LOUISVILLE, Ky. (NAMB)—Unlike most Hispanic immigrants, when Carlos and Cristina De La Barra arrived in the United States with their three daughters 14 years ago, it wasn’t a prosperous life they were searching for—but a more fulfilling one.

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Actually, life was quite comfor-table for the De La Barra family in their native Santiago, Chile, where Carlos owned a successful computer company.

“For years, we made really good money,” De La Barra said. “We traveled all around the world. But after a while, again and again, I had the same feeling of emptiness. I tried to kill this emptiness by working 20 hours a day seven days a week.”

But it wasn’t until he met a Southern Baptist missionary who was starting a church in his neighborhood that De La Barra began to realize he was empty spiritually.

Over the next year, the two families became friends, sharing meals together regularly. During a Saturday morning breakfast at a hotel restaurant in Santiago, De La Barra prayed with the missionary pastor to receive Christ as his Lord and Savior.

De La Barra’s prayerful commitment to Christ was the first step on a journey that has since taken him and his family from South America to South Carolina, Indiana and Kentucky to help start Southern Baptist churches in Hispanic communities.

The De La Barras are among nearly 5,200 missionaries in the United States and Canada supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions. They are featured during the March 6-13 Week of Prayer, which focuses on the theme “Answer His Call.”

“I am a Christian because a Christian family from South Carolina went to Chile as Southern Baptist missionaries to bring the Gospel to our people,” De La Barra said.

“Here in the United States, we realized the great needs of the Hispanic community,” De La Barra recalled. “They had spiritual, social, financial needs, and a lack of help and hope. We felt the call to serve them and help them where they live and in their own language.”

Following his graduation from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1996, De La Barra joined the North American Mission Board as a Hispanic church planter. While a seminary student, he helped start Hispanic churches in neighboring Indiana.

De La Barra, who also has an MBA degree, said the church planting process is often slow because most migrant families who come to Kentucky from Mexico are largely illiterate and highly transient.

However, Hispanics are increasingly pursuing full-time or permanent jobs in the construction, landscaping, retail or restaurant industry. And that means more and more Hispanic families are migrating to the U.S. and planting roots.

De La Barra estimates Kentucky’s Hispanic population at more than 200,000 but readily admits the number could be much higher because most come to the states illegally.

He serves Hispanic communities in central Kentucky between Louisville and Lexington. Over the past six years, the number of Hispanic congregations has more than tripled.

De La Barra mentors and trains local Hispanic pastors much the same way he was trained in Chile, by having men in the local churches regularly assist him with worship services and baptisms.

“Most of our training here in Kentucky is one-on-one,” he said.

And everywhere he ministers, De La Barra emphasizes the importance of supporting missions prayerfully, financially and actively.

“I became a Christian because of missions in Chile,” he said. “Without it my life would be empty and never fulfilled. And without the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering, we cannot continue doing what we’re doing.”