Last week I spent three unforgettable days with my family in Cambodia. There we saw signs of Jesus’ Kingdom shining in a land still under the shadow of death. I now find myself thinking daily what it would look like for the light of Christ to shine even stronger there and here– so people can really see it.

Gracie and I were invited by Servants of Asia’s Urban Poor—a team of people from New Zealand, the Philippines, Australia, Japan and Canada called to live and minister in slum communities in Phnom Penh. The first day I led a short retreat for the staff and Gracie and I prayed for each of them. We visited some of the families in their homes amidst the squalor of the slum communities where they are seeking to live humbly among the poorest of the poor, bringing Jesus’ light.

A highlight for our family was being driven from place to place around the city in a Tuk Tuk assigned to us for our stay. Looking out at Phnom Penh we saw myriads of motorcycles, often with three-four people. They moved like tropical fish in schools, flowing through intersections, turning in front of on-coming traffic, often with people texting or talking on cell phones as they drove their worn-out motorcycles. A father and his three two sons laughed as we took their picture— the older boy clutching two turkeys on the seat between he and his younger brother.

We had an alarming visit to the genocide museum Tuol Sleng, the former office S.21 of the “Kampuchea Democratic” from 1975-1979. Pol Pot had established this office to detain, interrogate and eventually send off to the “killing fields” thousands of people deemed enemies of the regime.

We wandered through the cells and torture chambers, reading the stories of victims and perpetrators, looking at instruments of torture, and the photos of hundreds of young people who were executed. These photos still haunt me. Young men and women, their shoulders pulled tightly back as their hands were bound behind them, exhaustion and terror in their eyes. Many had been forced to lay for days side-by-side like sardines in rooms, shackled, forced to remain silent, before being tortured for days while being held in narrow wood-walled cells. Eventually their captors would tell them they were being taken to study. They were photographed, blindfolded then driven 30 minutes out of town to a big field with pits. There they were forced to kneel on the pit’s edge, where their captors executed them and buried them in mass graves. Somewhere between 750,000 and 2.5 million Cambodians were killed during the Khmer Rouge’s reign.

I have since read historians who argue convincingly that the United States’ secret carpet bombing of Cambodia from 1965-1973 is directly linked to Pol Pot’s rise to power (http://www.yale.edu/cgp/Walrus_CambodiaBombing_OCT06.pdf). The 2,500,000 tons of bombs dropped on targets in Cambodia (more than all the bombs dropped during WWII) traumatized the country—and unexploded ordnances (bombs) still litter the countryside today. Unexploded spiritual ordnances in the people and the land most certainly require detection and removal too—a massive task that needs to be done with great sensitivity.

Walking through the Tuol Sleng genocide museum disturbed me on another level—genocide on display as a tourist attraction. I first noticed this when a beggar with a severely burnt face and another maimed man approached us as we got out of our Tuk Tuk at the museum to join throngs of mostly foreign tourists to look on the shame of atrocities committed. The museum was poorly kept up: an introductory movie of the poorest quality, photos fading and pealing— reflecting the very shame that it exposed in it’s featuring of crimes committed by Cambodians against Cambodians.

That very day judges were deliberating on the sentence of Dutch—the head of that very prison—and the next day his 19 year sentence was announced—over 30 years after these events. In one of the nicer neighborhoods along the river, restaurants drew tourists by advertising free movies after dinner on the Cambodian genocide and “killing fields.” Shining light that exposes atrocities and shames perpetrators does not bring the desperately needed healing and deliverance—but rather numbness, resignation or even anger and further destruction and abuse. True repentance comes through the light of Christ.

“Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand,” preaches Jesus. Confession and repentance are most certainly needed in Cambodia—but larger global powers like the USA (and most certainly aware Christians) need to be involved. Last week’s commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a missed opportunity for the USA to publically apologize for the 214,000 killed there. Yet the work of peacemaking is more hands-on then simple apologies.

We visited some of Servant’s many ministries to the poor that they have turned over one-after another to Cambodians: a rehabilitation center to street youth addicted to sniffing glue, Justees, a silk-screening operation run by young graduates of the rehab program that makes tee shirts with justice statements, a nutrition center for malnourished children, an outreach to people with disabilities (see www.servantsasia.org).

Gracie and I prayed for several people suffering from pain, and found that Jesus was quick both heal and to reveal hidden terror and anxiety from trauma rooted in Cambodia’s wartime violence. We saw a deep need for spiritual mine sweeping, and found ministry workers desperate for more of Jesus’ anointing to address widespread abuse, infidelity, HIV/Aids and other issues and to keep energized themselves.

