The Couple Who Sold Everything for a Country They'd Never Seen

In 2019, David and Maria Fernandez were running a successful catering business in San Antonio, Texas. They had a paid-off house, a loyal clientele, and deep roots in a church community that felt like family. Then one evening during a missions conference, they both sensed the same unmistakable pull — God was calling them to plant a church in rural Guatemala, a region they had never visited.

Their families thought they had lost their minds. David's mother wept at the kitchen table. Friends cautioned them to "pray about it longer," which really meant "come to your senses." But David, then fifty-two, and Maria, forty-nine, listed the house, sold the business, and packed what fit into four suitcases.

"We didn't have a five-year plan," Maria later told a reporter. "We had a promise. God said go, and that was enough."

Today their church in Chimaltenango serves over two hundred families, runs a feeding program, and has planted two daughter congregations.