Category Colombia September 2013

Luke, Oscar Useche, and I awoke Sunday morning with the knowledge that the night before had only been the beginning of what God was going to do this weekend. We all three woke before the alarm and were rearing to go. Pastor Jaun Carlos had been my friend for about 3 years. Every trip he invites me to preach in his church but it has never worked out so he and I were both very excited when he arrived at 8:00 am to pick us up so I could preach in his 9 am & 11 am service (they have 4 services every Sunday). Pastor Juan Carlos started out by apologizing for how ugly the slum was going to be where his church is. I told him that he didn’t know this but I grew up in street evangelism and I love the barrio. When my wife and I always lived in the war zone and took in hungry, abused, and abandoned teens (over 15 in our first 5 years of marriage) and so I was honored to preach in his church.

The hair was standing up on my arms as we drove through the littered streets of the Suba Barrio and my heart leaped as we climbed the stairs to the second floor church which seats about 150 people. It was packed for both services with about 3/4 teenagers and 20 somethings that have been saved in the last 7 years out of drugs and gangs and everything imaginable. What an amazing and anointed work God is doing here through Pastor Juan and Pastora Claudia and how blessed and honored I was to be there.

My translator Oscar and I preached our hearts out and praise God the Holy Spirit who showed up mightily in both services and once again the altars were filled both times with weeping people desperate for Jesus. In the second service I was so happy to see my dear pastor friends Lucas and Doryanne and their daughter Sara and her boyfriend Jurger. These ar some of the dearest people in the world to me and we could hug each other enough. God is so good to have such a huge and diverse family of sweet people as these. We had a delightful time with the pastor and his wife at lunch and then cafe con leche for desert.

Soon it was time to head to another barrio to preach for our new friend Henry. I had just met Pastor Henry on Friday when we had the “God Detour” at his Christian School. His church started with 4 people in a garage and then they moved into a building that seats 150 and then they moved to a park nearby and set up tents and now they have multiple services and 700 people show up in the park for Sunday morning under the large tents. The church workers start setting up in the park every Sunday morning at 6:00am and they don’t finish taking everything down until 4:00 pm Sunday afternoon just in time to get to the Sunday night 6:00pm service in the building that seats 150. I was preaching at the evening Sunday service. The service was video recorded and live streamed over the internet. Once again, in an amazing way the Holy Spirit got ahold of that service and many many were on their knees at the altar and up the aisles seeking the Lord with tears.

After the service Luke and I met with some of the pastors and we were blessed beyond words as they blessed us with much encouragement and prayed over us. The Holy Spirit was so present. I’ve rarely if ever been so ministered to as I was by the men and women of this church. We had a thrilling discussion about future ministry together in Colombia and the U.S. God is moving in a big way. Thank you all who have prayed given and gone. It was an outstanding week and only eternity will tell all that God did and is doing through this trip.

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Today was bittersweet. Pastor Timothy and our team left for Texas, and Luke and I had to take Heidy back to her place in La Calera, another beautiful little mountain city. It was such a blessing spending the week with all this sweet young people of God. Some wonderful news for Heidy is that we were able because of a donation on her behalf to get her paperwork started to come to the U.S.

We are very excited that after 4 1/2 years of working to get her home we are one step closer. It always rips my heart out to leave her and this time it was compounded by seeing Luke’s and Heidy’s tears as they hugged goodbye. What a treasure these children are. How our Father’s heart must long for us to be His arms and “abrazo” them. I’m so grateful to God for Mission Critical International and Pastor Timothy and Relationships for Christ making this Mission Possible trip a reality.

Upon returning from La Calera we had a lunch meeting with a pastor and his wife and did some vision casting for future work together in many parts of Colombia. It was very exciting.

