March-April 2023 Newsletter

Stop Loving The World (William Greenhill) was a book given to us in January that has caused a readjusting of how we look at the church and the world. We have taught that love is directional. To be able to love something or someone you must stop loving other things or people that would steal that love. The Bible tells us that one cannot love God and love the world. The question is how do we define the difference between using the world and loving the world? In our leadership class, we are teaching this so that each leader can define this for themselves.

Baby Owen Tolman was born on the 10th of January, a healthy very big boy. Simri and Nathalie are adjusting to a total change in their home with the new arrival. On the 28th of January Vanessa, our youngest was married to Daniel Sanchez. There is a saying that the only constant in life is change. That has been the case in our lives these last few months.

In the first part of February, we made a short mission trip to Guatemala along with Stephen and his son-in-law Paco. We attended a mission conference for national missionaries from Central and South America. We were able to meet many people personally with whom we have been meeting together on Zoom every month. Zoom is a great tool, but it will never take the place of meeting one on one. The Zoom church just doesn’t exist because without the gathering together there just isn’t a church.

As a ministry that is church focused, one of our main efforts is our Bible School. We have gone through different stages and types of classes over the 35 years we have had it open, but one thing never changes; we are raising up church leaders. We started a new semester on February 4th with a total of 15 students coming for classes between first- and second-year students. One of the 6 classes offered this semester is Ecclesiology, which is the function of the local church body. Our goal is to raise up leaders to minister in the churches and to start new works. Pray for our students as they continue preparing themselves to fulfill God´s calling in their lives.

Apart from our focus on the church we are working on two different projects for evangelism aside from the one on one that is done by most of the church members. The first one is our Bible project to place one Bible in each home in the city of Tepic. We have now programmed our next 4 months of areas of the city that we are going to cover and each month a different church works the street blocks around their church building giving away Bibles to anyone that doesn´t have one.

Our second project is Plan SAMAO 2040 which we started in 2020. The project is to walk alongside each child that is born in that county for the next 20 years of their life if the parents sign up for the plan. We now have 44 families in the project as we work with them on both the social and spiritual areas of their lives.

Talking of change, as we are preparing for our annual youth and family camp we are faced with a new challenge. Easter week has always been, for Mexico, a religious holiday that gave the students 2 weeks of holidays and most businesses closed Wednesday night and reopened on the following Monday. Easter is no longer a stipulated holiday in Mexico. Even though the schools still have their two weeks of holidays, no one else gets time off. This has changed the focus of our camp as we now mostly have school-aged youth and not the older ones that work. Also, attendance at the family camp has dropped since there is no holiday. On April 3rd we start camp as we work to adjust to these changes and make the camps effective.

In 2023 we are believing for a time of exceptional growth. The message that we received from God for this year comes out of Haggai 1:8 and it tells us to dedicate time to build the house of the Lord so that He can be glorified. Last year we raised money to buy land for the church Agustin and Damara are pastoring. This year we are looking to buy the property beside the Xalisco church so that we can double our capacity.

Thank you church family for supporting us as we minister here in Mexico. The church property of Agustin and Damara in Tepic that we have been raising money for has been paid for. THANK YOU TO ALL who made this possible. We pray that the blessings of our Lord Jesus Christ will be upon you. your families, and your homes. We appreciate your monthly support


Philip & Lucy Tolman

Baby Owen Tolman

Philip, Vanessa, Danny, Lucy

January/February 2023 Newsletter

As we start a New Year, we can look back at the good things that we experienced in 2022, leaving behind the trials and difficult times. The last two months of 2022 were filled with many opportunities to minister the Word outside of the regular church setting. The Christmas season is always a good time to share why the birth of our Saviour means a lot more than just celebrating Happy Holidays. The world wants to take Christ out of Christmas but without the birth of our Saviour there would be no Christmas. This is the message of hope that we share year-round.

