When I was 19 years old, I met my wife, Julie, during the final week of our sophomore year at college. I asked her out and things went well on our first date. I wasn’t quite sure how I wanted to contact her for a second date. The whole day went by as I thought through my next steps. That evening, there was a knock on my dorm room door, and there was Julie inviting me to go out to play laser tag with some friends. I was thankful that she had made the move for our second date! We jumped into the back seat of our friends’ car, and as we were driving to our destination, our friend in the front seat turned to Julie and said, “You must be so excited to be studying in Latin America next year!” Julie kind of looked over at me awkwardly, as she hadn’t told me, yet, that she would be studying abroad the next semester. My heart sank. I was so excited to meet her and get to know her, only to find out that she would be gone for four months studying international business and community development in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. We continued to date through the last week at college and into the summer. When she left for Latin America, I made a commitment to write her and stay in touch with her. A piece of my heart was in Latin America. We were able to talk on the phone for 10 minutes once a week while she was gone. Through her letters and phone calls, she would update me on all her adventures in learning Spanish and cross-cultural engagement. She shared about how much she loved the people she was meeting, including her host family, where she lived in San Jose, Costa Rica. Everything that she described made me also learn to appreciate Latin American culture. I couldn’t wait to experience it myself someday.
Fortunately, we were able to keep our relationship going long-distance. We dated some more and got married after she returned to the United States. It became a dream of ours to spend a lot of time in Latin America during our marriage, and we started with taking our honeymoon to Mexico. We jumped at the opportunity to visit San Jose, Costa Rica, and Mexico City together for a BGU City Immersion course in 2009. I did research for my BGU doctoral dissertation in San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa, Honduras in 2011, visiting orphanages, youth detention centers, and churches for global impact with a youth mentoring initiative that I was working on scaling. I started leading mission teams to Tegucigalpa every year with one of our church’s global partners, Dr. Lisa Anderson-Umana. My family joined each trip, so traveling to Latin America regularly became a family thing. Lisa and I co-led a BGU City Immersion in Tegucigalpa in 2023, a dream come true that I had been working on for years. Over the past ten years or so, I have also had the opportunity to visit Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Panama. During that time, BGU also launched our BGU Spanish program with our partners from CETI, and we have had our first Spanish-speaking graduates. I am praying that there will be many more to come as we continue to seek out students and partnerships throughout Latin America.
With continued expansion in mind, I was recently invited to visit Panama to explore ways to scale BGU’s impact in Latin America. I leapt at the opportunity to be back in Latin America again, and to dream together with a gathering of influential leaders about next steps in delivering transformational leadership training. As with every visit to Latin America, I experienced world-class hospitality and joyful encounters with new friends. I learned about what God is doing through city movements from Jose Duran, who equips leaders throughout North America and South America through his organization, Movimiento, in addition to his regional representative leadership roles with the City Leaders Collective and Lausanne Cities. Jose is a wonderful catalyst for mobilizing Spanish-speaking leaders to transform cities. I also learned more about potential ways to partner with the great work that my long-time friend, Robert Bruneau, is doing through formal and non-formal training with Mesa Global. Jose and Robert have been combining forces to do training and capacity-building work in cities with leaders from churches, mission agencies, businesses, and nonprofit organizations in many different countries. We spent several days together dreaming and praying through how BGU might be able to supplement the great work that they are doing. And, I can clearly say that God is opening major doors for collaboration and partnership. I am so excited to work on a big vision together to take what we’re doing to the next level!
I returned home to the United States with a full heart and a passion to take our work in Latin America to new horizons through the doors that the Lord is opening. As always, I can’t wait to go back. New ground requires new resources. To achieve the vision that the Lord has placed on our hearts, which is, I believe, to reach hundreds and eventually thousands more leaders throughout Latin America with contextualized training in transformational leadership, we will need more resources. As BGU’s fiscal year-end giving campaign comes to a close, will you prayerfully consider supporting our initiative to reach more leaders in Latin America by donating financially to BGU? My heart is still in Latin America, and I believe that BGU is uniquely positioned to make a significant impact during this season. Just go to https://bgu.edu/giving. So far, more than $25,000 has been donated to BGU for our fiscal year-end campaign. Praise God! Please help us finish strong by giving to BGU by June 30, 2026. Thank you in advance for your generosity!
Dr. Bryan McCabe
President,
Bakke Graduate University