Welcome to the website of Jonathan and Holly Boyd, missionaries to Colombia, sent by Campus Baptist Church of Ames, Iowa, in partnership with ABWE. We live on the Caribbean coast in the beautiful city of Santa Marta.

Location, location, location

November 8, 2010

I remember that in a church planting class we talked about the importance of the location of your church’s meeting place.  As a team we’re looking for a place to meet on Sundays. Here are several options we’ve thought about, in no particular order:   A house that could serve as both office and meeting [...]

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You need to get out more.

September 24, 2010

As I mentioned in my last post, we’re seriously thinking through our strategy here in Santa Marta.  This week I determined to start getting out into the community more and praying for at least three evangelistic Bible studies.  Well, it looks like God is starting to answer my prayers, as I think (here in Santa [...]

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Back to the drawing board?

September 13, 2010

We were out of the country last week for a conference, and things didn’t go so well for the Medinas in the ministry.  The attendance to our two groups has dwindled to a certain extent.  We had just launched the group in the Medinas house the week before and were really excited with the seven [...]

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Rain in Santa Marta

August 19, 2010

“The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.  Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.  Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the [...]

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Preaching again

August 12, 2010

Our missionary team has been meeting on Sundays to celebrate the Lord’s day together.  We started out working through The Story of Hope Bible study, but after about three months we decided that it would be better for one of us to preach each week.  Alfredo started out with the preaching responsibility for the first [...]

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Taganga: another reason why Santa Marta is interesting

July 15, 2010

I went to Taganga today to make a visit and was struck once again by how unique this village is.  The town lies just on the other side of the northern mountains of Santa Marta.  From the office it took me about 30 minutes to arrive.  You could say that Taganga is the best and [...]

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Blessings of being a missionary – Part 3

July 11, 2010

One of the biggest blessings of being a missionary has been the opportunity to work with a team. In Chía I worked with José Alonso and several other men from the church, and here in Santa Marta we’re working with the Carter and Medina families. As a team we’ve been meeting together on Sunday mornings [...]

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Cultivating contacts

June 24, 2010

I’ve been thinking about what it means to plant a new church. How should we spend our time? How should we determine with whom to invest valuable hours? I definitely don’t have this figured out yet, but I have learned a few things. First, we’ve been asked a million times where we “do church.” “We [...]

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Toss your planner out! You live in Santa Marta.

June 9, 2010

I have decided that my planner is not worth as much here as it was in other parts. Why not? Because I have had about a 25% success rate at setting up appointments with people and getting together with them. In contrast, when I just show up at someone’s house the way in which they [...]

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Blessings of being a missionary – Part 2

June 5, 2010

I used to think very little about the environment or about the way I wastefully used the resources God had given me. As Christopher J. H. Wright teaches in his wonderful book The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, we are humans as well as Christians, and as humans we have been given [...]

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