Nazarenes in Mexico Create a New Board Game to Reach their Community

By: Eunice Zaragoza Leal

When we joined the short-term missions trip, Missions Without Limits, we could not have imagined how we would engage in missions in the midst of this pandemic. As the date approached, our entire team in Cadereyta, Mexico began to experience trials of different kinds. We lost family members to illnesses, and some of our own group became sick. We saw the number of COVID-19 cases climb in the state where we would be working. The governmental restrictions grew stricter as closure of several economic activities, parks, and recreational places became the norm. However, none of this extinguished our desire; we saw it all as an opportunity to grow in creativity and develop new strategies as God led us to carry out his mission.

As we trained and met before Missions without Limits, we got the idea of creating a board game: something attractive, eye-catching, and interesting. The game would have three objectives:

1. To encourage healthy family recreation at home.
2. To share the gospel.
3. To let the community of Cadereyta know of the church’s reopening.

In addition, we included QR codes, which grabbed the attention of adults and children.

God made sure that our team would include the perfect combination of people in order to make this evangelistic idea a reality: a programmer, a graphic designer and several young people familiar with social media formed part of our group.

Once we laid out the general idea, the graphic designer, Marco Iván Portillo Noriega, put his talents into action. After exploring many options and styles for the game, we decided each square would make reference to Bible stories from both the Old and New Testaments, with the objective of getting players interested in what each Bible story is about. At the same time “reward” and “setback” squares were included, emphasizing that good values help us while bad habits harm us. Our hope was that the game would promote moral values in children in particular, so that they might begin to equate their good and bad actions with the subsequent consequences.

The game has 70 squares and, upon reaching the final square, the winner gains the right to scan the QR code and see a video creatively presenting the gospel on the church’s Facebook page. We also decided to share on the church’s website YouTube links of animated Bible stories found in the game, so that if someone would be interested in learning more about the Bible, they could easily access them, especially during the pandemic when face-to-face Bible classes for children cannot take place.

We printed about 400 board games and included some dice. We also played and tested the game over and over again. It was a tiring process for the team, but when we finally delivered the game to the families of the community, we saw the end result. In the following days the number of visits to the church’s website increased a lot. Weeks after, we have followed up with many families and they are responding to the salvation message! We praise our God because He has limitless creativity! And we thank our entire team that made this idea come true:

-Amisadai Hernández Argueta

-Verónica Ornelas 

-Alan Alberto Chong Ojeda

-Astrid Castillo Garza 

-Ricardo Adrián Cena Álvarez

-Erika Lorena Saldaña Ramírez

-Gustavo Ramos Flores 

-Aracely Leal Gil

-Marco Iván Portillo Noriega 

-Eunice Zaragoza Leal