The Story of a Peruvian Missionary in Equatorial Guinea

Mirtha Espino is the first retired missionary of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church (C&MA) in Peru. She served for 14 years in Equatorial Guinea, Africa. After finishing her ministry there, she once again said yes to her missionary call, and she tells us why.

Mirtha arrived in Equatorial Guinea in 2007 and settled in the Youth With a Mission (YWAM) base in the city of Bata Litoral in the Ekobenang neighborhood. There she lived with other missionaries and joined their work supporting the churches in this area and in the countryside with preaching, teaching, discipling, and helping the brothers and sisters.

This is how she met the pastors and brothers and sisters of the churches with whom she went out to evangelize. On one occasion, the pastor of the Good News Church in Bata invited her to hold a seminar and to preach for three days in several nearby towns, including Ebinayon, which is at the border of Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

Church leaders received them, cared for them, and hosted them in their home. On the second day, one of the church leaders arrived with one of her granddaughters, Gracia, 5, who had Malaria, and asked Mirtha to pray for her. The next day, she brought another granddaughter, Modesta, also 5, to pray for her as well. God healed both girls. It was a prayer of faith and healing.

After some time, Mirtha met a Guinean couple who were always serving in the church. The husband had had children with another woman, but not with his current wife, Bonita. Culturally in Africa, marriage is confirmed by having children, so for that reason Bonita shared with Mirtha that she suffered a lot from not having any of her own.

One day Bonita and Mirtha met at the door of a supermarket, and Bonita asked Mirtha to pray that God would give her children. Mirtha did pray for her and then they said goodbye. After a few years, they met again on the street, and Bonita told her, “Missionary Mirtha, that day you prayed for me, God allowed me to get pregnant. Now I already have three children!” and she thanked Mirtha for praying for her. “How not to be surprised and grateful to God for his wonderful work!” said Mirtha. “That woman had tangible proof of God’s sovereignty over everything and everyone!”

Part of Mirtha’s ministry was managing the “Amemos” School, where children were taught from preschool to the first year of high school. One day, one of the preschoolers disappeared from the classroom, and they only realized that he was missing when the boy’s father came to pick him up. The teacher had not noticed that the boy was not there, so the father immediately went to the principal’s office to find out about his son.

All the teachers and students began to look for the boy in the school and in the neighborhood, but they could not find him. Mirtha told the principal, “Sister, I am going to pray.” She knelt in one of the classrooms and prayed without taking into account that the principal’s niece had stayed there and was listening to her prayer.

Then a man came along with the boy saying he had found the youngster walking alone on the road. The principal fell to the ground and began to thank God in her mother tongue, Fang. Her niece, who had heard Mirtha pray, told her, “Missionary Mirtha, I have never seen God answer a prayer so quickly, because you asked the Lord Jesus for the child to appear and at that moment God did it.”

Going to another culture and to a completely new environment like Africa allowed Mirtha to see things in a different way, and these are some of the testimonies of how God manifested himself in a powerful and tangible way, using Mirtha for his glory.

Mirtha prepared to go to the mission field and once there she dedicated herself to preaching and teaching. She focused on the Christian education of children in schools and worked with women in the church. Each experience was a beautiful but arduous learning experience that helped her trust the Lord more. During that time, her call was supported by God and by her leaders at the Los Olivos Alliance Church in Lima and the Nations Encounter with God – NED Global, Peru.

Mirtha is one of the fruits of the Lima Encounter with God movement, which consisted of prayer meetings, evangelistic campaigns, and discipleship programs. In the 1970s, hundreds of people surrendered to Christ night after night. Mirtha is currently living in Peru, supporting different ministries in her church, and encouraging churches where she is invited to share her missionary testimony.

Sometimes people ask Mirtha, “If you went back in time, would you choose to go out to the mission field again?” She tells them, “Knowing what I now know, all the cost and sacrifice – for example, the death of my mother, father, and sister without being able to go back on any of the three occasions – knowing how to depend on God, crying and rejoicing in his presence … well, the answer will always be yes. God sustained me in a supernatural way, his Church is supernatural, the local church is my family, and their prayers, encouragement and offerings were instruments of God.”

We praise God for the dedication, work, and miracles that God did through Mirtha’s life and testimony in Equatorial Guinea and in Peru.