Then it was time to get ready for Pastor Urrego, a friend of our translator Oscar Useche and pastor of the church in which I was to preach tonight, to pick us up. We had a lovely hour and a half drive through the mountains north of Bogota to another beautiful little town called Sopo. The pastor is bi-vocational and works at Alpina, the largest dairy processing company in Colombia. His factory receives over 250,000 gallons of milk per day to be processed into yogurt, cheesecake, cheese of all kinds, and every kind of dairy product you can dream. Just before arriving at the church the pastor stopped at the Alpina factory outlet store. I call it the Disneyland of dairy stores. He took us inside and said, “Pick what you want to take back with you.” We asked, “What is your favorite Pastor?” He grabbed a shopping cart and started filling it up with two of everything in the store. We were like, “Oh yeah, a suitcase full of OMA coffee and Alpina cheeses will be just perfect.” After the service we shared some of the deserts that he bought. It was the most delicious love offering ever.

We headed over to the church, which is beautiful, and worship had already started. I was so humbled to realize that they don’t typically have a Saturday night service. They scheduled this one so I could be there and minister with them. Other churches from other small mountain villages as far as an hour and a half away had come to take part. What a blessing these Colombian brothers and sisters are. Praise the Lord for pouring down on us as we shared the word of God. There were tears on many faces and the altar was filled with people desperate for Jesus. We have been invited back next year to preach in their Sunday services and share with the pastors in the area. What a precious time we had with the pastor and his family after the service. They are precious people of God. Praise God for another wonderful day of pursuing Jesus on His mission in the world!

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This morning, once again, in His providence, God sent us on a detour. The plan was to sleep late, go sightseeing, and rest today before the team heads out to the airport early tomorrow morning but the Lord blessed us with another plan. We got a last minute invitation to go to one more place and when I asked the team they readily agreed we had to go. The church that I will be preaching in Sunday night has a school for vulnerable children here in the city and they asked us to come. We arrived at this small 3 story house and were ushered inside by Pastor Henry to find 79 little faces anxiously awaiting us. Words can’t express how impressed I was with this place. Story after story confirmed that they are taking in the least of the least of these and discipling them into warriors for Christ.

They put on the cutest presentation of each of the regions of Colombia and then a little couples dressed in the traditional dress of each region danced a traditional dance for us. It was so cute and you could tell they were so proud. After all of the presentations they asked me to share and so I gave my testimony of how I came to Christ as a 16 year old rebel and of some of the adventures that Jesus has led me on over the last 31 years. It was almost time to go and so the children split up into all the little tiny rooms of the house to have school. They asked me to pray over each class and so we squeezed into each room and prayed over the children and teachers. I prayed that the mantle of Elijah would fall upon Elisha and that the children would receive a double portion of the Spirit of their teachers and pastors and go forth to do mighty deeds in the kingdom of God. What a blessed detour that none of us would have missed for the world.

Next the team plundered the local souvenir market and then we headed up the tram to the top of the mountain to watch the sunset over the city. It has been raining most of the day so we were all praying that it would clear so we could see the view from the mountain and just in time it cleared up enough to see much of the city with a large thunderhead above which made the sunset quite spectacular. After the sun was gone we ended up gathered around Heyli and Deidra and the guitar and we sang and sang and sang. It was beautiful. Several people from Bogota and other places like the Netherlands stopped and listened and we enjoyed meeting them. What a perfect ending to a perfect week. Thank you Lord for being so kind to us. Praise be to your Name.

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Today was a beautiful day on many levels. First, because we were heading to an orphanage 2 hours outside of Bogota and we had to go through some amazing scenery to get there. We left the city and very quickly the landscape turned into desert. I was amazed as I had never been out this far west of Bogota and didn’t realize there was desert this close to this verdant mountain city. As we traveled farther west I kept telling everyone, “this looks like Arizona or southern New Mexico. There were cactus in bloom everywhere, deep red ravines (or arroyos where I come from), and strange monoliths of rock.

Then we began to climb and climb and climb. It wasn’t long before we had left the desert floor below and were winding through mountain peaks covered in clouds and mist. It was stunning. We wound our way down into the jungle and then up again into the mountains until we came to the sleepy little mountain Pueblo of La Mesa. We toured the orphanage and met all of the workers as we were waiting for the children to come home from school. This would be a beautiful place to come for a few days and they even have facilities to house us in the future. We had many talks of ideas and plans and are excited about future work with these folks.