Since last Friday, when Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrated Jesus’ transfiguration, I find myself thinking how critical it is to right now, in the midst of ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel/Palestine to pay special attention to the Father’s spotlighting of Jesus’ person, teaching and way of redemptive suffering, that Moses and Elijah discussed with him before the watching disciples. “This is my son, my chosen one; listen to him!” (not to misunderstood OT justifications of violence via Moses/law and Elijah/the prophets!).

“And we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. And so we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:18-19).

Please pray for the many Christian workers seeking to bring the light of Christ into the darkest places in Cambodia. Please pray for Om Neang, a Cambodian woman working with Servants who established the nutrition center– that Jesus would heal her of lung cancer. Pray for the other many workers of Servants of Asia’s Urban Poor, for great wisdom, strength, health and more of Jesus’ anointing so they can bring the best news of God’s Kingdom to the people of Cambodia.

In April I traveled to the steamy, tropical island of Leyte in the Philippines to participate in a Holy Given Mission School where I became involved in a mission I never could have anticipated.

On the third day the worship leaders WanHsi (Singapore) and Juliana (Brazil) led us in several hours of worshipping. They longed to see the group of young Filipino leaders step into greater freedom and authentic expression in their worship and prophetic voice. It was during this intense, prolonged worship that I had a vision as I looked out the window at the lush tropical hill towards the Pacific Ocean.

I saw hundreds of Japanese soldiers standing in the lush grass under the coconut trees outside the classroom, looking intently in at us through the windows. I’m not sure how I knew they were Japanese, but they looked more like prisoners of war from another time than active soldiers. On the opposite side of the room, facing the street I saw crowds of Filipino people looking in at our group. What might contemporary Filipinos and the enemy combatant dead be looking for from worshiping Christians?

I met with pastor Ferd and shared what I saw with him. He told me that a number of Bible school students had had visions of headless Japanese soldiers marching around the land. “Many of the local people are afraid to come here because they believe there are spirits of the dead Japanese here on this land,” he said.

I asked pastor Ferd about the Hill 120 World War II memorial several kilometers down the road. In 1944 US General Douglas MacArthur had led the Allied troop invasion of the Philippines. In the naval battle just offshore in the Gulf of Leyte the Allied forced destroyed many Japanese ships, causing locals to name it “the red sea” because of all the blood. After pounding the Japanese stronghold Hill 120 from sea, MacArthur came ashore and took the hill after killing many Japanese soldiers, planting the American flag at its top (See the film “Letters from Iwojima” for some valuable perspective on a similar invasion of a Japanese island).

Pastor Ferd explained that the tourist Hill 120 down the road was not the actual site. I was actually looking out the window at Hill 120 from our classroom as we worshipped—the very site where many Japanese, but also Allied and Filipino soldiers had died. Why had God shown me these Japanese prisoners of war? What was I to do with this vision and what did it have to do with the mission school?

Internet research turned up MacArthur’s victory speech on Filipino radio from Leyte, and I read words that I found deeply disturbing. “I have returned… By the grace of Almighty God our forces stand again on Philippine soil-soil consecrated in the blood of our two peoples. We have come, dedicated and committed to the task of destroying every vestige of enemy control over your daily lives, and of restoring, upon a foundation of indestructible strength, the liberties of your people. The hour of your redemption is here. Rally to me.”

I thought about the 20-foot-tall bronze statues of MacArthur and his men down the road, and was struck by his messianic pretention and over confidence. MacArthur seemed to see himself as the Filipino’s Savior-liberator. Filipino soil certainly was not consecrated in the blood of two peoples—Americans and Filipinos. America blood consecration certainly did not give the USA the right to keep Filipinos in a debtor state after the war.

Allied “liberation” was followed by the US’s bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and MacArthur went on to govern Japan in the aftermath of the war. US victory in the Philippines did become the basis for a new imperial domination as the US followed suite after Spain and the Japanese to establish a beachhead into SE Asia that would later serve them in the Vietnam War and other interventions. One of my big concerns is that Japanese and SE Asian’s would have a confusing understanding of Jesus, his Kingdom and missionary activities through their identifying the US as a Christian nation.

As I kept investigating I learned that the Bible college was founded in the 90’s by American missionaries as a beachhead for mission, with the name “World Evangelism Bible College.” But locals referred the college as the “White House”—another clue that the land was still associated with imperial domination.

