A Calling Renewed
Caleb and Esther McDonald have spent their marriage (22 years and counting) following God to unlikely places. Caleb grew up in Assemblies of God churches in Ohio and Kentucky, and on a missions trip to Venezuela at age 15, he first felt God call him to the mission field. More than 4,000 miles away, Esther grew up in a Lutheran home in Germany and spent two decades as a devoted, Montessori-certified teacher, pouring into children’s and youth ministry wherever she’s planted.
Those two threads came together in 2018, when the McDonalds moved to Potsdam, in East Germany, to plant D!SCOVER Church, in a largely unbelieving region. For seven years they built something from almost nothing: a handful of people meeting in their home grew into a church that weathered a pandemic and kept moving forward.
Then God began stirring something new. Esther sensed it first; Caleb wasn’t so sure — until he was. Eventually they arrived together at the conviction that a new field, and a new season, was opening up: the Canary Islands.
It wasn’t a leap without confirmation. On a trip to Tenerife with their three kids, Josiah, Lilliann (“Lilly”), and Sam, the family found unexpected clarity. All three kids said, unprompted, that they wanted to move. Josiah, initially wrestling with the idea of leaving, prayed for God to speak to him personally — and that same week, the answers to his math homework spelled out a word: Tenerife. And when the McDonalds learned that more than 43,000 Venezuelans live on the island, it felt like a direct echo of the call Caleb received as a teenager.
An Island Caught Between Worlds
To understand why the McDonalds feel called to the Canaries, it helps to understand Tenerife itself. It’s a place of striking contrasts. Mass tourism drives the island’s economy, but much of that money flows to outside companies rather than local families. For example, seasonal workers brought in for seven or eight months a year often earn around €800 a month, while a livable local income runs closer to €1,500–2,000, against rents that frequently top €1,000. Foreign buyers have driven up real estate prices further, and the McDonalds have felt it themselves: as outsiders, they’re often quoted higher prices than locals would pay.
The island’s population reflects that same tension between “here” and “elsewhere.” Venezuelan, British, German, Italian, and Scandinavian communities all have a real presence — the British even have a town largely their own, but these communities tend to stay separate from each other and from Canarian life rather than integrating and creating community. Spiritually, generations of Catholic tradition have largely shaped the island, including deep devotion to “Our Lady of Candelaria,” honored as the island’s protector.
Evangelical, born-again Christianity represents only a small fraction of the population. Among younger generations, that’s shifting again — many are drifting toward secularism or a loosely spiritual, “something’s out there” outlook, with growing interest in Eastern practices. Meanwhile, the island’s Venezuelan community has brought real spiritual vitality with it, strengthening both Catholic and Pentecostal congregations.
Canarians, for their part, will tell you they’re Canarian first — not simply Spanish, despite holding Spanish passports. It’s a 56-hour ferry to mainland Spain, with Morocco much closer. It’s its own world, in its own dialect, and — Caleb notes — evangelical churches here have largely grown up in isolation, without much outside input, in a culture where direct critique is genuinely difficult. This fall, the McDonalds are part of a church consulting effort aimed at helping local leadership build the kind of outside perspective that’s been missing. It helps that the church also reaches a few different national groups, including Germans.
“I didn’t leave Germany to do German stuff,” Caleb says, “but it’s where God knew he needed me.” In fact, much of his preaching still happens in German, for a seasonal congregation of Northern Europeans.
Two Callings on One Island
Out of this landscape, the McDonalds’ vision for Tenerife has taken shape around two callings. The first is education: building an international Christian school offering immersion instruction in English, Spanish, and German — something Caleb believes has never been tried on the island. It would be only the second evangelical school in the Canary Islands, and its primary focus is Canarian families, though it’s also expected to draw interest from expat families, including some who left countries like Germany partly out of frustration with rigid, performance-driven school systems (homeschooling, notably, is illegal there).
“We basically just want people to discover God and their God-given potential,” Caleb says. “God has established you as great, given you the potential to fulfill the plan for your life, but we need help discovering that. School is a huge part of it. My wife has been a schoolteacher for twenty years, and she’s Montessori-certified. We believe the system needs to fit the kids, rather than fitting kids to the system.”
Beyond academics, the McDonalds hope to build in real pastoral care and counseling for students. It is a conviction rooted in a simple idea: kids who feel safe and welcomed learn better than kids who feel pressured and afraid.