As we finished our last newsletter, we are getting ready to have a march through part of the city of Tepic and a night of prayer in the town square. Two days before the event, the government officials cancelled our permit to use the town square for the night of prayer but after taking council, we decided to do the event anyway. I will not take you through all the details but in the end, we were not only given the permit to use the town square, but we also had a complete police escort for our march through the city. We had an excellent turnout from the churches and we so impacted the city that the local government has met with us in January we will be having breakfast with the mayor of the city of Tepic as pastors. Agustin and Damara and the worship team from their church did a great job with the singing and we even had a time of prayer and healing for the sick.

December was a time of “posadas” which are traditional Christmas parties in Mexico. Each church and each church group must have one so as pastors we attended over 10 church parties in a two-week period. They are a good time for fellowship, eating and sharing the Christmas story. They help with the breaking of bread part of the gospel that makes us family and not just church members.

The 10th of December we finished another semester at the Bible school. Four of our students graduated as they finished 3 years of study, which is 6 semesters of classes on Saturdays. We still have 16 students enrolled and there are now new students signed up for the start of classes on the 4th of February. The church will only grow through having leadership that is prepared to lead and teach. In 2023 we are believing in a time of exceptional growth. The message that we received from God for this year comes out of Haggai 1:8 and it tells us to dedicate time to build the house of the Lord so that He can be glorified. Last year we raised money to buy land for the church Agustin and Damara are pastoring. This year we are looking to buy the property beside the Xalisco church so that we can double in capacity.

On the family side, we are going through big changes. As we write this letter, Simri´s wife, Nathalie, is in labour and we are expecting baby Owen Tolman to be born before the 12th of January. On the 28th of January Vanessa, our youngest will be getting married to Daniel Sanchez. Now we will have an empty nest and we will be able to travel more together as we minister outside our local area.

Thank you church and church family for sending us offerings last year as we invested in the property that we need for the church of Agustin and Damara in Tepic. We pray that the blessings of our Lord Jesus Christ will be upon you. your families, and your homes. We appreciate your monthly support. We have so much to be thankful for.


Philip & Lucy, Tolman

November-December 2022 Newsletter

Nov/Dec 2022

Writing a newsletter is not always easy. We want the newsletter to be interesting, exciting, and uplifting. There are sometimes in life when those things just don´t happen. That doesn´t mean that things didn´t happen, it´s just what happens are not exceptional events. Our ministry team continues ministering in 15 services a week, as well as holding Bible school classes every Saturday, home groups and special activities. Lucy continues to supervise our Christian schools, Monday through Friday but here are some of the EXTRA activities that we have organized and been part of these last month two months.

On September 27 we held our anniversary for the church in Compostela. The church was started 34 years ago in a home, and it continues to reach out and convert people to Christ. This present year we baptized 7 new people. We have as of January installed a young couple, Rafa and Karla, that are working with us as assistant pastors here and we have the goal of installing them as full-time pastors soon.

On Saturday the 1st of October we did another bible evangelism event with our goal to get a Bible into the home of every home in the city of Tepic. In 4 hours, we covered 16 city blocks and the following Saturday we had to go back to cover the remaining 8 that we had programmed. We gave away a total of almost 72 bibles in that area. Now the local church that we worked with will hold bible studies in the homes that invited them back.

Our next event was on the 22 of October with the youth of the Pastor´s Alliance of our city. Even as Christians we have certain needs that are common to everyone. One of our needs is to be able to dress up and be seen. Even as Christians it is part of our DNA. Throughout the years we had held a citywide youth Night of Talents. In this event, the youth from the different churches of our city presents a drama, a song, or a poem in front of the audience to see who has the best performance. It is a formal night, and everything is Christ-centered along with short videos that are shown between the performances. The last many years we had stopped doing this event but this year we made it happen. We had over 10 different churches do a presentation, and youth from many other churches attended the event.

November is a month jam-packed with special events. On Friday the 4th we held a conference on religious rights in Mexico that was attended by church leaders and government officials (and the press). We had over 170 pastors, priests, and religious leaders in attendance and we brought in a speaker that specializes in teaching about our rights as a church and our religious freedoms as Mexicans.

On Saturday the 5th we had a movie night in one of our churches with a double purpose. The first goal was to raise money for some sound equipment we need and our second goal, which is always present, was evangelism (needless to say, it was a Christian movie). We packed the church out and we sold all the goodies that you can buy in the theatres to raise money.

