In the spring of 2018, I felt convicted and decided it was time to do more than just say the words of the Great Commission. It was time to obey what Jesus was saying and “go” on a mission trip. One of the great things about this was my oldest son, Matthew, also felt the call that same Sunday. We decided we would do this together. We prayed about the upcoming mission trips that our church was sponsoring and decided to go for a week to the Dominican Republic that summer. My prayers leading up to our departure was asking God what exactly was He calling me to do; what did He want me to learn from this experience?
Our mission for the trip was to work with local churches in the city of Santo Domingo doing pretty much whatever they needed from us. We also taught some Bible lessons to children and spent time evangelizing in the local neighborhoods. Each day, I continued to pray the same thing: “God, what are You calling me to do”? By the time the week was coming to an end, and we prepared to return home, I received the answer to my question. The answer was available to me all along right there in Jesus’s words in the Great Commission. Jesus was telling me to do all that He commanded:
Go / Make / Baptize / Teach
I had answered the call to “go” but there was more. I was called to “make” and “baptize” and “teach” as well. I didn’t feel qualified to baptize but I had no excuse when it came to “making disciples and teaching them all Jesus had commanded me.” This now became the focus of my prayers, and I knew who God was calling me to “make” and “teach”.
One of the things I noticed while working with numerous churches in the DR during the week I was there was an absence of young men in the church. This didn’t really surprise me because the same thing happened to me many years ago when I was young. My parents raised me to go to church every Sunday but after I graduated from high school and the opportunity came to make my own decisions, I gladly walked away. For the next 12 years I turned my back on religion, the church, and especially on Jesus. I’m thankful that Jesus never turned His back on me during those years and He was drawing me back to Himself through my many experiences. However, it still makes me a little sad sometimes to think about all of those years that I could have been walking with my Savior instead of away from Him. I don’t want my own sons to experience the separation from God I went through. I wouldn’t want any young man to go through that!
I met a man named Manny on the mission trip. Manny is a pastor and was working with my team. We quickly became friends and when it was time to leave, I shared with Manny how I felt God was calling me to fully obey His Great Commission. I wasn’t sure how to go about it but I knew that we needed to reach out to young men before they were faced to make a decision about turning their backs on Jesus or walking with Him. We needed to make them disciples and teach them all that Jesus had commanded us. We prayed together about it and vowed to stay close after I returned home. Manny and I stayed in close touch and continued to pray. About six months later, Manny shared an idea he had about starting a leadership academy that would make Godly disciples and leaders for the next generation. After a year of planning, Making Men of Action (MMA) Leadership Academy opened its doors in January to our first class of students.
During our first year of ministry, an interesting thing started to happen. Young women began showing up at the academy on Saturdays and asked if they could join also. We told them, “No” because this ministry was just for young men. But every week, more and more young women kept showing up. Manny and I talked about whether we should expand to include women. My first inclination was to keep things the way they were. I asked if there were any qualified women to lead and Manny told me there had been at least five ladies who already volunteered to lead this new ministry for young ladies. After hearing this, I felt God was speaking to Manny and I and wanted us to open our doors to young women as well. After one year, in January 2021, Making Women of Action (MWA) was born.