For the past 15 years I have served as a pastor of Tierra Nueva, ministering to immigrants from Mexico and inmates in Skagit County Jail here an hour north of Seattle. I regularly see immigrants suffer terribly due their inability to become legal residents or avoid deportation on account of sometimes even minor criminal activity. Immigration reform is critical at this time and must include far more than an opportunity for the millions of undocumented immigrants residing in the USA (12-20 million) to become citizens. Reforms are also desperately needed to overhaul the failed 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA) to give young men and women labeled “criminal aliens” opportunities for redemption.

Last week while in Honduras my wife Gracie called me about a close friend from Mexico named Ignacio whose 21-year-old son Jose was in jail charged with a DUI and possession of a controlled substance; as a result he was subject to a Border Patrol hold. If he is convicted, he will serve his time and then be deported back to a country where he has never lived, with a possible lifetime bar to re-entry. He will be separated from his US citizen wife, three year old daughter and family. “Is there anything we can do?” Ignacio asked in desperation.

I was talking with Gracie by cell phone, having just arrived in a Honduran town where we had lived for six years in the 80s promoting sustainable farming to stem the exodus from rural areas to cities. Two days before a 23-year-old man from a nearby village had been shot to death by someone he had threatened. The INS had deported two months before, after he served time for a minor crime in a US jail.

“He had been working for three years in different states but then was arrested and deported. Like many young immigrants who have been in the USA, he came back with a serious drug problem, all disoriented and not wanting to work for $3.00 a day,” said Angel David, Tierra Nueva’s Honduran pastor whom I joined to comfort his grieving mother. The US-based MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs were exported and rapidly spread throughout Central America when the INS deported vulnerable immigrant youth from violent American urban centers and prisons.

What could we do to keep Jose from being deported? Since he is married to a US citizen he might be able to apply for a waiver, depending on the seriousness of his conviction. However, people can be stripped of their residency status or barred from ever becoming a legal resident through committing a crime involving drugs or “moral turpitude”, which includes nearly every offense. This is because IIRAIRA created a terrible two-edged sword: the threshold for a having a crime be considered the most serious crime has been dramatically lowered (so that shoplifting a pack of gum is equated with the murder of a policeman or rape of a child), and at the same time the ability of immigration officers and judges to offer forgiveness to the truly deserving has been severely limited.

The law now puts tremendous discretion in the hands of our current prosecutors, and immigrants are too often left to the public county and municipal defender systems, which are overwhelmed and underfunded. Prosecutors can determine what charges to file and what plea agreements to accept, often well aware that what might be a great “deal” for a citizen of the US will impose a horrific “collateral” immigration consequence upon the immigrant: exile from work, home and family. This is coupled by the inability of our overworked public defenders to gather the resources needed to fashion resolutions of criminal charges, like drug treatment, community service and education, that allow the immigrant to pay his debt to society and reintegrate as a productive member. In contemporary America justice too often requires hard cash.

Ignacio and his wife Maria, like most immigrant workers, don’t have cash to pay for a private attorney for their son—who really needs drug and alcohol treatment and not jail time. They migrated to Washington State from Nayarit 15 years ago when Jose was 7, and other kids were 5, 3, 2 and 1. They had been unemployed and landless and were eager for work. Like many undocumented immigrants, they have struggled at the bottom of American society, taking on minimum-wage jobs in construction, slaughter houses, meat-packing plants, landscaping and field work.

I think back to a forum Tierra Nueva hosted more than a decade ago when a local berry farmer shared with the regional head of the INS his longing to see his many beloved workers be offered the chance to become legal permanent residents. “You know sir, that’s not what you really want,” said the INS chief. “If you give these people status and they will go after the America Dream. Then they won’t want to work for you anymore and there will have to be another wave of illegal immigrants to provide the workers to harvest America’s crops.”

Could the current political impasse that is keeping undocumented immigrants “illegal” be a deliberate mechanism to keep people in a state of perpetual slavery? Until ordinary Americans become aware of the desperate plight of immigrant workers, which is sustained by laws and economic forces that encourage them to come here but then force them to remain in the shadows, the sorry state of our justice system and shrinking pathways of forgiveness and begin to make their voices heard the plight of people on the margins will worsen. As people get to know immigrant workers as friends they will become motivated to put healthy pressure on prosecutors, judges and lawmakers to enforce laws in ways that favor all people and communities and change laws that don’t permit full consideration of each person’s humanity.

Last night I met with Jose during a bilingual Bible study in Skagit County Jail. His father Ignacio has spent the afternoon repairing my car after he and Maria had attended their son’s first court hearing. “We’re doing everything we can,” I assured him. “Esta bien, gracias,” he said smiling as they led him back to his cell.

Angel David is 52 and serves as Tierra Nueva’s Honduran leader due to his tireless service on behalf of the area’s most marginalized people. I have known him for 26 years and watched him grow fuller and fuller of grace and truth. Now he leads TN’s new initiative to establish “hogares en transformacion” (households in transformation)—a house church movement focusing on people in extreme poverty who are excluded from the church.

Two days before TN’s Mexican pastor Salvio and I arrived for a nine-day visit he tells us how he heard gunshots on the dirt road below his house. He ran down to find a 23-year-old man he had been a godfather to dying in a pool of blood, shot to death by someone he had threatened. He carried him to his mother’s house, his upper body soaking up blood and brain fragments, and they loaded him into a pickup to be transported to Tegucigalpa. He died en route.

“Like many young men from our area he had gone to El Norte looking for opportunities, worked a few years in different states before being arrested and deported back to Honduras,” explained Angel David. “He came back with a serious drug problem, all disoriented and not wanting to work for $3.00 a day. I used to invite him to play soccer with the other young men, and always insisted on holding his revolver for him as we don’t let people play armed, and now he’s dead and the young man who shot him is on the run,” said David.

