CAPE CORAL — Grace United Methodist Church here has been very faithful in being in mission to its own neighborhood, according to its pastor, the Rev. Jorge Acevedo.

What it didn’t have until last February was a mission presence in the world outside Cape Coral. The church’s first mission team spent Feb. 3-14 in Hydrabad, India, ministering to women and children and building a new church.

Acevedo says Grace has been very intentional about meetings needs in the community surrounding the church, but “we were grading out pretty low once you left Jerusalem.”

That revelation came during a Global Focus Leadership Seminar held by the Mission Society for United Methodists, a missionary organization in Norcross, Ga. During the seminar at Grace church, the Society’s teachers taught from Acts 1:8 in which Jesus sends his disciples to minister “in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.”

“What is it our church expects of ordinary Christ followers?” Acevedo said. “We’re not living out our full potential if we’re not engaged in ministry to the poor in the name of Jesus. I now know what my entire life is about. It’s about engaging the entire church in mission.”

Acevedo said he prayed the Holy Spirit would lift up someone from the church to lead the effort. Jan Gilbert, the church’s missions ministries coordinator, was that person.

At the same time Acevedo was encouraging the church to get personally involved in global ministry, Gilbert was struggling with her own calling. She had been instrumental in starting the church’s Stephen Ministry, but said she felt “called to do something different.”

“I felt a little bit called to mission work, but my heart wasn’t there yet,” she said, adding she volunteered to get involved in a missions committee “because nobody else was doing it.”

Last February, Gilbert was part of the 14-member mission team that traveled to India to work with Peter and Esther Periera, Mission Society missionaries in Hydrabad.

Most of the team spent their time in the slums of Warrangal and its surrounding villages, Gilbert said. They held Booboo Camps, providing basic first aid for children. They visited one of the Perieras’ schools and helped teach the children about Jesus. They also worked to help villagers cover their grass and mud huts with sheets of plastic before the rainy season begins.

Three team members also went to the village of Togarrai to help a team of five men from Tennessee build a church. “They built it complete from the foundation to the top of the roof,” Gilbert said.

The entire team attended the dedication of the church, which was packed with villagers. “They were already hanging out the doors,” she said. “It was the first day of worshipping in the building and already people were standing in the doorways.”

Two team members are now “strongly considering and praying about” returning to India as missionaries, Gilbert said. Another 10 want to return on a short-term mission trip. “…everything happened so fast, I haven’t digested what God was saying to us and teaching us,” Gilbert said. “Being with the people, especially the children, was an awesome experience.”

Gilbert said her passion for mission work ignited at a Global Focus Leadership Seminar held in Atlanta. “God had me on my knees before the end of the two-and-a-half day seminar.”

When she returned to her church, Gilbert and Acevedo worked with the Society to bring the seminar to Cape Coral. More than 100 people attended, and 12 people attended the first meeting on short-term missions.

“It was mostly people that had a heart for missions,” Gilbert said. “We started talking about mission trips to India. Within 45 days, we had a group of 19 people who wanted to go.”

The urgency for world mission work caught on throughout the church, Gilbert said. Members agreed to give a tithe from their capital funds campaign to world missions, which paid for part of the India trip.

“We’re taking giant steps,” Gilbert said. “It’s mind boggling to think what God has accomplished in six to nine months. But it’s scary to think what he has planned for us in the years to come. We’re off to a good start, but we have a lot more to do.”