A legacy continues
Training young people to change a nation for Jesus
BY DANA MICHEA MARQUEZ
B E A CON W R I T E R
Cassiano Homes is one of the
poorest and largest communities on
San Antonio’s west side. Almost 500
apartments span across the 54 acre
property. Hanna Hunter, Cassiano
Homes Property Manager, says that it’s
the oldest public housing in our city.
The bigger apartments are often filled
with up to twelve children, she
explains, and adds that “about 85
percent of these families are single
mother households.” The community is
a hotbed for drugs, gangs and dysfunctional
families — a perfect opportunity
for ministries like Ethnos Missions to
become a light for a broken community.
In 2007, Pastor Marty Gaines, his
wife Imogene, sons Gabe and Joshua
Gaines and Joshua's wife, Tiffany,
traveled with a team of 20 people to
Jamaica on a mission trip where they
met a child who was deaf. They prayed
for the child and God healed him. The
Gaines ended the second week of this
special trip seeing over one thousand
children give their lives to Christ.
When the Gaines came back to San
Antonio, they realized that they had to
change. “After Jamaica, the Lord
showed us that we could not do church
the same,” Tiffany says. “Meaning that
we had to get outside the four walls.
We had to go to the poor and disadvantaged.
We took church to the
streets.”
Pastor Joshua continues, “This lit a
righteous fire in my dad! That was
when my dad started questioning,
‘How can we become better at reaching
our community for Jesus?’”
The family continued to pray;
Pastor Marty started looking around
San Antonio. “My dad drove down
Poplar Street on the west side of San
Antonio. There was a house being
Pastor Josh and Tiffany Gaines receive two NAHRO
community service awards from SAHA management.
One is for the state of Texas and another is for all of
the southern states in the U.S.
6 www.saBeacon.com July 2019
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