Gerald Bogantes, an evangelist from Costa Rica, has a vision for reaching the youth of Costa Rica and Latin America with the gospel. On January 1st every year, he hosts “Dia Uno” (Day One) to call the youth of Costa Rica to repentance and unity. This event has grown from 4,500 attendees in the first year to over 10,000 in attendance across multiple countries. On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, we learn about how God is moving in Central America.

Learn more about Dia Uno: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100068739000519 

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus Today. I have a very special guest with me, Gerald Bogantes from Costa Rica. Thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.

Gerald Bogantes (00:12):
Oh, thank you, Daniel. It’s such a privilege to be with you and with all the people that are watching

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:19):
You. And I have been friends for a long time. I went down to Costa Rica many years ago and you helped to translate for me.

Gerald Bogantes (00:28):
And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:29):
Over the years you’ve actually translated for many great men and women of God who have come to Costa Rica. Who are some of the people that you get to translate four?

Gerald Bogantes (00:38):
Well, Tia Osborne, imagine that’s such a blessing to have been his translator also. Well, I was, and I am still the translator of Cindy Jacobs, Tommy Tini. I even translated from Kenneth Copeland when he came to Costa Rica. Well, many more. Tommy Barnett from the Dream Center and many, well, Marilyn Hickey, even Tia Osborne’s daughter, Laona Osborne was the last one that I translated for.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:12):
Wow. So what a privilege. You get to be the voice for all these great men and women of God. But God has given you a tremendous vision for Costa Rica. And the name of your event that you do every single year is Thea Uno, which means day one, and you always hold it January 1st. Talk to me about Dia Uno.

Gerald Bogantes (01:36):
So Dia Uno is a vision from the Lord that the Lord gave me when I was in my home, I was in the living room and in 2009 the Lord spoke to me and said, Gerald, I want you to call upon the youth of Costa Rica. And the funny thing is that he spoke to my heart about a specific date, which was January the first, 2011. So imagine it was two years beforehand. So it was a crazy date because

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:01):
How old were you when you received that vision?

Gerald Bogantes (02:04):
Well, I was, I guess in my late twenties, something

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:07):
Like that. So you were young, but you were called to reach young people.

Gerald Bogantes (02:11):
Exactly, exactly. And at that moment, I didn’t have a leadership role at national level like I do now. So it was crazy for a young kid to call upon the youth of Costa Rica and to do it in a date, which was really a need is not necessarily the best states to do something because of New Year’s. But the Lord spoke so clearly to my heart that I had to obey his voice. And the Lord even spoke to me about the event’s name called Day one, Theo. And he finally told me about had to do with unity. So I just began to seek the wisdom of different leaders and pastors, and they said, yes, we believe it’s from the Lord because it’s centered in prayer and unity, but why don’t you change the date or maybe do it in a Saturday or whatever. And I just said, I have to be faithful to what the Lord said to me. And some of them really didn’t have a lot of faith. You can’t

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:09):
Have diare.

Gerald Bogantes (03:12):
Yes, exactly. And yeah, the is not only day one, not only it’s the first day of the year, but it’s a day of unity that we are one. And there’s many examples in the Bible of not only of unity being part of revival, like Acts chapter two verse one, but also in Nehemiah chapter eight verse one, it says that they were together as one. So when we were about to do the first day one event in 2011, some pastors said, at most you’re going to have 200 young kids, but praise the Lord. We had 4,500 kids in our first day, one.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:50):
Wow.

Gerald Bogantes (03:50):
And from that day on every single 1st of January, every year we did day one. I say we did because with the pandemic we had to stop. But now we’re going to do it again next 2025 for January 1st. So we’re going to continue. And the good thing is that the Lord is expanding that vision to other countries now. So it’s a blessing.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:14):
Wow. So how many is the most that you’ve ever had at a day one event?

Gerald Bogantes (04:19):
Well, I would say the thing is that obviously the first one was amazing because it was almost 5,000 young kids. But to tell you the truth, I think we can, we have more than that if we include the countries where we have done it in Costa Rica, in Venezuela, in Ecuador at the same time. So maybe 10,000.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:42):
Wow. And at day one, what is the focus of the event you’re inviting young people and then what are you talking to them about? What is the spirit saying?

