Robert Nichols and his wife, Deborah, grew up in the same town and same church, attending college and seminary together. Today, as International Mission Board (IMB) missionaries to Uruguay, they’re still directed toward an identical goal — spreading the gospel.
In Uruguay, it is a diversity of religious beliefs, rather than a lack of religion, that impedes evangelical Christians. Although two-thirds of Uruguayans are professing Roman Catholics, only about half of them regularly attend church. About 2 percent of the population is Protestant and 2 percent is Jewish.
“All the different religions that exist in the United States are here,” said Nichols.
“In addition, there are Afro-Brazilian indigenous religions called Macumba, which is a form of spiritualism spreading across South America. In the midst of this, we’re preaching Jesus Christ,” he said. “We need to keep people from mixing Christianity with other ideologies. We’re preaching to a very religious world that is also very lost.”
The Nicholses are natives of the Athens area, where they and their families were members of Sardis Springs Baptist Church. “We weren’t exactly childhood sweethearts, but we started dating when Deborah was still a teenager,” Robert Nichols said.
Marrying in 1976, they dedicated their lives to Christian service three years later and were called to serve as missionaries in 1981. They entered Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. There Robert Nichols received a master’s in divinity. Deborah Nichols earned a master’s in social work, taking a semester off when their son, Adam, was born in 1988.
Robert Nichols was serving as an education/youth minister in North Carolina and a pastor in West Virginia, and Deborah Nichols had served as a director for hospice volunteers before they were appointed by the IMB as missionaries in late 1995.
“God has made it clear that being a foreign missionary involves growing in all our spiritual gifts,” Robert Nichols commented.
Uruguay, with about the same population as Alabama, has about the same land area as North Dakota. It is the only South American country completely in the temperate zone, although summers along the coast can be hot.
In Uruguay, the Nicholses work in two “departments.” These are Uruguayan equivalents of U.S. states, but about the size of large American counties. They live in Melo, a city approximately the size of Tuscaloosa.
“In Melo, we began the fourth start of Baptist work in that city during the past 35 years,” Robert Nichols said. He and his family work with La Iglesia Bautista Calvario, or Calvary Baptist Church, in Melo. He said when they first began working there, “Luis De Los Angeles, who is the pastor, along with his family and two other people, were the only members of the church left.”
As well as working with the church in Melo, the Nicholses work with Trienta y Tres Baptist Church. Robert Nichols said they had only been able to visit the church once a week, and in consequence, the church had been struggling.
“However, we now have a brand-new pastor, Guillermo Rodriguez. By God’s grace, we’ve been able to see revival,” he said. “Sixteen people have been baptized in the past two years and nine months. Both pastors are men of God and wonderful individuals.”
Key to this growth has been the efforts of church planting teams, comprised of both North Americans and South Americans. They include young journeymen and short-term visits from 10 volunteer groups during the Nicholses’ last tour.
“Volunteers are valuable, because when we work together to evangelize, it presents a picture of the true body of Christ,” Robert Nichols said. “One image that South Americans have of North Americans is people at war. One young lady told me that volunteers had shown her that all North Americans weren’t bad.
“Gonzalo, a waiter in a restaurant we often visited with volunteers, was impressed with our mealtime prayers and that we didn’t use alcohol or cigarettes,” Robert Nichols continued. “One of our journeymen witnessed to him, and [Gonzalo] received the Lord that way. But he also observed how we lived.
While volunteers provide willing hands and hearts, gifts to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering provide the fuel for the Nichols’ efforts.
“We use Lottie Moon funds to produce tracts passed out at the markets, to pay for showing programs such as ‘Left Behind’ and the ‘Jesus’ film, and to meet needs ranging from discipleship literature to gasoline for vehicles,” Robert Nichols said.
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