ABOUT US

La Costa Colombia exists to support and encourage Colombian churches and missions in the coastal cities of Barranquilla, Santa Marta and Buenaventura. We provide financial assistance, training and Bible study materials for local pastors and Christian leaders for the development of their local churches and missions.

HISTORY

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

LA COST COLOMBIA

Meet Pastor Jerry

Jerry came to La Costa Colombia with over 40 years of ministry experience. During those years he served as a youth minister in both rural Appalachia and urban Indianapolis, Indiana. He also served as an Associate Minister in Lexington, Kentucky and as a Senior Minister in Charlotte, North Carolina. From 1989 to 1998 Jerry worked as a Career Advisor with several companies. In 1998 he felt the call back to ministry and began a mission to Spanish speaking immigrants in Indianapolis. After five years Jerry accepted the call to be the Senior Minister at New Paradigm Christian Church where he still ministers.

Having grown up in a very missions minded household Jerry became passionate about world wide missions. When he met his wife, Vilma, in Barranquilla, Colombia he became very impressed with work his future wife had done as a single mother in starting and sustaining churches and missions in northern Colombia. Jerry saw a new door of opportunity being opened to him. While still working as Senior Minister of New Paradigm Christian Church Jerry began La Costa Colombia, a mission dedicated to supporting, encouraging and training local ministers and missionaries on the north and west coasts of Colombia.

Jerry graduated from Kentucky Christian University in 1979 with a major in Bible and a minor in Greek. He earned his Master of Arts degree in Practical Theology in 1989 from Cincinnati Christian Seminary. Jerry is fluent in Spanish which helps greatly with his work in Colombia. Along with his work at New Paradigm Christian Church and La Costa Colombia Jerry serves on the standing and program committees of the Lake James School of Missions.

Meet Dr. Tom

Tom is the Chairman of the Board for LaCosta Colombia and the mission’s medical director. He is a family doctor practicing in Jamestown Ohio and has been in practice for over 30 years.

Tom brings a lot of missions experience to LaCosta, having been on multiple short term medical mission trips to Zimbabwe, Romania, Cambodia and, most recently, Colombia. He has been taught the importance of world evangelism since childhood, having grown up in a strong missions minded home. His parents took the family every year to the Lake James School of Missions, exposing their children to the veterans of cross cultural evangelism. Tom and his wife, Sandy, in turn took their children and still attend the annual gathering.

Tom has served in various leadership positions in his home church, First Church of Christ, Fairborn, and still teaches adult Sunday school.

Tom received his undergraduate degree at Milligan College and his medical degree from Wright State University. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Family Medicine.

Meet Bob

Bob is a high school classmate of La Costa Colombia Executive Director Jerry L. Sizemore and a lifelong friend. Jerry and Bob’s friendship was started when they were swim teammates and furthered as their love for theatre and music gave them the opportunity to perform together first at school and later in ministry a New Paradigm Christian Church where Jerry was the lead pastor. Jerry was a co-officiant at Bob’s wedding to his wife Leslie in 1979.

Bob graduated from Indiana University in Bloomington, IN and went on to a career in insurance and investment advising. He is president and owner of Bison Creek Advisors, LLC, a Registered Investment Adviser in the State of Indiana, USA.

He also has always been civic and community minded, serving on the Perry Township School Board, The Friends of Garfield Park, Indianapolis, The Baxter YMCA Board, Youth Football League Board, Reach for Youth Board (Youth Counseling Agency) and currently serves on two town commissions in his hometown of Nashville, IN. Bob and Leslie split their time between their Nashville home and their condo in Indianapolis and attend regularly Tabernacle Presbyterian Church in Indy and Nashville UMC in Brown County…. with a little St. Agnes Catholic Parish sprinkled in….(Leslie is Catholic). Bob sings in both Tab and Nashville UMC choirs.

Bob and Leslie are proud of the work La Costa is doing and visited Colombia in 2022. They look forward to continuing to support this organization’s efforts for many years to come.

Meet Pastor Bill

Bill Bruneau began his professional career in the automotive industry with General Motors as a supervisor. In 1977 he began his ministry as an itinerate minister, serving various congregations until 1980, all the while continuing his job at General Motors. In 1980 Bill resigned his job at G.M. and began full time ministry in a variety of capacities. Bill was an itinerate evangelis, a street minister, a local Pastor and has done extensive missionary work in Jamaica, India and now Colombia.

Bill is well known in the Christian music world because of his work in Richmond, Indiana organizing concerts which drew thousands of people to hear the gospel of Christ. Bill is also a broadcaster and worked in radio and television ministry for 17 years.

