In June 2019, Stadia took a group of women from a company called MONAT to Ecuador on a vision trip. The women connected with Stadia through David Jane, pastor of Connect Church. A member of MONAT, Jessica, attends services at Connect Church, so Dave thought outside of the box.

After an exciting and God-ordained move into a permanent facility, Dave’s church did not have the budget to plant in South America in 2019. However, after having partnered with Stadia in Latin America previously, he was determined to do so again. He connected Jessica with the Stadia and Compassion partnership, and the MONAT trip to Ecuador was born! The trip was powerful, and as the women returned from Ecuador, they committed to raising funds for a church plant in Ecuador – and they did, in just 5 weeks!

Shortly afterwards, Jessica called Stadia asking if there were opportunities to plant churches in Colombia. The owners of MONAT are Venezuelan, and many Venezuelans are fleeing to Colombia in the wake of political unrest and corruption in Venezuela. Jessica’s group wanted to plant a church in Colombia in honor of their founders and owners. At their company conference, Jessica shared the opportunity to fund another plant – and MONAT raised the funds in just 28 hours!!

In the process, the president of MONAT found out there were three additional available plants to fund in Colombia. He said, “We’ll take them all.”

On October 15, all 3 of the additional Colombian plants were funded. In total, MONAT raised over $300,000 and funded 4 church plants in less than 5 months with hundreds of gifts ranging from $5 to $43,500! And all because one U.S. pastor trusted that God was calling his church to think outside of the box to plant healthy, reproducing churches all over the world!