The next Friday and Saturday was the Pastor´s Alliance Annual ladies' conference in Tepic. Lucy is one of 3 lady pastors that organize this event every year. With over 200 ladies paying to attend, the theme of this year´s conference was “Know my Essence”. This year was a special time as the ladies got to know, through the Word who they are in Christ.

As you get this newsletter, we are getting ready on Saturday 19th to have a march through part of the city and a night of prayer in the town square in Tepic as we participate in a National Day of Prayer. Over 15 churches have signed up to participate in the event and we will have more by the time this event takes place this weekend. In our next newsletter, we will let you know the results of this event.

Thank you church and church family for standing alongside us as we endeavour to fulfill the calling of the Lord Jesus Christ as put on our lives. Also, we urgently need 180 people willing to give $250 each to invest in the property that we need to finish paying off for the church of Agustin and Damara in Tepic. Please help us make this church building a reality so that it can continue to grow and plant more churches.

We pray that the blessings of our Lord Jesus Christ will be upon you. your families, and your homes. We have so much to be thankful for.

Philip, Lucy, & Vanessa Tolman

September-October 2022 Newsletter

As we mentioned in our last newsletter, on July 30th we hosted, along with the State Pastoral Alliance of which Philip is the Chairman, a Pastor and leadership conference. We had 140 attendees. Aside from the fellowship we had 4 great conferences on leadership in the church. We had over 12 different churches participating, and the consensus was, “let´s do this again”. It is a blessing when pastors from different denominations can work together for a common goal. The Lord taught me a long time ago that I am responsible only to pastor the members that He gave me. The rest are not my responsibility and I have to leave them in God´s hands. What I can do is love them and help them as they are also working for the same God I serve.

On the 1st of August, a group of 14 youth left, under the guidance of Agustin and Damara, for an 8-day mission trip. They travelled to the States of Jalisco and Michoacan. They did outdoor evangelism, one on one sharing of the Word along with work projects that needed to be done. We try to make one of these trips every year as they are not only a blessing to the churches where they go but also to the youth. They get to visit new areas of the country where they have never been as well as they spend a week away from their parents which helps them mature. On the spiritual side, they have devotionals every day and they are a lot more open to sharing the Gospel in areas where nobody knows them. This year they had a new experience as one of the vehicles they were travelling in broke down and half of them had to return home on an intercity bus.

On the 13th of August, we started a new semester at our Bible school. We had 11 students signed up for our second-year classes but only 3 had signed up for our 1st semester of the first year. We decided to go ahead with classes anyway even with the small enrollment and to our surprise by the second week of classes we had 14 new students enrolled. That gives us a total of 25 students every Saturday in classes.

At the end of August, we also started a new school year in our secular schools. We had a good enrollment in our primary school, but we still need more students for secondary school. We also have a new principal as the young lady that has been Principal for the last 6 years got married during the summer break and will be moving out of the area. Now that we have all 3 schools back in class, we are in classes 6 days a week.

In January we started a project to place a Bible in every home that didn’t have a Bible in the area of the city of Tepic. We thank you who gave to make the start of this project possible. The local churches are also giving to purchase Bibles. This first Saturday of September we covered another 23 blocks, this time in the subdivision of the “Cantera”. Not only did we give away Bibles, but we also had over 10 homes open to receiving further bible studies. On the first of October, we will be covering another 20-25 city blocks in the same area.

Thank you church for standing alongside us as we endeavour to fulfill the calling the Lord Jesus Christ has put on our lives. Also, we still need 270 people that are willing to give $250 each to invest in the property that we need to finish paying off for the church of Agustin and Damara in Tepic. Please help us make this church a reality so it can continue growing and planting more churches.

We pray that the blessings of our Lord Jesus Christ will be upon you. your families, and your homes. We have so much to be thankful for.