Presently, Bill is the minister of Gaston Main Street Christian Church in Gaston, Indiana. Since Bill came to Gaston the church, which was viewed by many as dying, has seen significant growth and vitality. This congregation serves as an example to other rural or small town churches of the power of gospel preaching and loving one’s neighbor.

Bill serves as a Director on the La Costa Colombia Board and has also participated in several mission trips. He is deeply loved by the folks who he serves in Colombia.

Bill has been married to his lovely wife Bobbie for 53 years.

DIRECTORS OF AFFILIATE MINISTRIES

Roger is the Pastor of the Casa Firme (Firm House) Christian Chruch and the Director of the Casa Firme Foundation. He is also the in country representative of La Costa Colombia. Roger partnered with La Costa Colombia and New Paradigm Christian Church in Indianapois to start the Casa Firme congregation in 2017. Today over 60 people worship together on Sundays, there is a youth church of over 20 young people, and outreach to children that feeds 165 children five days a week, a community heath center that teaches nutrition, hygiene and family health, and a coninuing education ministry which helps adults learn accounting, computer programming and more.

Casa Firme also hosts the medical missions of FAME (Fellowship of Associates of Medical Evangeism) and La Costa Colombia which occur once or twice every year. Usually over 450 people are attended by medical personnel from both The United States and Colombia. 

Roger’s Story

Rogelio Torres was on a very destructive trajectory as a young man. Addicted to drugs and living a life on the streets, he had an encounter with God and was miraculously delivered from any addiction to dugs or alcahol. The change in Roger was so profound some people literally did not rcognize him. Out of a grateful heart he dedicated himself to God’s service. Not long after he met his lovely wife Elida at a church function and they embarked on a wonderful adventure serving the Lord.

Meet Elida

Elida Camargo Espisita is the wife of Rogelio Torres Florian, the Pastor of Casa Firme congregation and the Director of Casa Firme Foundation.

Elida is the Director of the newly established Community Health Center. This center is providing education on nutrition, family health, marital relationships and soon will be offering continuing education classes and a program entitled Gardening God’s way which will teach folks to grow nutritious food in their own back yards.

Meet Harold and Erica

They are the new Directors of the continuing education program in the Community Health Center of the Casa Firme Foundation.

Subjects offered include household finance, computer programming and web design, graphic art, English as a New Language, music, the law and you, and bookkeeping. Graduates of La Costa Colombia’s scholarship program will provide most of the teaching.

Meet Carlos

Carlos Gomez came to the attention of Jerry Sizemore at a very young age. When Jerry first began to visit his future wife, Vilma, Carlos and his brother Joge and Gerardo would always approach him at church with very polite greetings and conversation. Jerry was impressed by these boys over the next couple of years and began to follow their lives.

One day the shocking news came to Jerry that the boys’ father had been assassinated right in front of their eyes in their very house. Jerry could not help but think of the scripture from James 1:27 “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

That moment was the beginning of what would become the La Costa Colombia scholarship program. All three of those boys eventually were part of the scholarship program. Carlos was one of the first six graduates.

Wanting to give back to the community in some way, five of the original scholarship recipients began a sports ministry to children in the Las Flores barrio. That ministry has expolded and presently 170 children and youth participate in soccer, volleyball, basketball and swimming. Two of the soccer players have gone on to be professional players. The ministry has gotten the attention of local businesses who help with financial sponsorships and Carlos and his team are being asked to expand their work in five other barrios.

Recently, the ministry has gotten the attention of some sports ministries in the United States. La Costa Colombia is serving as an agent to represent FUNDEPCAR here in the States. Hopefully one of these ministries will soon become a strategic partner of La Costa Colombia working to help Carlos and his team.

Josefina DeAvila is a native of Barranquilla, Colombia, but her husband Narciso was a native of Buenaventura, Colombia on the Pacific coast. Narciso felt a strong call to minister to his home community after his conversion to Christ in Barranquilla. So, he and Josefina moved to Buenaventura and literally built a church with their hands. The ministry flourished under Narciso’s leadership and had a membership of over 100 people. Sadly, in 2017 Narciso contracted spinal meningitis and succumbed to the illness on March 12 of 2017. But the congregation wanted to continue and pleaded with Josefina to fill the role of Pastora.

Josefina and the people of the church have begun a ministry to children and to women. The children’s ministry teaches about 50 children every Saturday. The women’s ministry helps women such as Josefina, who are in need of a network of assistance.

The church has undergone some ups and downs but presently is thriving again under Josefina’s leadership. She asks God to call a man to be the pastor of the church, but until that happens she leads as she can, asking elders of the congregation to preach, as she feels it is not her calling.

Josefina has two daughters, Laura and Maura. Laura is in the La Costa Colombia scholarship program studying nursing. Her long term goal is to become a Medical Doctor and minister with her mother.