The Bairds [The Baird's testimony]

Field ministry

Direct Church Planting
The Bairds have been involved directly in planting two churches in Delicias, which is a city of 140,000. Emanuel Bible Church was planted in 1992 and Calvary Bible Church was planted in 2000. Both of these churches belong to an association of Bible Churches which was formed in 1993 to fulfill government requirements for local churches. Currently, Eleazar and Adela Gonzalez pastor Emanuel Bible Church and Trini and Loyda Medrano pastor Calvary Bible Church. Planting these two churches involved many learning experiences with evangelism, discipleship, leadership training, church organization, land and building projects and also many miscellaneous activities.

Indirect Church Planting
The Bairds have also been involved in helping various other churches in different stages of being planted. Larry has been a part of a church development committee which had the oversight of 6 national churches which are in the process of attaining autonomy. Other church plants have been helped in the mountains of Chihuahua or in the State of Sonora, Mexico. We have helped with providing work teams, DVBS teams, other ministry teams and general encouragement to the national workers and their families.

Group, camps, Bible Institute, etc
Our family has been able to host approximately 40 different groups or work teams in the past 15 years and it has been our privilege to serve as the liaison between national churches and groups from the States. Groups have ranged in size from 3 up to 25 in number. There has been much blessing for both sides from these groups coming to Mexico. We also have been involved in youth camps for our Bible churches. Recently, we helped with a week of camp by being camp “pastor” and wife where our main ministries were giving a daily devotional to the camp staff and helping with spiritual or discipline needs during the week. Larry has also taught for several years at the Maranatha Bible Institute which served the Bible churches and others for a number of years. Recently, it has been revamped by national pastors and is a big help to the churches.

Zacatecas, Mexico
In June 2006, the Baird family along with Kevin and Crystal Elworth made a survey trip to central Mexico. As a result, the decision was made to open up a new field of service for BMW in Zacatecas, Mexico. Zacatecas State is located in the very center of Mexico and has been the new ministry location for the Bairds since their move there in September 2007. They live in Guadalupe which is a sister city to the State capital, Zacatecas City. The Zacatecas City/Guadalupe metro area has about 300,000 and the Bairds live near the junction of these two cities. They have been involved in evangelistic ministry since their arrival and are currently developing Bible studies with different individuals and families as God works. Their goal is plant Biblical, reproducing, and national led churches in this new area and eventually in other parts of central Mexico.

Testimony/time prior to field ministry
Larry was born in Colby, Kansas and was raised on a farm in nearby Brewster. He has one twin brother. It was through the ministry of a local pastor that Larry came to the Lord in August 1974 at the age of 11. In 1976, his family joined Goodland Bible Church. He then attended Goodland Christian School (beginning in 1975) graduating from high school in 1981. It was during this time that the Lord used teachers, missionaries, pastors and family members to encourage him toward serving in full-time ministry. God directed him to study at Citadel Bible College (now part of Calvary) where his interest in missions grew and he became a missions major graduating with a BA in Bible in 1985. After a year internship in Rochester, MN, he applied to and was accepted by WEFMinistries to serve the Lord in Uruguay, South America. In the fall of 1986, he began raising support as a single missionary and gained many valuable experiences for the future. After raising partial support, Larry was encouraged to attend Rio Grande Bible Institute’s language school for missionaries where he spent the 1987-88 school year immersing himself in the Spanish language. Being single, there were many opportunities for him to practice in the dorms, in the classrooms, in the dining hall and in the basketball courts. It was in one of these opportunities that he met his future wife, Lilia.

Lilia was born and raised in the mountains of Chihuahua, Mexico in large logging and ranching town called Madera. She comes from a family of 11 children (7 boys and 4 girls) and her family has always been religious, but not saved by grace through faith. She left her home to go to Baja California in order to study nursing and ended up staying with a Christian family who invited her to their church. She attended for quite some time, but never trusted Christ until after she had finished nursing school. She was invited to work in a missionary hospital farther south in Baja California and they accepted her assuming that she was a believer. It was shortly after her arrival that she trusted Christ after listening to one of the morning devotionals given by the hospital staff. She was about 23 years of age and immediately she began to grow in Christ and serve in a local Baptist church connected with the missionary hospital. After several years of serving at the hospital she sensed the need to study in a Bible Institute. This was because Lily had been teaching in DVBS and had other ministries with the local Indians nearby the hospital. She was encouraged by a single missionary lady to attend RGBI and she began her studies in the Fall of 1986. She was planning to take the one year course, but decided to return for one more year and that was the year that she met Larry.

During 1988, many changes took place. Larry and Lily were married on May 28, but prior to this WEFMinistries merged with another mission board to form Biblical Ministries Worldwide. Because of this merger, other fields of service were available and Larry and Lily were encouraged to consider Mexico because of its lack of missionaries serving in Chihuahua State. After prayerful consideration, they accepted the call to go to Mexico and were appointed by BMW in 1989. Following a year of deputation and a summer visit to the field, they arrived on the field in December 1990. Their first son, Aaron, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1990. Melissa was born in Delicias, Chihuahua in 1992 and Isaac was also born in Delicias in 1993. Delicias has been their home since that time and they have only moved three times in 16 years. Aaron, Melissa and Isaac have been homeschooled during most of their education and Larry finished a MA in New Testament at Calvary Theological Seminary in 2005.

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