much more. You help us be creative in our evangelism. You help us plan well. You help us be better organized.”
   
Fornino noted that it adds credibility to the gospel when Venezuelans see North Americans who live out the love that the Bible talks about. 
   
“People take time to listen to the gospel when it is presented through the partnership projects,” he added. “That means it (the gospel) is less likely to be rejected.
   
“Miranda Mission is growing in quantity and quality because of the Alabama Baptist partnership. I hope Alabama Baptists feel every investment they have made in Venezuela is justified,” Fornino said. “God always uses Alabama Baptist volunteer teams.”