Years before we had tried to intervene in his family’s life after a local pastor had insisted that his father return to his first wife to escape the punishment of eternal hell for adultery. The young man’s father had at that time left his current wife and eight children to return to a previous partner in another part of the county.

We held a four day leaders school to directly confront negative images of God and the Bible that often lead to disaster. Some 60 participants were involved, many from Angel David’s home gatherings. Afterwards we traveled from village to village to tell people about our new initiative and pray for them.

Last Sunday afternoon we visited our new 15-acre coffee farm high in the mountains of Yoro and met and prayed with old friends in the village of La Fortuna. It is exciting to see the tremendous potential of eventually being able to fund TN’s Honduran movement through coffee sales while at the same time providing quality coffee for our ex-gang members in Burlington to roast and sell Underground Coffee.

We then descended to Guachipilin, a village that runs up and down a steep mountainside. Back in TN’s heyday nearly all the famers there had converted their eroded lands into highly productive contoured terraces, winning them a national ecology award. We stood among a gathering of peasants overlooking a sweeping valley and Angel David introduced our visit.

“Tierra Nueva used to come with files and machetes and hoes to promote conservation of soils. We are still about this but now our first priority is to discover in the Bible about a God who loves sinners, to invite the Holy Spirit to fill us and to see Jesus heal people of their sicknesses.”

He described how our team were there to pray for people to be filled with the peace of love of Christ. He then prayed for the Holy Spirit to come and we began laying hands on people while Carlos from Catch the Fire in Raleigh played guitar and sang “Fire of God, fire of God, come breath on us” in Spanish.

Angel David, the six of us from Tierra Nueva in Burlington, Carlos’ English wife Catherine and other Hondurans who had attended our course fanned out an began praying. A whole line of peasant women were crying softly as they received prayer.

Next we prayed for those in pain and a woman who said she suffered from pain in her back, joints and throughout her entire body began to weep and loudly cry out as she bent over double. A bit worried I asked her what was happening.

“I feel heat in my whole body, and all the pain is gone,” she said.

Many others were healed that afternoon of all sorts of aches and pains. From there we jumped in our pickups and drove the bumpy roads to Las Delicias—where the local Catholic leaders who had all attended our course hosted a worship and healing service for the community.

There I felt led to have the children lay hands on people in need of healing. Six young kids came forward to volunteer. I invited them to lay hands on a woman with pain all through her head, neck, and shoulders. I had them send the pain away like they would order a dog trying to eat their dinner to leave the kitchen. “Vaya para afuera!” (Go out!) they said over and over. The woman began to cry.

“What is happening?” I asked her. “I feel heat all over… and the pain is going away.” We kept praying until it was completely gone and the kids prayed for others too.

It was a delight to see the Spirit move so powerfully in our outreaches after having earlier in the week experienced God’s empowering presence in our course.

On the third day of our course after teaching on baptism/empowerment by the Holy Spirit we prayed for people and many were deeply touched in ways that I have never seen in Honduras. Adults, youth and children were overcome by the Spirit—surrendering themselves to God’s love without resistance. This was very moving and our leaders there were all very surprised and delighted.

There was healing happening every day– nearly always accompanied by heat and often by tears. One man named Hector, an old friend and once TN promoter who is over 65 had severe back problems that have kept him disabled for 15 years. He had come with a cane that he used to walk everywhere. After going through a fire tunnel he began leap and was ecstatic:

“I’m healed! I’m healed” he shouted and jumped. He left his cane under his chair– a souvenir I’ve brought back from the trip.

On the final day of the course we had a worship and healing service in the center of Minas de Oro– which we never have done. Some 60 people came– mostly our course participants, but also some others. The worship was powerful and many people experienced God in new ways. Nearly everyone lined up at the end to receive prayer to step fully into Jesus ministry of sharing good news, healing and deliverance.

On our sixth night I had a powerful dream where I met a Latino man in his office. He looked at me and began to prophesy in an ecstatic way: (esto va ser fructifero, pero muy fruitifero) “This is going to be fruitful, but VERY FRUITFUL! he yelled, pointing at me. I began to cry and fell to the ground in the dream. I woke up panting rapidly and heavily. I fell back asleep and the same Latino man came back to confirm the same message.

Our Honduran leader Angel David was amazed by what God is doing and sees unprecedented thirst. He’s worried about how he’s going to lead this new movement of the Spirit– which is exactly what it feels like.

The six of us from Tierra Nueva got to assist in a beautiful new thing that is happening after 27 years of work there in Honduras. Please pray:

For Angel David, Ramiro, Elia, America and Dagoberto– our main TN Honduran leaders. For wisdom, courage, unity and love to reign. Pray also for strategies to reach young men who are either contemplating heading to the US to work or those recently deported who are longing for new opportunities.

I am amazed by how the Holy Spirit is at work actualizing Jesus’ work of breaking down the “barrier of the dividing wall” (Eph 1:14) through the gift of prophesy. Prophetic words bridge divides between God and humans, the past and present, believers and unbelievers, people of diverse ethnicities, nationalities, theological traditions, political ideologies, bringing reconciliation amidst every imaginable difference. God is at work reconciling the world to himself, gathering his children into a united family in Christ.

And why should I be surprised? Early in John’s Gospel it is written that those who receive Jesus and believe in his name are given authority to become God’s children who are “born of God” (1:12-13). Intimacy with God is a lifelong process that grows as we learn to hear the Father’s voice, see what God is doing, become transformed by his compassion and engage in Jesus-like actions. Jesus says:

Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself, unless it is something he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows him all things that he himself is doing; and greater works than these will he show him, that you may marvel (John 5:19-20). (See also Jn 5:30; 8:28; 12:49).
As we become more aware of our identity as God’s beloved sons and daughters, the Father will inevitably seek to reconcile us with estranged siblings. Friendship with God will also lead us into friendship with God’s many friends, including sinners, bringing us across every imaginable wall of separation as the Father makes us one as Jesus (John 17). Intimacy with God is an invitation into Jesus’ way of discerning his ministry of reconciliation.

