Part 1: How Father built the team
When Ronnie Herrera showed up at the mission’s house in 2005, neither of them had any idea of the friendship that would be formed, and the ministry that God would do through them. Neither of them knew that over the next 15 years, God would use them to plant dozens of churches across the country in the most remote villages of the Dominican. Back in 2005, all that Ronnie knew was that he was called to be a missionary, and Miguel was the only missionary he knew of. So Ronnie asked Miguel to show him what it meant to be a missionary.
Ronnie had always thought of missions as something that only wealthy Americans did. “Missions was for Americans who could afford traveling,” he said. Growing up, Ronnie hadn’t heard anyone in his church ever talk about missions, so he assumed it was something that people did overseas, but not Domincan people. But Ronnie had a calling on his life from God. He and his friend would go to neighboring communities to share the Gospel and hand out tracks. He told someone in his church, “If there’s a ministry I want to do, I want it to be this,” and they told him that was what missionaries did.
This calling led Ronnie to Miguel’s door. Miguel and his wife Kristen had moved to the Dominican Republic in 2005, and they began speaking in local churches about raising up Dominican missionaries. A friendship formed, and Miguel began to disciple Ronnie and help develop the missionary calling on Ronnie’s life. Over the next few years, Ronnie traveled to Haiti and Peru to continue learning dependence and obedience, and grow in his calling as a missionary.
Eventually, Miguel and Ronnie formed an evangelistic ministry called Dominican Rising, focusing on discipling young men and women to be missionaries. This group of young adults spent months together studying God’s word, sharing the Gospel, ministering in slum communities, and even traveling to Swaziland. What began as a group ministering to their local communities has now grown into a family called Gran Comision Quisqueyana with a grand vision: to see a vibrant church in every community on the island of the Dominican (Tierra Prometida Ministry), and to grow the Dominican Republic into a missionary sending nation (Amanece Dominicano).