Soon the children arrived and we had lunch and then spent some time helping them with their homework and then it was off to play soccer, frisbee, dodgeball, and all manner of games. It was a wonderful time of building friendships and sharing love. The old guys sat in the shade and dreamed up new visions and ministries together. As we were resting a little boy named Miguel came up to talk to us. He was a very precocious three year old who surprised us with how bright he was and as cute as a button. His mother abandoned him to live in a drugged stupor on the streets of “The Bronx” Bogota’s worst section. My heart broke for her and for him.

Everyone played and played and then we gathered up for devotions. We sang some songs and Luke shared his heart with the children and then Oscar Perez shared. It began to rain so while Pastor Timothy and I met with the director the team and children moved into the chapel and had a wonderful time with the Lord. At the end the children prayed for our team. It was very powerful. We said our long goodbyes and then headed into the village for a wonderful dinner in among the 200 year old colonial buildings of the square. On the long winding ride back through mountains, jungle, and desert we sang, shared, dreamed, and some of us snored. We arrived back and the hotel and our two beautiful Colombian daughters were waiting for us with the wonderful news that Heidy had been accepted into the prestigious music school for which she interviewed today. Praise God. Blessings all around.

 
 
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Today was simply WOW as they all have been. We headed back to Soacha to minister to 200 orphans, street children, and otherwise vulnerable children at a Christian hot lunch room down in the city of Soacha with our friends from God in the Streets, a Christian hip hop and street evangelism ministry in which our dear brother Orlando and our new friend Pastor Jordan partner together. We are very excited about partnering together with them in the future to make an impact for Christ on the city of Soacha. The neighborhood we visited today is so bad that we had to have a police escort to get in there. It is controlled by drug gangs and poverty is rampant.

First, we visited some of the families that are served by the hot lunch room. As we walked into Johanna’s very small house where she, her husband, and four small children live she began to cry as she told us how difficult their life is there. I asked her if we could pray for her and she quickly stepped toward us and said, “yes please.” The team gathered around her holding hands and I prayed for God to protect them, give them wisdom and guidance, but most of all to be near them and give them His presence. I asked Him to minister to their needs but primarily the need of their souls. They thanked us and thanked us. After I prayed her 6 year old little boy Miguel asked if he could pray. We said, “PLEASE.” Miguel folded his little hands and thanked God for the day, for us, for our visit, for his family, and asked for God’s blessings. It was the cutest, sweetest prayer I think I ever heard. Then his 11 year old big sister, Luisa, asked if she could pray and she too pray a sweet prayer of gratitude to God and asked Him to bless us for visiting her.

We visited some other families and then headed back to the lunch room to greet and minister to the 200 children that come there every day for what is for many their only hot meal of the day. I was blessed to get the chance to visit with Marleny, the founder of this amazing ministry. She told me all about her dreams and goals and the history of her work there. She was so proud to tell me that when she started there the malnutrition of children under age five was 80% in that neighborhood and now after a few years it is down to 10%. But the excitement among her donors has waned and her funding is continually shrinking. It costs $1.50 per day to feed a child and she is only receiving enough support to feed 120 children but over 200 come every day so she finds ways to fee two children for $1.50.

Soon the children began to pour in and the girls on the team broke out the crayons, chalk, paper, and coloring books and it was on. Luke and Deidra took frisbees and soccer balls out to the field in front of the lunch room and the fun ensued there as well. After everyone had eaten, the God in the Streets band started up and sang and shared the gospel with the children and adults from the neighborhood who had filled the place up completely. After several songs, Pastor Timothy got up and shared his testimony. It was very powerful. It was a beautiful day all around with a ton of fun and hope in Jesus shared with all.

 

 

 

 

 
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Today was another glorious day in which I am humbled and blessed to be working with some of God’s choice warriors. The 10 “twenty somethings” we are leading on this trip give me hope for the future of God’s work. I am so honored to be laboring with them in the vineyard.

I don’t have any photos to share today because in the 2 places that we went today the children are in protection as either victims of crimes or in a sort of witness protection because guerrilla hit squads are after them and so for their security we only took photos with some of the children this afternoon.