For most of my Christian life I was estranged from the body of Christ charismatic. Years of ministry among the poor in war-torn Central America and among undocumented immigrants and inmates in labor camps and a jail in the United States put me at odds with my government and with many evangelicals and charismatic Christians who supported its wars and laws. I was inspired by Jesus’ life and teachings in the Gospels, the desert fathers, liberation theology and people like Dorothy Day, Archbishop Romero, Jean Vanier, and Mother Theresa. I pursued academic study of Scripture, contemplative spiritual practices and sought to combat the roots of poverty and oppression through contextual Bible study, sustainable development and human rights advocacy.

Week after week over a ten-year period I counseled inmates and immigrants in crisis and led bilingual bible studies in our local jail and storefront at Tierra Nueva in Washington State. I saw firsthand how harsh laws and immigration policies, poverty, drugs and alcohol destroy people’s lives. I became increasingly discontented with the gospel I was sharing, and longed to see more of God’s power to bring transformation. My desperation for breakthrough in ministry became so great that I ventured across the line into an ecumenism broader than I’d ever considered– attending a pastors’ and leaders’ conference at the infamous Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship.

I was struck from the start how much the Holy Spirit was moving during a session on the importance of forgiveness. As the speaker taught and prayed vivid memories came to mind of offenses and judgments held against people in my distant past who I felt compelled to forgive. After another stirring session on Jesus’ ministry announcing the Kingdom of God I lined up to receive prayer with hundreds of others for greater fruitfulness in ministry, and soon had my turn before a young man from the UK on the ministry team. His words opened me up as he spoke what only God could have shown him:

“I see you in a circle of men in red uniforms, I think they are prisoners,” he started out, getting my rapt attention. “The Father is saying ‘I am delighted how you love my prisoners and I’m going to give you deeper revelation from the Bible that will make their hearts burn,’ he continued, moving me with this reference to my favorite picture from the Emmaus road story in Luke 24:13ff before a final unexpected clincher. “He is releasing an anointing for healing on you so your words will be confirmed with the signs that follow.” I fell to the ground overcome by the Spirit, my hands burning. I continued to be touched more and more by the Holy Spirit at that conference in ways that transformed my life and ministry.

Since that time God has used me to invite many others from diverse camps in the body of Christ across lines of division to receive from each other. Over the past six years I have learned to identify the Spirit’s promptings to pray for people in ways that show me Jesus’ longing to reconcile people. Once after a Bible study on Jesus’ healing of the bent-over woman in Luke 13:10ff a Chicano gangster named Santos asked if I would pray for him for lifelong nervous tick that caused his face to dramatically flinch several times a minute. Upon praying I got an impression that he had been beaten in the head by his father as a child. When I asked him he nodded and began to weep. After leading him through prayers of forgiveness of his father his humiliating tick went away and he gave his life fully to Jesus. A Chinese woman in London was healed of chronic back pain and insomnia last April after she forgave her father for beating her, her siblings and mother after the Holy Spirit revealed this prophetically. While I have seen God heal hundreds of people over these years in many nations and subcultures, what most touches people is the recognition that God personally knows, loves and welcomes them into his family and offers the Holy Spirit to bear witness that they are indeed his children (Rom 8:15-17).

The Spirit that came on Jesus at his baptism, which his followers received at Pentecost inducts us into filial intimacy and membership in God’s borderless family. The tongues of fire that rested on each one gathered ignited their tongues to proclaim the mighty deeds across the boundaries of language and culture. Peter’s use of Joel 2 to interpret the coming of the Spirit re-enforces this notion of the prophetic as barrier removing: sons and daughters, young and old, female and male slaves all will prophesy (Acts 3:17-18). An angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, directing him to go to the road to Gaza where he met an Ethiopian eunuch who came to faith and carried the gospel into Africa (Acts 8:26ff). Peter received prophetic revelation in the form of a vision that opened him to minister to Gentile Cornelius (Acts 10). As we grow in intimate communion with God we will find ourselves bringing Good News across borders that show that in fact the dividing wall of hostility is down and “[we] are no longer strangers and aliens, but [we] are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God’s household” (Eph 2:19).

Whenever I go into a jail or prison I am changed. This past June a missionary friend invited me to lead Bible studies in a prison and jail in Pemba, Mozambique. She had begun visiting inmates some eight months before and was passionately engaged—and I soon saw for myself why.

We first visited a prison in Mieze and led a Bible study on the parable of the lost sheep to some 100 inmates. The men sat three abreast in a deep, narrow corridor lined with cell blocks that divided the prison in half. We stood in the same corridor a few steps above. After an opening prayer and introductions we sang a few worship songs together in Portuguese.

We sat down to place ourselves closer to the people’s level and a volunteer read in Portuguese Luke 15:1-2, which was then translated into the local language Makua.

“Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to him to listen to him. And both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”

I gave a quick summary of the characters, telling how tax collectors were viewed as thieves, and asked the men if any of them knew any thieves. Everyone laughed as they looked around at each other. “Jesus was a friend of thieves and sinners. All of the thieves and sinners came to him to listen to him,” I continued. “Where would Jesus find thieves and sinners in Mozambique?” I asked. “Right here! responded some of the men” – and there we were to re-experience thousands of years later the same Good News.

I suggested that thieves and bad people must have felt his love and total acceptance. The law-abiding people criticized him for hanging out with criminals, so he told them a story. Though it was far from an ideal place to act out this parable, I asked for a smaller, light weight volunteer to be a sheep and a stronger bigger volunteer to be a shepherd and found willing actors in a flash.

