The question I’ve gotten the most is “When exactly are you going?” The simple answer is, when I am fully funded! As of right now, I am 27% toward the goal I need to meet before EFM can send me to Mexico. If you haven’t already, would you prayerfully consider giving toward my missions fund? And if you have, thank you so much for partnering with me in this missionary work! If you are so inclined, I particularly need monthly recurring gifts in order to meet monthly expenses, including food, housing, and travel.

In the meantime, EFM and I have been preparing the further training I will need on the field. Last month, I had a meeting with Carol Lewis, who will be my language coach over Zoom. While I currently display some proficiency in the Spanish language (“nerd Spanish,” as Marco Martinez of Haviland Friends has termed it), Carol will work with me to refine my language skills to communicate effectively as a minister of the gospel and the deep, nuanced, and intimate personal conversations that will entail.

As I continue to wait and prepare to be sent to Zacatecas, I have been attending the Spanish-language service at my home church, called Amigos Rose Drive. The congregation and Pastor Javier Marin have warmly welcomed and received me and my dad, who is also regularly attending with me. Javier, who is from Mexico City himself, has repeatedly expressed his excitement that I’ve been called to preach the gospel in his home country.

For me, it has been very touching to watch my dad enjoy immersing himself with me in a new culture while we continue to learn and practice the language. While the content of the songs and sermons aren’t that different from that in the English service, my dad has said that the Amigos service has been more engaging for him, since he has to concentrate more to listen and understand. During my first trip to Zacatecas earlier this year, my dad attended Amigos by himself every week, and he told me that the congregation would always eagerly ask him for updates about me.

I am very grateful for Amigos Rose Drive for how they are preparing me for life and ministry in Mexico, but I am especially happy to see my dad’s spirit reinvigorated by the same cross-cultural connections.

I will praise you, Lord, among the nations;
I will sing of you among the peoples.
For great is your love, reaching to the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

(Psalm 57:9-10, NIV)

Dutifully yours,

Erik

I am currently looking for supporters to partner with me in my next steps with EFM. You can support me through prayer and financial giving. I need and appreciate both so that I can reach 100% in both areas at this stage of my journey with EFM. I currently have 239 prayer partners and my goal is to have 250. If you know anyone who would like to sign up to be a prayer partner, you can send them this link. 

 Would you pray and consider supporting me financially in this endeavor? There are four ways to partner with me:

•  Online. Donate online here. Make sure to select “Field Intern | Erik Nilsen” at check out. You’ll be given the opportunity to indicate whether you are making a recurring or one-time gift.
• Credit Card. This may be given online (as stated above) or by calling the EFM office (303-421-8100) to give your information to a live person.
• Automatic Bank Transfer. Download the form here and email it to Debby McElroy (EFM Bookkeeper) at debby@friendsmission.com. Please note that ACH payments are processed on the 10th or 25th of the month.
• Check. Mail a check to EFM, P.O. Box 771139, Wichita, KS 67277. Make sure to mark your check “Erik Nilsen Field Internship Support” and note if you will be giving on a recurring basis (monthly, quarterly, etc.). Pay to the order of “EFM.”

The post Erik Nilsen July 2025 Fundraising Update first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.

In December 2019, I graduated from Barclay College in Haviland, Kansas, and returned to live with my family in Orange County, California. I had made plans to join the Teaching Abroad program, newly absorbed into Evangelical Friends Mission, to go to China to teach English to university students. I had long felt a call to international missions, but was attracted to the model of offering a tangible service for a stipend, room, and board from the school. By March 2020, however, it was very clear that I would not be going to Wuhan, China, anytime soon.

In the following months, EFM continued to contact me about their Luke 10 Initiative to open several new fields to send new missionaries by 2025 and asked if I was interested in any of the fields being explored. At first, I felt uncomfortable with the prospect of the more traditional missionary route, since it would require me to fundraise and ask for money, which had no guarantee of success. I continued to discuss the prospect with EFM while finishing a master’s degree and working several jobs in HVAC, plumbing, t-shirt printing, and real estate (to name a few), and volunteering in my church’s youth group (Rose Drive Friends Church). We narrowed our focus to my passion for biblical literacy and teaching, and my proficiency in the Spanish language.

By the end of the year, I felt the weight of an impending decision to step out in faith. All of the other opportunities I had pursued had closed: my business ventures, my HVAC career, and even my ministry as a youth volunteer. Moreover, I had been living with my grandma since college and really needed to move on in life. Would I let go of my plans and follow Jesus on an unknown path, trusting in God’s provision? I prayed for direction, and I asked (pestered) trusted mentors at church whom I should contact to prepare for the mission field. I was introduced to Alan Amavisca and Nick Ward of North County Project, who welcomed me with open arms and began teaching me their methodology.

In 2023, Edwin and Maria Giron invited me to join them on a Luke 10 Exploration Trip to Jalisco and Nayarit, Mexico, with a team of Friends Church members from both the United States and Mexico. There, I learned about Mexico Yearly Meeting’s goal, called Vision 32, to plant an evangelical church in all 32 states by the year 2032. I also got to meet several members of the Mexican Friends Church who were called to go evangelize and make disciples in communities far from home, including Pedro and Sandy Moscosa of Mexico State, and Sergio (Tyson) Contreras of Coahuila.

In 2024, EFM announced a partnership with NCP to train future missionaries for their new mission fields and invited me to train for ten months as one of the first wave of future missionary candidates in this new process. The experience was both hallowing and harrowing, and I was the only one to complete the program in its first year. Earlier this year, EFM sent me to visit Pastor Omar Ramirez and his family, who have been raising a new church body in Zacatecas, Mexico, with the purpose of getting to know the Ramirez family and their congregation in preparation for ministry with them.

After returning and debriefing with EFM, I am proud to announce that I have been accepted for a 12-month field training internship in Zacatecas, Mexico, in which I will be learning directly from Omar how to facilitate ministry and Christian discipleship in Mexico, assisting him in serving his growing congregation, and engaging in long-term cultural and language immersion. This opportunity is an enormous answer to prayer, and I am excited to follow God’s calling in my life to missions, and to partner with EFM and Mexico Yearly Meeting in reaching the weary and the discouraged in Mexico for Christ.

For those who have followed my journey up to this point, thank you so much for your constant love, prayers, and support, through good times and difficulties, as God has continued to transform me into the image of his son as much as the people to whom I minister. For those to whom my story is new, thank you for joining me in ministry and becoming part of this story—a small chapter of God’s greater story of the redemption of all the nations of the earth.

Dutifully yours,

Erik E. Nilsen, M.A.

Evangelical Friends Mission

eriknilsen1@gmail.com

620-349-9249

The post Erik Nilsen’s Internship in Mexico! first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.