We headed out this morning to a to a house for teenage mothers ages 12-17. Many of them were raped and so are under the protection of the government. Some of them were trafficked, were street children, were abused by the boy friends of their mothers, and other reasons. All the young mothers and their babies were assembled and we each introduced ourselves and then one by one we shared a testimony. As each of us shared how we came to Jesus and what He means to us the Spirit began to move mightily in that place. Heyli would play the guitar and she and Heidy would sing some beautiful song in Spanish and then someone else would share. As they sang and shared tears ran down the face of some of the girls. I knew God was moving in their hearts. When my friend Hayley Marie shared it was so powerful that she broke down and had to leave. Others shared and then Deidra played the guitar and Amy, Luke, and I sang a worship song. Then it was time for me to share and I told how Jesus had grabbed ahold of my heart as a 16 year old boy and how I had been passionately pursuing Him ever since. I gave a very clear presentation of the gospel and asked the girls to bow their heads and I prayed for them to understand and to open their hearts to Jesus. When I finished praying, I was bombarded with girl after girl asking how she could receive Jesus and what was faith and what did they have to do to follow Jesus. It was amazing. Soon Heidy and Heyli were singing again and I stepped out of the room to make room for others. When I stepped out I said to Pastor Timothy, “That’s a room full of hungry eyes if I ever saw it.” Some of the girls followed me out of the room and Pastor Timothy, our awesome translator Oscar Useche, and I shared more with them and prayed with them. Some made decisions for Christ but not before grilling us with some very serious questions about sin, and the fear of God, and grace, and love. It was stunning. I saw before my eyes today God rescue some girls from shame, fear, and despair and usher them into His loving arms. Praise Him for being that kind of good God.

After sharing some gifts that we had brought for them we headed out to lunch. At lunch we met up with our friend Jair Montiel of the band Viraje and he spent the afternoon with us.

We headed over to Hogar De Paz (house of peace) where our friend Rafael Afanador takes in street children and clothes, feeds, and disciples them in the Lord. These children have seen and experienced horrible atrocities and they are getting the love and the message of Jesus here every day. While the team sang songs, played games, puzzles, drew, and colored with the children, Pastor Timothy and I and Oscar Useche spent a few hours with the director of the house brainstorming about future ministry ideas and opportunities. It was a blessed meeting.

We enjoyed hanging out at the hotel and then went to a nice dinner. When we came back we gathered around the breakfast table and began to share as a team what God was doing in our lives this week. It was a sweet and holy time with the Lord. As we went around the table we came to Heidy, our Colombian daughter, who has thoroughly enjoyed getting to spend this time with her Daddy and Big Brother, Luke. I hadn’t looked her way as the testimonies were being shared around the table until it came to her and then I realized that she was softly crying. As she started to share it wasn’t long before Luke and I were crying too. Heidy shared that she had been one of those orphans that we saw yesterday living in the shack on the side of the hill when she was 10 years old and even though she was living in those dire conditions she was always hoping and always dreaming. And then she said she came to the orphanage and there she met me and eventually our whole family and she learned what love is and she was so loved that she now has extra love to give to others and she told how she was able to share about the love of God with several children the last two days and that she loves this ministry and wants to always work in it with us. Words can’t express how beautiful it was what she said and her sweet little face all wet with tears. Oscar was crying just trying to translate.

Then we had a sweet time of prayer together and are now heading off to bed. God has been so good and we are just getting started. Thank you all for your prayers and support. God is doing a mighty work here.

For months before every mission trip I wrestle with God asking Him to superintend our trip. I always know in my heart that if His presence, power, and His Divine direction is not with us that all that we do will be in vain. There is always spiritual warfare of all kinds that precedes a trip like this and I have come to pray specifically that the Lord will be our vanguard and go before us removing every obstacle and paving our way before us. And in my humanness I always continue to be amazed when He comes through and shows Himself mighty on our behalf. Today was another example of this taking place.
 
We had planned for weeks to go to a certain orphanage this morning that I have been to many times and is one of my favorites and at the last minute this weekend there was a snag and we had to adjust our plans. Though I was tempted to be disappointed and concerned, I knew that many of God’s richest blessings on our ministry here in Colombia have come through what we would have considered a detour and so I waited for the Spirit to show us His plan. I was not disappointed to say the least.