Men read the parable of the lost sheep in Portuguese and Makua and I then asked the man playing the sheep to go as far as he could away from the others into the depths of the corridor. He found his way back there and waited. I then asked the men how people end up getting lost, getting into trouble. People mentioned drinking, steeling, poverty, drugs, rape and other things. Then I sent the man playing the shepherd to go find the sheep, place him on his shoulders and bring him back, inviting the rest of us to his house for a big celebration.

The stronger man went and lifted him on his shoulders while the other inmates clapped and cheered. Once back I asked the inmates and the man playing the sheep what he was doing when the shepherd found him? The men seemed delighted to see that the sheep wasn’t doing anything, just being lost. The shepherd came looking for him, “until he found him!”

“What did the shepherd do when he found him?” I asked. “Did he yell at him, beat him, or sentence him to prison time?” Acting out the story made the answer obvious. The shepherd found him, rejoiced and carried him back, inviting all his friends to a big welcome party in his honor. There’s even a big party in heaven over a sinner who is found/repents!

“How many of you would like to be found, brought home into God’s house and celebrated?” I asked. I told the men like I have many times in Skagit County Jail that Jesus is looking for them and will not give up until he finds them. “But you can give him permission to find you sooner rather than later if you’d like,” I offer. “If you are interested in being found now, I invite you to welcome Jesus into your life and surrender to his love.”

At this invitation there’s was a massive response. I could see that people were very moved as they prayed in Portuguese or Makua to give their lives over to Jesus. We then offered to pray lay hands on each man to bless them and pray for physical healing. My missionary friend, the Mozambican interpreter and the four or five other outside ministry team people and I spent the next forty five minutes or so praying for every inmate.

I was moved to see how nearly every man had scars on their arms, faces and legs from knife or gunshot wounds. I went and prayed for men who were laying sick in their beds in some of the cells together with a Mozambican pastor. We left warmed to the core by God’s love reflected towards us from these open, desperate Mozambican men.

A few days later our missionary friend took my son Isaac and I and some other Iris School of Ministry students to the Pemba city jail where I led another Bible study. The jail was much dirtier and bleaker then the prison, with inmates crowded in a yard guarded by AK-47-bearing women and men guards. While the majority of inmates where Mozambican, we met men from Kenya and other African countries, and there were 15 or so Bangladeshi men squatting together in their own little alcove. A line of women inmates leaned against a wall listening in as a Mozambican pastor led worship and began to interpret my Bible study.

In this jail like in many jails and prisons in poor countries around the world, food was a meager serving of rice and people slept on a cement floor and had to relieve themselves in an uncovered hole in the ground. After a Bible study we passed out small loaves of bread to the famished inmates, prayed for people’s healing, and saw many people get visible relief. I prayed for one older man who had open sores covering his entire body—allowing me only a small patch on the top of one of his bare feet to place two fingers.

Before leaving I talked with the Bangladeshi inmates. They had been picked up trying to cross Mozambique illegally from Tanzania en route to South Africa. They said they’d been there four months without an attorney visit and knew nothing about how to get released.

A younger man wanted prayer for his arm, which he couldn’t straighten out and pained him greatly after a fall. I gently held his swollen elbow and prayed for Jesus to heal him. As I prayed I asked him to begin to try to move his arm. At first he winced and couldn’t straighten it. Little by little as we continued to pray he was able to completely bend and fully straighten his arm. Astonishment then joy came over his face.

“My friend wants you to know that he thinks you are magnificent!” said the interpreter. I insisted that this was Jesus’ doing as the entire group of Bangladeshi’s and Indian men looked on. We prayed for God to act on their behalf, liberating them from the jail.

The next day I met an influential Muslim businessman whose family were originally from India who has befriended Heidi and Rolland Baker. He agreed to meet with Isaac and me to talk about advocating for the Bangladeshi inmates release. While I never confirmed that he was able to get them released, I could see that advocacy must accompany proclamation both here, in Mozambique and everywhere else where I have done jail ministry.

Since our return I have often remembered these poor prisoners and prayed for them, and also for our missionary friend, the Bakers, and Iris Ministries’ many missionaries and Mozambican pastors. Please pray for them, and for God’s wisdom and direction for Gracie and I too as we discern our role in equipping the body of Christ for ministry to people on the margins.

In the last few days I have received invitations to return to Mozambique next summer to teach Mozambican leaders and possibly prison chaplains; and to Bordeaux, France to train French jail chaplains.

Meanwhile in our own local jail officials have just told us we can no longer lay hands on inmates or offer services with more than two of us ministering. Please pray for at Tierra Nueva as we continue to share God’s amazing love in Jesus to men, women and juvenile offenders here in Skagit County. Pray for doors to open again for us to minister more freely, advocate more effectively and see prisoners find spiritual and physical freedom.

A few events have caught my attention this past week linking God, fishing and the need to be vigilant on both spiritual and day-to-day fronts.

Last week our 16-year-old son Luke and our dear friend Troy were on our floating docks in front of our house, fishing for humpy salmon in the Skagit River. Troy lay on his back under a big dead tree that leaned over the water, casting and reeling in slowly. Luke stood on another dock beside him, casting out into the blue-green river.

Luke, lamenting that they weren’t catching fish like others in many boats around them, was comparing his lack of s uccess fishing to his frustrations at not experiencing God’s tangible presence. Why do some people seem to feel God’s Presence, getting touched or healed in ways that excite and encourage them, while others go to all the same places and want more of God but don’t feel or experience anything for themselves? That question was about to be partially answered, not in church but right there on the river.

Luke saw some fish rolling down steam and ran down the bank and cast out. Immediately he had a fish on and yelled to Troy, who jumped up with his pole, caught up with Luke, cast out and himself hooked a salmon. They skewered the fish through the gills on a tree branch, but Luke’s fish’s gill broke, leaving Troy’s fish hanging there bleeding all alone.

“I looked at the fish all covered with blood and thought it looked like it was being crucified,” recounts Troy. I took it down and lay it on the sand and placed my hands on it, giving thanks to God for its life. I felt the life leave it and just then heard a big crash.”