Philip, Lucy, & Vanessa Tolman

July-August 2022 Newsletter

The Cycles of Life

Everything needs a start and it needs a finish. Everyone needs a time of celebration and a time of hard work. Ministry runs the same way. Things just can´t go on and on, we need to reach goals. In the last week of June, we finished another semester at our Bible School. We run two semesters a year, one from the end of January through the end of June. The second starts in August and runs through the middle of December. Hopefully this December we will be graduating 8-9 students that will have finished our 6-semester (three-year) program. One of those students is our daughter Vanessa who aside from studying at the bible school is also in university doing her fourth year of business administration. Two weeks after finishing our Bible school we also held the closing ceremonies for our primary and secondary school. Since we are registered with the Mexican national school board, we are having to use their school schedule, but we are permitted to not teach from their textbooks if necessary. This next school year we are looking to replace several textbooks since Mexico is promoting gender ideology in all the schools. This teaching is totally contrary to what the Word of God teaches us. Also, pray with us as we look for a new principal for the school since our present principal got married in May and will be moving out of the area. Aside from the academic requisites, we are also needing someone that is a strong Christian. Over 80% of our students are not Christian nor do they come from Christian homes.

In the month of June, both of us have our birthdays (Vanessa also celebrates her birthday one day before her dad). Since both of our birthdays were on service nights, the churches decided to give us a time of celebration which we enjoyed together with all our brothers and sisters in the Lord. We also held our Xalisco church anniversary number 34 on the 11th of June. Thirty-four years ago, we were just a home group. We have been persistent and through the years the Xalisco church has grown to be 11 churches and missions in our area of the State of Nayarit. There are also many other members that left the church but continued serving God and some even planted churches only without our covering. As the name of our ministry out of Genesis 8 states, “While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, ….Shall not cease.”

As we look forward to the next couple of weeks, we have two weddings programmed before the month ends. Also, on July 30th we are hosting, along with the State Pastoral Alliance of which Philip is the Chairman, a Pastor and leadership conference. We are expecting between 150-200 attendees. Aside from the fellowship, we will have 4 great speakers that will be teaching on leadership in the church. On the 1st of August, a group of 14 youth leave under the guidance of Agustin and Damara for an 8-day mission trip. On the 13th we start a new semester in the Bible school and by the end of the month, we will have all 3 schools back in class. There are a lot more activities that are planned to take place in the next two months but all of them are just help for the local churches. The strength of any ministry is the churchgoers. If there was no church, there is no body, and without His body, Christ would not be preached.

Thank you church for standing alongside us as we endeavour to fulfill the calling the Lord Jesus Christ has put on our lives. Also, we still need 300 people that are willing to give $250 each to invest in the property that we need to finish paying off for the church of Agustin and Damara in Tepic. Please help us make this church a reality so that it can continue to grow and plant more churches.

We pray that the blessings of our Lord Jesus Christ will be upon you. your families, and your homes. We have so much to be thankful for.




Philip, Lucy, & Vanessa Tolman

March-April 2022 Newsletter

Taking the Land

If we are going to take our place in the promises that God has given us, we need two things. First, we need the Lord to be our captain. Just as Joshua bowed down before the Captain of the Lord before crossing the Jordan, we need to bow down and recognize God as our captain. Secondly, we need to have a plan and do things according to the plan. For every work that needs to be done God has a plan and we need to make that plan ours. Here in our mission field, we have a plan, and we know that the plan is from God. The church is not about numbers, as Jesus Christ will place us in the exact spot we need to be. Salvation is about numbers. God doesn’t want anyone to perish but that all can come to the knowledge of Christ. That talks about numbers.

SAMAO 2040 is a project that we started in October 2020 in part of one township in our State. In the 18 months that we have been running the plan, we have now signed up 15 families that we are meeting with every month. To be eligible to sign up for the program there must be a baby born into the household.

The basic plan is to help the family to raise that child for the next 20 years giving them orientation in 5 areas of their lives. This includes social, financial, health, education, and most important religion.

A second project that we just started in February is a plan to place a Bible in every home in our city in the next 5 years. In February we started with the first 23 blocks in the subdivision around one of our churches. We are not doing this alone as there are over 20 other pastors working on the project with us (Philip is

currently chairman of the city Pastor´s Alliance). We are using a version of the Bible that is called the fisherman’s Bible that has study notes to help a person who doesn’t know how to use a Bible, an easy way to learn. Our city with its suburbs has close to 400,000 inhabitants and just over 50,000 homes. If 40% of these homes do not have a Bible, we will need 20,000 Bibles over the next 5 years, or in dollars, just over $100,000. God is our supplier.