We headed out this morning to a new part of Bogota to which I had never been called Soacha. It is a suburb of over 1 million people and for the most part it is very poor. We soon discovered that the place we were going was up in one of the mountains that ring the city of Bogota and after a somewhat harrowing ride up a very primitive “road” we arrived at a very poor neighborhood carved into the side of the mountain.

Many of the people here have been displaced by the forty-year war in Colombia and have cobbled together “houses” on this hillside with whatever materials they could find. An elderly woman, affectionately known throughout the town as Abuelita (Granny), runs a hot lunch kitchen there for the children of the neighborhood many of whom only get the one meal a day that she provides. We were to be her guests today and spend time with the orphans and impoverished children of this refugee city.

Before the children arrived we hiked through the neighborhood and visited several homes of the families whose children we were going to spend time with. It is impossible to explain the primitive way that these people live. They have no running water except for one hour per week and they have to collect all the water that they will need for the whole week in that one hour.

They live in shacks pieced together from bricks, tin, lumber, anything that they can put together. There are no sewers, or drainage other than the streets. When it rains hard many times their houses are washed away and they have to begin again. Our contact here is a young pastor named Jordan that we met through Pastors Hector & Liliana. He and his family minister in this place and they are very passionate about their work here.

The children arrived and had their lunch and then the fun began. Deidra has collected three large suitcases full of toys, balls, puzzles, frisbees, crayons and coloring books and such. It wasn’t very long before everyone was gathered around the team playing and drawing and this went on for over 2 hours.

Two different singing groups were with us as well and they sang the gospel and then shared the gospel with the children and prayed with them.

It was amazing to see how quickly the children responded to the love and how quickly the team responded to the love that the children showed so freely. Luke and I stepped outside with a couple of frisbees and it wasn’t long before several teenage and adult men had gathered around and Luke was teaching them to throw and catch. I told him it looked like he had the makings of a Frisbee ministry here in Colombia. He flashed his signature smile and kept playing.

As the afternoon passed I noticed that Pastor Timothy was spending a lot of time with Pastor Jordan asking many questions about their dream and vision for this place. It wasn’t long before Pastor Jordan shared his dream of buying some land right there on that street and building a larger place where Granny could feed many more children and the gospel could be shared with the community. Pastor Timothy, in his irresistible “Git er done” fashion said, “Well let’s go find some land.” So up we went and started hiking through the neighborhood looking at different available chunks of land on this hillside.

It wasn’t long before they had decided upon a piece of property and began negotiations… but that is a story for Pastor Timothy to share so stay tuned but let me say this, only eternity will tell how many souls will be affected by our little “detour” to Soacha today. Soon it was time to go and the precious little kids gathered around and told us goodbye, begging us to come and see them again soon. We had a wonderful dinner at one of our favorite places here and returned to the hotel full of joy and totally exhausted and excited about what the rest of the week will bring. Once again Lord, You have shown yourself all wise and guided our trip marvelously and we praise You.

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I am so grateful to God to once again be writing from Bogota, Colombia.
 
God has put this city in my heart and I am excited to be here on my 16th trip with this wonderful team of friends, my goddaughters Heidy and Ginary and my oldest son Luke on his first mission trip. Praise the Lord! We began our mission trip this week in Colombia with a very blessed church service with our dear friends at Iglesia Libertad in the heart of Bogota.

I always love coming to this place and these people.

The Holy Spirit’s presence is so tangible here. We started the service with amazing worship from Pastor Hector & Liliana’s daughters, Heyli and Caroline, and our friends Javier and Orlando. It was absolutely heavenly. I love worshipping with our Colombian family.

Then it was time for the word of God to be spoken and I was so blessed to share the pulpit with my friend Oscar Andres Useche as translator.

God helped us mightily and many souls were encouraged in the Lord. There were many tears and the altar was filled with those desperate for Jesus.

Then we were surprised with a beautiful song and dance by the children of the church calling on the Lord to make His name famous among the nations. It was very moving.

After the service we shared a wonderful Colombian meal with the Pastor’s family and then back to the hotel for a restful afternoon and evening. A glorious start to our week.