While Luke was reeling in another fish, Troy ran over to the dock to see what had happened. The big dead tree had broken in half, falling into another dead tree which had been propelled down onto the dock right where Troy had been laying. Just then Luke ran up and said:

“Whoa Troy, if you’d been there you would have been dead.”

Troy couldn t help but see the connections between Jesus and the fish: “It’s like the fish gave its life for me. He pondered in detail the amazing timing of his deliverance from near certain death.

“When I was laying there on my back casting I had decided to take 7 more casts. I was reeling in slowly so each cast was taking about 2 ½ minutes. I was on my second cast when Luke caught his fish. About four minutes passed between when I jumped up and when the tree fell on the dock. If he hadn’t caught the fish I would have been there another 15 minutes or so.”

In the next half hour Luke and Troy caught their limit, bringing 8 fish up for a Pascal barbeque dinner. But the story’s not over yet…

The following Sunday we had a big baptism service way up river on the bank of the Skagit near Tierra Nueva. Gracie and I baptized 14 of our community members in the cold Cascade flow amidst anglers whose lures and sand-shrimp nearly entangled our joyous baptisms. The Holy Spirit was coming on strong as people came up from the water, making it hard for Gracie and I to stay standing (see http://s616.photobucket.com/albums/tt246/waharpist/baptism%20august%202009 .

On my way up from the bank I received a call from Lourdes, a farm worker whose family has been part of our ministry for our entire 15 years here. Her husband Boni had=2 0been under his truck when the jack failed and the truck fell down on his chest. He was in the Emergency room and they wanted me there quick. I rushed to the hospital and hung out and prayed with the family around my traumatized friend who should have been dead. Just as the doctors made us leave the room so they could take an X-ray, two paramedics rolled in another of my beloved charges, Jose who had just fallen out of a tree.

For the next few hours I was in the ER, going from Jose’s room to Boni’s, praying for them and talking with their families. Boni is now recovering from a broken collarbone, dislocated shoulder and lots of scrapes and bruises and Jose from a broken neck.

While not all suffering and calamities can be avoided and God can rescue us in spite of ourselves, these events have reminded me of the need to be vigilant, paying close attention to what God may be warning us about or calling us to. But how do we discern God’s protective, saving presence in our lives?

Earlier in the summer I had noticed the leaning tree and consciously imagined a similar scenario, but put off cutting it down as I figured in would fall on it’s own during a storm when no one was around. If Luke hadn’t noticed the salmon surfacing, ran down the bank, cast out and hooked the fish Troy would likely have been killed.

Lordes felt strongly that her family should go to Tierra Nueva’s service but Boni needed to rep air his truck so he could go to work the next morning. Jose dropped his tools several times while climbing the tree, wondered why, ing his tools from the tree and even says he kept dropping his tools as he climbed the tree, wondered why, but says he kept pushing himself to get the job done even though he was really tired. Peter’s words ring true and inspire me to greater attentiveness.

“The end of all things is at hand; therefore, be therefore sober and watch unto prayer (1 Peter 4:7) and “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brothers who are in the world” (1 Peter 5:8-9).

We give thanks to God that all of these friends are alive and ask you to pray for Boni and Jose’s speedy recovery and for provision for their families.

At the end of June I returned from two rich weeks in Mozambique with my oldest son Isaac—a trip that took us from the cooler South (Maputo) to the more tropical North (Pemba) of the country and across the diverse landscape of the body of Christ.

Isaac and I tasted the banquet awaiting us, sitting at table and ministering together with mainline Christians, Catholics, evangelicals, Pentecostals, villagers, inmates and missionaries. This is the first of several reports on this fascinating and deeply encouraging trip.

I can see clearly that the problems facing Africa require that the body of Christ come together like never before. Looking at some of today’s most tenacious social problems in the light of Scripture can shake the church out of complacent accommodation. Being further empowered and led by the Holy Spirit to step into Jesus’ ministry of healing and deliverance may be the only hope to get us past the impasses of enlightened talk and programs.

This trip began with a course on “Lectura Popular de la Biblia” (street-level Bible reading) at the Seminario Unido de Ricatla in Maputo. Dutch theologians and missionaries Hette and Petra Domburg and recently-elected general secretary of the Mozambican Council of Churches Marcos Macambo coordinated an amazing coming together of 35 pastors from many different mainline and evangelical denominations for five days of stimulating Bible study and fellowship.

Luiz Dietrich and Adeodata Maria dos Anjos came from CEBI (Centro de Estudios Biblicos) from Brazil—offering their wisdom as Catholic theologian activists from out of a movement with a long history of social engagement in the light of Scripture. Adeodata gave a talk on her work establishing water cisterns, promoting sustainable farming and Bible study with Catholic base communities in Northeastern Brazil.

Luiz is a Bible scholar with a passion to see quality exegesis reach the poor. He brought stacks of small booklets in Portuguese that inspired me in a project I’ve been aiming at for years: to prepare bible study and theological reflection materials that draw from quality scholarship that bring the best to the least.

Maria Makgamathe of Ujamaa Centre for Biblical and Theological Community Development and Research in S. Africa led a Bible study on the rape of Tamar in 2 Samuel 13:1-24 that exposed contemporary attitudes towards rape in African society. The men were able to see how our attitudes often parallel those of many of the men characters in this Biblical narrative who in various ways contributed to Tamar’s rape and it’s tragic aftermath – Amnon, Jonadab, Absalom, David. Tamar’s resistance and lament were prophetic cries that visibly empowered the women gathered there at the conference.

The following week in Pemba I led 35 of Iris Ministries lead pastors in this Bible study. They lapped it up and wanted more—confirming my belief that the charismatic renewal desperately needs the resources of socially-engaged Bible scholars and popular education movements like Ujamaa and Cebi. See http://www.sorat.ukzn.ac.za/ujamaa/resources.htm for a write up of this Bible study and info on Ujamaa’s Tamar Campaign.