At the end of January, we started a new semester at our Bible school that will run through the end of June. We have 11 students in our second-year class and 6 in our first-year class. It is an honour to be able to teach the Word, but it is not only the Word but a lifestyle. In the second year, we teach biblical finances which not only teaches what the Bibles says about money but also how to run your daily expenses. Another class that we teach is Spanish. Grammar, word use, and spelling are all part of sharing the Word of God.

The last Saturday in February we had an outdoor church get-together of our churches that are close to Tepic. With just under 200 people in attendance, we had an excellent time of worship, the Word and fellowship. Every year we try to have at least one of these fellowship meetings to help create unity between the pastors and the churches. It is easy to get locked into your local church activities and forget that God´s church is a lot bigger than one local assembly.

We pray that the blessings of our Lord Jesus Christ will be upon your families and your homes. We have so much to be thankful for. Please keep in your prayers our upcoming youth and family camp during Easter week. We take 6 days to go up into the mountains to camp and we disconnect for everything but God. No electricity, telephones, internet or running water. In the over 30 years that we have been doing this, one thing is sure, the presence of God is always there in a powerful way.


Philip, Lucy, & Vanessa Tolman

January-February 2022 Newsletter

Planting In Good Ground

Planting a crop is very hard work. If the field is not properly prepared before planting your work will be doubled. We have a small ranch of about 600 fruit trees and we have learned the importance of looking for good ground. In the church the same concept is true. We can spend all of our time planting seed on the path or among the thorns and we will never have a harvest. We need to look for good ground to get our returns. In 2021 we spent a year preparing the churches and planting the Word outside of the church. This year the Lord has opened the door for us to have an abundant harvest and see all of our churches grow.

As we mentioned in our last Newsletter we felt that it was time for the churches to start doing aggressive evangelism. In December we started with a 3-day evangelistic crusade in the main park of the city of Tepic. For the last 2 years, we had only been having church inside our 4 walls or in homes. During the crusade, we saw real miracles of healings and bodies being restored. More than the miracles it was a place of breaking fears that were holding down many people in the church. There were a lot of people that came back the next day bringing people that needed a healing touch on their bodies. More than anything the name of Jesus was glorified. The last day of the crusade was Sunday the 19th and we cancelled our church service and almost everyone from the church came out to attend the crusade.

At the end of January, we will be starting a new semester at our Bible school. In the month of February, we will be starting with our Bible outreach and doing evangelism with the Jesus film.

In the last part of 2021, we finished the year with a Youth Conference in San Pedro with Stephen & Marcela. We sent a busload of young people (with their chaperones) and they were blessed. Each person that went came back motivated to continue on with their walk with God. We also had our church Christmas Posadas (this is more than just a Christmas party) where the church family gets together to celebrate the birth of Jesus and do activities that represent the Virgin Birth of our Savior. There is a lot more that we could talk about, but I want to share a short story of one of our converts.

I will call him Pancho. About 23 years ago Pancho was sent to one of our churches by his leaders, who were Satanists, to destroy the church. He was not able to do what he was sent to do but before he left he had heard enough of the Word that it stayed with him. We fast forward 18 years and Pacho comes back to the church accompanied by his wife and 3 of his children. He has left the coven and he is now a born-again Christian along with his wife, his parents and part of his wife’s family. I will not go into the details of the struggle he went through to be free of the demonic activity in his life but even today he still is in constant warfare. What I want to mention is that Pancho and his wife are now starting their 5th semester in our Bible school. They both have ministries in the church and are helping us with one of our church missions. These are lives that have been transformed through being born again.

We pray that the blessings of our Lord Jesus Christ will be upon your families and your homes. We have so much to be thankful for. If God lays on your heart to help in the upcoming projects we have please do so, We have students to sponsor, Bibles to give away as well as our own personal expenses to cover as we work with the churches here. Also if someone wants to come and teach English as a ministry for 3 to 6 months we have an opening for you.




Philip, Lucy, & Vanessa Tolman