Daybreak International was founded in 2001 by Steve Reed as he was beginning a new church in the Kansas City suburbs called Daybreak Community Church. Growing up, Steve’s parents were missionaries to Costa Rica and Peru. In January of 2000, during a return trip to Costa Rica, Steve met a Guatemalan man by the name of Cesar Gonzalez, who insisted that Steve come and travel across his country to dream with him about starting new churches for unreached people groups in Guatemala.

What started with Steve traveling to Guatemala by himself, quickly turned into  taking teams down to work on various evangelistic and church planting missions. To date, Daybreak teams have done a wide range of projects including medical clinics, sports clinics, water projects, clowning, cowboy church connections, motorcycles, cooking lessons, women’s issues, agriculture clinics, teacher’s trainings, Jesus movie showings, and more!

Our Philosophy
We are certain that lasting ministries occur when the local people are the primary leaders. We come alongside these leaders to partner with them in starting new churches and ministries. We pray that together we can be catalytic in starting church planting movements all across the globe.

Often we link christians from various occupations with people of similar interests in other countries. In the flow of relationships, we seek to share our faith, locate leaders who want to do more to reach their people for Christ, and then foster environments for teams to begin working toward a common mission of reaching people with the good news of Jesus.  

While we may see large numbers of people coming to a saving faith in Jesus on our trips, we know that if they don't get plugged in to local churches and local Christian communities, they will have a hard time growing in their faith. So church planting is a vital part of our ministry.

We like to have a variety of people from a wide range of backgrounds on most of our trips. Usually, we are able to tailor our strategy of each trip around the skills and the talents of those who go with us. Whether you are a cowboy, a plumber, hair dresser, painter, cook, doctor, nurse, coach, teacher, or even a pastor, we could use your help on one of our projects. Speaking Spanish is not required but is a bonus.

Kekchi Indians
In the past 5 years, the Daybreak teams have been instrumental in starting over a dozen churches among the Kekchi Indians in a remote jungle location. To reach the farthest churches, participants strap on backpacks and hike up to six hours to reach these out-of-the-way places. Many of the leaders of these villages were former communist guerrillas, and amazingly they are now the ones asking us to come to their villages to start churches. In this region alone, there are approximately 30-50 more unreached villages that Kekchi Christians are asking us to help target.

Guatemalan Cowboys
Another project that is thriving is our outreach to cowboys. In the past two years, Daybreak teams have helped start 7 small cowboy churches. This work began with a connection between cowboys and ranchers in Nebraska and Guatemala. Now, leaders are dreaming of establishing more than 100 of these churches in the next 10 years.