Gerald Bogantes (04:57):
Since it’s mostly targeted towards Christian kids, it’s not too much as an evangelism, but what we do is we motivated, we challenge them to have a lifestyle of evangelism. And really what we do is a day of repentance and humility and just coming before the Lord and saying, Lord, we want to give our lives back to you, and we want to also consecrate the whole year for the Lord. It’s like the first fruit. And after day one, what we have seen is that some of these kids, they have gone into a deeper relationship with the Lord. They want to do evangelism with their churches. And that’s part of what we do after day one. We do evangelism, outreaches. We call upon the youth to do evangelism, outreaches with their schools, with their high schools and also amongst their communities.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:53):
Talk to me about evangelism in Costa Rica. Costa Rica is a very unique country, very special country. It has no army. It’s a very peaceful country. It’s very beautiful. A lot of tourists love going down there to see ecotourism. It is got beautiful beaches and stuff, but I would say in some ways it’s more secular than some of the other central American countries. So what are some of the unique challenges of evangelism in Costa Rica? And then what are you seeing God do in evangelism?

Gerald Bogantes (06:29):
Yes. The thing is that compared to central America, Costa Rica has maybe, I don’t know how to say it, but in a sense of people are better off in a sense. And when prosperity comes to a nation, sometimes they forget the Lord a little bit. And we have seen that in a sense of people not being so much in fire for the Lord, maybe they’re not suffering so much of poverty. So they’re like, okay, maybe God is just something that I can put a little perfume here and there a little religious ity in me on Sunday morning. That’s it. So when you have Jesus as just something that you put on Sundays, it’s not a God for you. So maybe you see money being a God. And that’s what we fight against a little bit of the religious spirit or maybe just secularism coming in. We have seen some of the kids saying, well, we don’t need as much religion shot down our throats.

(07:39):
So the way we have fought against that is just telling the kids what we need is revival. So what we need is getting on fire with the Lord. And we have seen great results when we just tell it as it is to the kids and say, do you want to really have the fire of God in your heart? Do you want to see signs and miracles? Do you want to pray for the sick? And they’ll recover. And when they see how God uses them, then they are really on fire with the Lord. And they do want to continue in love with the Lord. But you have to be definitely sold out for the Lord. If you want to do something. Costa Rica, you can’t go just and paint a little bit of religion on the Costa Ricans or the Kos are as they call us, you need to be on fire and you’ll see results.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:28):
And so what is the message that God has given you for young people?

Gerald Bogantes (08:34):
Well, the message is one of revival, obviously for the people that they don’t know, the Lord, obviously the message of salvation, the message of love. But for the church itself, for the young kids, what I tell them is that you have to be on fire for the Lord. And just to condense it in a phrase is when you have inner fire, you have outer love. If you have the fire of the Lord, the glory of the Lord inside of you, that is going to come out some way. And the best way is to love others as yourself with the preaching of salvation. So what we have done is we have gone to the universities, and I am also an attorney, so I had to go to university. So I know the secular arena. And even when I was in my university years, we did a drama in front of 800 of my classmates and I was dressed up as Jesus in front of them and I was like, Lord, I’m going to do it for you.

(09:32):
So I’m going to go all out. And I preach to 800 of my college professors and classmates and people respect that. People respect that. So my message to the youth and to people that hear me is that if you are on fire for the Lord, your life is going to be transformed. You’re going to have the greatest adrenaline spiritually speaking, and it is going to be the best life that you could have. So I really am a preacher that speaks about the love of God, but also that fire of God. We need to be like that prophet that has fire in his bones.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:11):
And so are you still practicing law or are you full-time in the ministry?

Gerald Bogantes (10:15):
I’m still practicing law, but really I do it as a tent making process. And the Lord has allowed us to even do ministry almost without any type of restriction. So it’s a blessing. If the Lord ever tells me to leave the practice aside, I’ve done it before. I have quit my job before and I’ve done it to serve the Lord. But in this moment, the Lord has allowed me to even give testimony using my law practice and to finance the ministry. So in this moment, I can go with you to campaigns and I can go with different, like today we are talking from outside the country. For two weeks I’ve been outside just preaching and teaching.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:02):
Yeah, we’re at a great conference in Korea. In Korea it’s called the Billion Soul

Gerald Bogantes (11:08):
Harvest.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:09):
And they are calling the body of Christ to reach a billion people for Jesus.

Gerald Bogantes (11:16):
And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:16):
So it’s great being here because we’re around lots of ministries that have big vision, but then also very humble people that are in the villages of India or Bangladesh just ministering. And so it’s been very encouraging being here just to see how God is using so many different people, but all of us can unite around this vision of reaching the world for Jesus.