Bongi Zengele of Ujamaa of Ujamaa led a Bible study on the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11, linking the crowds condemning, scapegoating actions to people’s marginalization of people living with HIV/Aids now in Africa. There in Maputo over 25% of the population are HIV positive. Shame and fear of exclusion and condemnation keeps this scourge hidden. Bongi got the group of Mozambican pastors talking more directly and openly than they probably ever had about the most sensitive social issue affecting everyone.

I led the group in a biblio-drama on the same text where we acted out Jesus’ confrontation with the Scribes and Pharisees, which illustrated clearly how Jesus’ writing in the dirt takes the condemning, shaming gaze off the woman. We pondered how Jesus’ challenge “whoever is without sin cast the first stone” turned the accusers’ attention away from the woman and towards their own hearts. His stooping to write on the ground once again keeps Jesus himself from standing over the blamers as accuser, since he came not to condemn but to save (John 3:17).

One afternoon Hette took me and Isaac out to visit a small Presbyterian congregation of some 20 people in the village of Boquisso. While the people were embarrassed by their teetering grass church with its rusting sheet metal roof they formed a tunnel and worshiped as we went between them into the dirt-floored sanctuary. I led them in dramatic reenactment of Jesus’ healing of a woman in the synagogue who was bent over double in Luke 13:10-21.

In response we prayed for people with pain in their backs and stomachs and those suffering from night terrors. After the first woman was healed I showed her how to pray for the second, who experienced dramatic relief from back and stomach pain as we talked her through consciously receiving her healing from Jesus as a free gift. This is a radical idea in a culture where traditional healers charge for their services. As they were praying for the third woman suddenly she began dancing and worshipping, overjoyed to be immediately released from pain. I had all the remaining people pray for themselves, and people were overjoyed by the healing the some 18 of the 20 experienced.

An older woman named Elsa who was the closed actual equivalent to the bent over woman Jesus healed in Luke was not getting relief. Finally after Hette and Isaac hung in there with her and welcoming God’s presence, her stomach pain left. When we left she was not yet straight. Please remember her in your prayers—that Jesus would totally heal her and inspire this congregation to step deeper into God’s Kingdom.

The next day I spoke on jail ministry, leading the group through a Bible study on Jesus’ call of Matthew in Matthew 9:9-17 I’ve done in the jail and with MS-13 gang members in a Guatemalan prison. Some of the pastors were so inspired that I heard the next day that I will likely be invited to return to for a longer national-level training on prison ministry.

The final day was spent discussing the “see, judge, act” or “reality, bible, community” approaches to reading Scripture in the light of pressing community and social problems where we sought to integrate our approaches. We then divided up the group into five groups which each prepare Bible studies that addressed a social problem like HIV/Aids, domestic violence, orphans, water, crime, corruption, etc.

Hette, Luiz, Adeodata, Isaac and I left together that Friday afternoon on the same plane northward. They were off to teach a course to a Catholic community on Revelation and Isaac and I to teach Iris Ministries Mozambican pastors and international Mission’s School participants—which I will write about in my next update. That weeks experiences and conversations sparked thirst in all of us to experience more of Jesus’ Kingdom here and now—to the extent that we ended up praying for more of the Holy Spirit’s anointing right there in the airport before our flight.

Please pray for these news friends and for Mozambican pastors and leaders—that street/reality, bible/word, Spirit and community would come together as Christians come together in unity as Christ’s body in the world. We long to see the word carefully read to illuminate God’s loving presence at work in the darkest places of our hearts and world. At the same time we pray for faith to expect the Spirit would confirm the words with concrete signs of liberation following.

Bob Ekblad
Jun 10, 2009

This last year many of us at Tierra Nueva have felt a need to go deeper into God’s love and presence and into Jesus’ ministry of deliverance to people oppressed by personal and structural evil.

Jesus describes God as having sent him to proclaim release to the captives and to let the oppressed go free (Luke 4:18). In Acts 10:38 Peter summarizes Jesus’ ministry as he witnessed it “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power… he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”

We want to see people (ourselves included) freed from forces like shame, fear, control, anger, abandonment, rejection, addictions, lust, and greed, as well as from indebtedness, criminal behavior, legal oppression, racism, gang and national allegiances and other macro powers.

You are invited to join us for four days and five nights of worship, teaching, participatory Bible studies, discussion and fellowship focusing on Jesus’ teaching about deliverance and getting filled up with more of the Holy Spirit.

Topics include: revisiting cosmology; hands on teaching on deliverance, inner and physical healing; the importance of forgiveness; freedom from the stronghold of shame, fear and control; deliverance from micro and macro powers; hearing the voice of God; adoption and empowerment.

Bob Ekblad and the Tierra Nueva staff will provide the teaching, worship leading and personal ministry.

When and Where: Sunday night July 26, 4:30pm – Thursday night July 30 @ 10pm At Tierra Nueva, 102 N. Pine, Burlington, WA

Cost: $145 per person or $200 per couple.

Lodging at New Earth refuge $20 a night (single bunk beds in separate women and men’s dorms) or $75 for four nights.

To register or for more information contact
and/or check our website www.tierra-nueva.org

The last two Wednesday evenings Tierra Nueva pastoral colleague Emily Martin has taken me with her to visit Mixteco-speaking farm workers from Oaxaca, Mexico who have been attending our Sunday evening Spanish service. The new arrivals from Oaxaca are some of the poorest of Mexico’s poor. They come from remote, impoverished villages where they have had minimal access to education, running water, electricity and health care. They come desperate for work on local farms to sustain their families.

I make my way up rickety stairs and knock on a hollow door before entering into a run-down room full of people and minimal furnishings. Luisa, a Mixteco woman in her early 30s nurses her infant on a stained mattress that takes up 1/3 of the room. Teen girls have big banana leaves laid out on the kitchen counter that they’re busy dishing corn, chicken and sauce into to make tamales. Paulino and his uncle Raul greet me politely, pulling out a child-size plastic chair for me in the center of the room. Raul is tired for a hard day’s work near the Canadian border where he was planting blueberries.