The second calling is compassion: a community development center for single parents and families squeezed by the island’s cost of living, where spiritual need runs alongside very practical ones, like learning the languages required to find steady work.
Both callings have taken real shape since the family’s move to Tenerife in 2025. What began as an open question — reform an existing school, or start something new — resolved into clarity. The McDonalds are building a new international Christian school from the ground up, and are now assembling a founding team of local and missionary teachers who share the vision.
They’re fundraising toward roughly €250,000 in start-up costs, hoping for a 2027–28 launch, though they’re candid that Tenerife’s approval process and the funding still needed may push that timeline later. A larger, standing property — multiple buildings and outdoor space, suited for a combined school and missions center — has also come up as a possibility, though it isn’t the current, active funding target.
“We’re making progress, one small step at a time,” Esther says. “We can see God’s hand at work as we continue to step forward in faith. We are trusting God to supply the funds needed to launch the Christian school, which will impact the lives of our students, their families, and the greater community.”
On the church side, the McDonalds discerned something different than they expected going in: not to plant their own congregation, but to come alongside existing local ministries that are, in their words, struggling to find the leadership and outside perspective needed to move forward. They found a home doing exactly that with 3/16 Church (named for John 3:16), where Caleb now preaches regularly at the German-speaking campus and meets weekly with the pastoral team.
It’s been a season of growth and growing pains. The German campus was asked to leave the church building that had hosted it for 30 years, ultimately finding a new, more central location; the Spanish campus has weathered internal conflict; and a new campus plant is taking early shape in La Laguna, aimed at reaching a generation the McDonalds describe as largely lost to the church. And bringing the McDonalds’ heart for church and school strengthening together, 3/16 Church plans to serve as the legal entity needed to formally launch the school.
It’s a partnership Caleb describes as no-strings-attached: he helps strengthen their church, and in turn they help get the school off the ground faster than the McDonalds could on their own.
Life on the Island
Settling in has meant real adjustment for the whole family, especially after spending most of their lives in Germany. Even when the family visited Germany over the summer, the only home Sam had ever known, he put it simply: “I’m looking forward to seeing my friends, but this is my home now.”
His brother Josiah has taken his own leap, enrolling this fall in a fully Spanish-immersion school and skipping ahead a grade. It’s a real stretch for a boy who’s bilingual in German and English and still building his Spanish.
The family has leaned into Canarian culture — traditional dress for El Día de Canarias, flower-carpet artistry for Corpus Christi, even witnessing the Pope’s historic first visit to the island. They were encouraged by a summer visit from MV’s VP of Global Ministry Eric and Marilyn Loftsgard, whose own experience founding Christian schools and ministries was, in the McDonalds’ words, a reminder that they’re part of something bigger than themselves.
Their compassion calling is already showing up in small, human moments. Outside their regular grocery store sits a man we’ll call Sergio. He’s widowed, living with a disability, unable to work, quietly providing for his children. The family stops to talk with him every time, in whatever Spanish they can manage.
When he needs something, say cooking oil, he asks with real humility. And he gives back just as readily: bracelets for Lilly, avocados from his own garden, chasing the family down just to share what he has.
“Most people probably don’t give him the time of day,” Caleb says. “We just try to meet needs where we can, when we can, however we can.”
And they’ve seen God move in dramatic ways too. For over a year, Caleb and Esther prayed for the daughter-in-law of their school’s principal, diagnosed with a malignant tumor and given only months to live. In May, they learned the tumor was gone, and doctors couldn’t explain it.
She asked only that the McDonalds keep praying — “since it’s obviously working.”
“We’re grateful that God is faithful, even when the path sometimes seems, or is, challenging,” Esther says. “Your prayers, your encouragement, and your support are a great blessing to us.”
Support for Next Steps
As the McDonalds continue to settle on Tenerife, encouraging the local church, strengthening relationships, and building a Christian school, prayer is critical to not only their work but the gospel’s movement throughout the island.
In his preaching and the local church, Caleb is encouraged by believers who are growing in their Biblical knowledge and deepening faith.
“The multi-denominational church is awakening something in them and then they take it back home,” he shared.
Beyond the church, the school start-up is moving along. The church’s non-profit foundation should be approved in January for the school. And the McDonalds are looking for teachers, interns, and supporters to come alongside them in opening the school’s doors. Whether on the island or from afar.
Click here to support The McDonalds and here to support their school project. Click here to learn about opportunities to serve with them in the Canary Islands.