Gerald Bogantes (11:40):
Yes, and I love it. So the Lord has allowed me to even have this ministry of law practice because I can see that also as a workplace ministry. And that has allowed me to be here for two weeks already. And thank God I don’t have any type of hindrance in that sense. So I also encourage people that they don’t need necessarily to have maybe a salary from a church to say that they are full-time ministries. They can be full-time ministries, whatever the way the Lord finances them, if they give it all to the Lord, they’re in full-time ministry.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:18):
Amen. What would you say to evangelists in Latin America? One of the themes that we heard last week at the Uzon conference this week too, is that the mission field shall become a mission force. And we see this here in Korea because Korea went through a war where north and South Korea were divided. And at the end of the war, Korea was very poor, extremely poor people working out in the fields, growing rice. And I would say Central America, south America has a lot of poverty like Korea did at that time. But a large number of people here turned to God. And now over 30% of Korea is Christian. And I would say being here, it’s a very modern country. God has really blessed this country, beautiful buildings, everything is clean. The people here are very blessed.

Gerald Bogantes (13:23):
Now

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:25):
They have, Korea has now sent out missionaries all over the world. In fact, after the United States, I think Korea is now the number two missionary sending country in the world. I think God wants to do the same thing for Latin America because Latin America has lots of

Gerald Bogantes (13:44):
Fire.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:45):
The churches of Latin America, they know how to pray. They have so much fire. And now prosperity is coming to Latin America. I mean, it’s very vibrant, it’s very alive. Economies are growing, but it’s very important that the church doesn’t forget Jesus in the midst of it. But I think what God wants to do is to start raising up more and more missionaries from Latin America that will go to other countries and preach the gospel. What do you

Gerald Bogantes (14:16):
Think? Yes, exactly. I think that if we just see how the Lord is prospering, a country is not just for our own benefit and prosperity and better roads and better economy. No, it’s because of our prayers and just asking the Lord to prosper a country. But it’s mostly to finance the last wave of evangelism and missionary work. And I think we’re in the last day, so we need to see the times. We need to be the sunset bicycler that they knew the times and they knew what Israel had to do. And we need to understand the times. These are the last days we need to, yes. If the Lord prospers us, yes, we have to use those funds to finance the ministry and to do evangelism and to do crusades and to have these outreaches. So really the time is ripe. And we have seen sparks of revival, not only in Costa Rica but in Latin America, and we have to be sure that we take advantage of this revival because this is the last harvest. And I don’t know if we’re going to be here for many years in the sense of the Lord, maybe he is going to tardy a little bit more, but we have to live as if the Lord is coming in two weeks.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:37):
Amen. One of the speakers, I forget who it was, but they said, we are marata people, which the word Marta means come Lord Jesus. And so we are eagerly awaiting the second coming of Jesus Christ. And I think Jesus is coming soon, but the greatest harvest of souls in history will happen in just the next few years. And what’s exciting is we are the generation that gets to participate and gets to be a part. And I think this is a very special

Gerald Bogantes (16:08):
Generation. Yes, I love it. And you and I, we were here in Korea evangelizing in the streets, and we have seen results. And people are so open, they really want to have genuine and sincere conversations. If you are genuine in your faith with the Lord, people want to, they see through that. They see if you’re genuine. They see what you have is real. And when you have something that is real and something that is good, they want it also. And I have seen that for my desire for the youth of Latin American, obviously for all the ages, but specifically for the youth, is for them to know the gem of high praise, which is Jesus and for them to share it. If you have that beautiful encounter with the Lord, we have to share it as much as possible. So that’s why I commend you for everything you do.

(16:56):
Also, Daniel around the nations, and we need you in Costa Rica. So please come. I want to be your translator, but I really think that we need to learn from people like you, from your ministry, king ministries, and thank you also because you today gave us a great teaching on evangelism and resources. And I think it’s part of what we need. And I want to tell you, you didn’t tell me to say this, but I want to ask the sponsors of your ministry and those that join forces with you to continue to do that because we need ministries like you and many others to continue to have that last harvest, to sow that last harvest for the Lord.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:39):
Amen. Well, thank you, Gerald. Let’s finish by praying for God to send revival to Latin America. And could you pray for, but pray in Spanish?

Gerald Bogantes (17:53):
Yes. I love it. Thank you. Ate Jesus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:27):
Amen. Thank

Gerald Bogantes (18:29):
You so much. Your best.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:32):
Okay, that’s good. That’s good. Thank you so much.

Gerald Bogantes (18:36):
All right, now.

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