This night Emily download and burned onto a disk a recorded message from globalrecordings.net in these people’s particular dialect of Mixteco that effectively summarizes Abraham and Sarah’s story in Genesis. The 10-12 people living in this one-room apartment all gather around a near broken down CD player and listen intently, smiling and nodding as they hear of Abram and Sarai’s journey as migrants from Ur to the foreign land of Canaan spoken in their own language.

A 16-year-old boy holds a flip chart of drawings of Abram and Sarai’s life that goes with the recordings. This boy was recently released from an immigration detention center for minors after spending four months in custody after U.S. Internal Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided his apartment. They had deported all the adults but kept him detained in a special house for minors in Seattle since he’s an orphan with no home to deport him back to– until Emily negotiated his release to family and her own custody.

I summarize the story, emphasizing God’s call to leave all securities behind in order to be blessed and consequently become a blessing to every family on earth. These people had already left everything, embarked on a precarious journey and are here in what they thought might be a sort of Canaan. Will God meet them here as God had met Abram and Sarai when they came into new, foreign territory?

We ask if anyone needs prayer, and Paulino motions to his wife Luisa, who child now lays fast asleep in her arms.

Paulino interprets as she tells us how she hasn’t been able to lift anything heavy due to severe pain in her stomach just below her rib cage. She also has lots of pain when she tries to move her head from side to side. I invite people to put out their hands to receive the Holy Spirit. Then we lay hands on the Luisa and pray for relief. “What are you feeling I ask?” All she says is “ini” (heat). I ask her to move her head from side to side to see if there’s improvement and she says it’s lessening. We pray again and keep asking her. When it’s time to go she says the pain is all gone. Later in the week we learn that she is able to lift with no pain in her stomach. The following Wednesday we learn that many suffer from regular night mares. We invite them to place their hands on their own heads and we pray for God’s protection and relief: for dreams from heaven to replace night terrors. People are desperate for Jesus’ help and openly receive and seem to benefit almost immediately.

Last Sunday other farm workers showed up at our Spanish service. We saw five people we prayed for healed of different chronic aches and pains. It is beautiful to see people experience the reality of God—even though many still struggle to pay rent, find adequate work and help their children succeed in our complicated school system.

Signs of God’s Kingdom here but not yet are evident in the following testimony by a beloved Tierra Nueva community member Susannah Reyes.

“As I attended the past seminar at Tierra Nueva, one of the most incredible things happened to me on the last night.

I usually watch people receive prayer and have watched some overcome by the Spirit. They are sometimes not able to stand, because they are so overcome. I’ve sat back and watched this with some skepticism, yet wanting it so much to happen to me. I wanted it so much, I guess I wasn’t allowing it to happen. The more I wanted it, the further it got away from me. Or maybe the Lord knew I wasn’t ready.

Anyway, the person giving me a ride was leaving early. I got up to leave, but Elizabeth asked me to wait and receive prayer. So I stayed to worship and pray once again. Another person offered to give me a ride, so again I got up to leave. Once again, Elizabeth intervened and asked me to stay and receive prayer. So I stayed and returned to prayer.

I am an addict in recovery. I have been in remission for two years. As I stood there deep in silent prayer, I was asking for forgiveness for having been an addict and all of the hurt and wrongs I had done to my family and others, and also the magnificent temple God had given me to care for. All of a sudden I felt Bob’s hand on my forehead and he said, “You are not an addict.” At that moment I felt something deep from the pit of my stomach come up and out of my chest. It was so intense I couldn’t stand and felt myself falling. I had finally totally been overcome by the Holy Spirit. I lay there in total peace for some while.

That experience freed me. My identity was no longer an addict named Susannah. I am Susannah and I have a disease called addiction. God released me from this horrible bondage. God heard my heart. I am God’s child!”

Susannah wrote this testimony just a few days before she was found dead in her apartment by TN staff member Elizabeth—our beloved Susannah had passed away of natural causes.

Please pray for Susannah’s family and join us in thanking God for her beautiful testimony and her life. Pray for God’s continued presence and ongoing signs of Jesus’ Kingdom here and now as we minister to Mixteco and Triqui farm workers here in our valley.

I am convinced that God is longing to take us deeper into Jesus’ death and resurrection this Easter and beyond.

I have been meditating on Jesus’ words in Matthew 12:40 “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign shall be given it but the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

In the past I interpreted Jesus ’offer here to give his contemporaries the sign of Jonah as something less than the signs that people craved. But Jesus really wanted to do far more for people. He came to die at human hands to undo the power of sin and death forever. He carried the world’s sins and sicknesses, violence and oppression with him to death and burial into the heart of the earth. He did this in total submission to the Father’s will, yielding himself up to death. He showed us the way into the deepest place of baptismal death, demonstrating total trust in God.

Baptismal death is the way forward to life empowered by the Spirit– who raised Jesus from the dead.

Think about Jonah. When the storm was raging, threatening to sink the boat, the pagan sailors are described as knowing that Jonah was fleeing God’s Presence. “What should we do to you that the sea may become calm for us?” they asked him (Jonah 1:11). Jonah responded: “Pick me up and throw me into the sea (1:12). Rather than take the whole ship down with him because of his rebellion, Jonah submits to God’s judgment– or to the consequences of his rebellion. He cries out from inside a fish that God sends to swallow him:

“You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me. All your breakers and billows passed over me… I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever. But you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. (John 2:3,6).

Jonah partially embodies baptismal death and new resurrection life that Paul describes in Romans 6. “Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”

Resurrection power follows baptismal death in the life of Jonah and Jesus. Once vomited out by the whale Jonah heeds the original call to preach to his national enemies, the people of Ninevah. The anointing was apparently so strong on Jonah’s preaching that the whole city believed in God, repenting in sackcloth and ashes visible on everyone from the King to the animals.

After Jesus’ baptism and wilderness temptations we see amazing power and authority. Fishermen drop their nets and immediately follow him and everyone who is sick and demonized are healed and delivered (Matt 4:18-25).

Yet the sign of Jonah Jesus describes does not include the resurrection. The sign Jesus leaves his compatriots with and us too this Good Friday is simple and radical: submission to God to the point of death.

Today I feel called by the Spirit to once again lay down my life, my agendas, my theology, my everything in total submission to the Father. Jesus himself calls disciples to take up their crosses daily and follow him. Where he goes is to the cross. It is there that he saves us as we are crucified with him—the righteous for the unrighteous to bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18).

God can only resurrect the one who has died. This Good Friday and Easter weekend let us yield ourselves totally to God— not out of despair but in hope: ”But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who indwells you” (Romans 8:12). Blessed Easter death and resurrection.

Come to Tierra Nueva’s School of Transformational Ministry: Going Deeper—Word, Spirit, and Street

Dates: Friday, May 1 at 6:00pm – Friday, May 22 at 10:00pm

Here at Tierra Nueva we are seeking the Gospel that has the power to save people on the margins and mainstream of society from powers that oppress. We have been ministering among poor peasants in Honduras since 1982 and working with immigrants, inmates, ex-offenders and gang members in Washington’s Skagit Valley since 1994. Learn about particular challenges and approaches to sharing the Good News of God’s transformational love in Jesus with marginalized people in North America. Join Tierra Nueva’s ministry workers and worshipping community for three weeks focused on experiencing God’s transforming love, following Jesus, and participating in the Kingdom of God here and now. Live together with others in a lush forest alongside the Skagit River at New Earth Refuge—a beautiful new retreat center on the Ekblad’s 35 acre property. Join us in a new move of the Holy Spirit to bring together orientations that are too often kept separate in the body of Christ: word, spirit and street.

Word

How do we read the Bible with all our questions, integrating both head and heart? What does it look like to read the Bible with people who consider themselves damned? Who is Jesus and how did he come to fulfill the Old Testament? What was his ministry in his context and what might that look like in today’s world? Explore Biblical perspectives on salvation, healing, and deliverance, as well as advocacy, peace-making/reconciliation, forgiveness and prophetic ministry.

Spirit

Enter into a deeper encounter with God through immersion in the Holy Spirit. Spend quality time in worship, contemplative prayer, and soaking prayer as the wellspring of daily activity. Receive God’s love and liberation for yourself and learn how to flow in the grace and power of the Spirit. What are the gifts of the Spirit? How do gifts awakened by the Spirit guide us in life and ministry, into hearing from God and entering the Kingdom? How does the Holy Spirit guide our theological reflection and Scripture reading? Special emphasis will be placed on learning how to hear the voice of God for personal direction, healing and deliverance, group discernment, and local, national and global social issues.

Street

Learn about the streets and the margins, with a special focus on Tierra Nueva’s context. What are some of the burning social issues of our time that affect people on the margins? Meet farm workers, ex-offenders, gang members, judges, prosecutors, public defenders and others who work with people on the margins of American society. Learn about social advocacy from Tierra Nueva ministry workers who work with ex-offenders, gang members and immigrants. Visit courts and migrant camps. Read and discuss books and watch provocative films.

Schedule and Themes

The journey begins on Friday, May 1 at 6:00 pm with introductions, worship, teaching and prayer. On Sunday morning we will join the 16th Annual Farm Worker Solidarity March, walking with farm laborers and advocates from Burlington to Mount Vernon. In the evening we will eat and worship together at Tierra Nueva’s bilingual service. Each day following will begin with worship, followed by morning sessions on key topics relating to our themes of Word, Spirit and Street. Afternoon sessions will vary between hearing from judges, gang members, farm workers and TN community members regarding aspects of advocacy and accompaniment of people on the margins. There will be many opportunities to receive prayer ministry. There will also be opportunities for quiet time, recreation and celebration. Topics covered throughout the course include:

History, Vision & Mission of Tierra Nueva

Knowing the God of love and experiencing God’s Spirit of adoption

The Ministry of Jesus and the Kingdom of God

Understanding Baptism and Christian identity & authority

The gifts of the Spirit & the five-fold ministries

Cosmology 101: The problem of evil and Jesus’ cross

Developing a real-world (contextual) theology appropriate to the margins

Poverty and social marginalization North and South

Sustainable development, relief and accompaniment

Developing a Biblical understanding of prophetic ministry in personal ministry and social engagement

Being Guided by the Spirit in Ministry

Developing and leading contextual Bible Studies

Faith Formation and leading not-yet-believing people into a living relationship with God

Faith formation for people on the margins

Healing Prayer

Facilitating deliverance from powers that oppress

Christian non-violence

Pastoral Ministry and spiritual accompaniment

Understanding the legal system, advocacy & accompaniment

Advocacy before other government institutions & the social welfare system

Prophetic Evangelism

Preventative health & self-care: hygiene, nutrition and exercise

Required Reading (ideally before arriving)

Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, Westminster John Knox: Louisville, 2005.

Heidi Baker and Shara Pradhan, Compelled by Love: How to change the world through the simple power of love in action, (Mary Lake: Charisma House, 2008).

Brad Jersak, Can You Hear Me? Tuning in to the God who speaks, (Abbotsford: Fresh Wind, 2003).

Charles .H. Kraft, Deep Wounds, Deep Healing, (Tonbridge, Kent: Sovereign World, 1993).

Fees (partial scholarships may be available)

Tuition $600

Accommodation $340

Food $460

Total $1400

If you have questions or are interested in applying please contact us at

Check for more information soon at www.bobekblad.com or www.tierra-nueva.org