In fact the Spanish had “discovered” this island and others when Magellan came through. They’d also established a fort there because of its strategic location facing the Leyte Gulf and the Pacific Ocean shipping lanes. For Filipino Christians to step into their authority God’s sons and daughters, heirs of this land and a missionary people with a prophetic voice it seemed clear that lies had to be exposed and perceived debts cancelled.

But why had God shown me this vision of Japanese prisoners of war? The Japanese were hated by the Filipino people because of their ruthless occupation. They had raped, stolen livestock, killed people and committed other acts of brutality. Yet these soldiers had been forcibly recruited and had probably not had the opportunity to hear about God’s love for them in Jesus—especially not from the American soldiers who killed them. So is it absolutely too late for these poor souls? Why had I seen them as still living on this blood-soaked land?

1 Peter’s description of Jesus’ preaching to the spirits in prison who died during the time of Noah kept coming to mind, but I had never heard of anyone enacting 1 Peter 4:6: “For the gospel has for this purpose been preached even to those who are dead, that though they are judged in the flesh as men, they may live in the spirit according to the will of God.” What does this mean for our practices here and now?

Pastor Ferd and I wrote up prayers of confession and declarations (below), and planned a worship service atop Hill 120 for that Friday. That morning with guitars, drums and communion elements in hand we hiked with all the students up into an overgrown bomb crater above the stone fortifications of the stronghold, worshipped, spoke the confessions, and celebrated the Lord’s Supper together.

While most of the students worshipped in the crater, pastor Ferd, a few other Filipino students and I climbed to the top where we symbolically took down the American flag, replacing it with a pole and banana flag for the Kingdom of God. We spoke words of forgiveness and the Good News of Jesus’ death to reconcile us to God “while helpless” and “enemies” (Rom 5:6,10) over the Japanese soldiers and others who had died there. We prayed prayers of cleansing and blessing over the hill, the Gulf of Leyte, and the Bible college—for a fresh wave of God’s Presence to empower the church to announce the Gospel of Jesus’ Kingdom.

While it is hard to know the impact of such confessions and declarations, my dear friends from the Holy Given school reported that there was a breakthrough for the students in their worship and prophetic ministry—and no more complaints of nightmares involving the Japanese dead. Some of the students said they perceived deep cries released from the land as we declared forgiveness and others have said the hill feels “different” and “much better” now. My hope is that all of us, our ministries, and lands can become cleaner carriers of God’s Holy Presence to our communities and to the nations—remembering always that Jesus works through us as we are, in spite of all our personal and social failings. My hope is that those who are watching us will see less of us and our agendas and more of Jesus and his kingdom.

I am now in Maylasia with my family speaking at a global missions conference, and we will be in Cambodia, Thailand) this coming weekend and next week. Please pray for us, for spiritual discernment, direction and God’s Holy Presence as we travel, meet the people and minister.

***
Confession of sin on behalf of the American people (led by Bob)

I confess the sin of the United States of America before the Filipino people and the people of Japan of taking credit for Filipinos being liberated from the Japanese as stated by General MacArthur. I confess and repent of the sin of messianic pretention, self-aggrandizement (visible in statements like of MacArthur’s on Filipino radio: “I have returned” and “rally to me”.

I renounce the lie that the USA and Allied forces (soldiers and/or commanding officers) liberated, redeemed or in any way saved the Filipino people, and declare the truth that Jesus is the only Messiah/Christ and Savior of the Filipino people and world.

I renounce the lie that Americans/Allied troupes are capable of “destroying every vestige of enemy control” and “restoring upon a foundation of indestructible strength, the liberties of your [the Filipino] people. I declare the truth that Jesus Christ has conquered the Ruler of this world and all demonic powers through his life, death and resurrection, and through his reign through the Church, his body “who not even the gates of Hades can withstand.”

I ask the Filipino people for forgiveness…

I confess and repent of the sin of the USA of imperial domination and control in the aftermath of WWII, and of using it’s favor with the Filipino people for it’s own interests—establishing military bases, intervening to establish pro-American national leaders. I confess and repent of American use and abuse of Filipino political leaders and other citizens in violation of the best interests of the Filipino people, especially the poor, and of the sin of abusing women as prostitutes around the military base.

I confess the sin of General MacArthur, who representing the USA called on the spirits to save. I renounce the call: “Let the indomitable spirit of Bataan and Corregidor lead on.” We declare that only Jesus saves.

I cancel MacArthur’s call to “rise up and strike”, and pray the prayer that Jesus teaches us to pray: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be they name (Jesus), thy kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven….” We counter MacArthur’s call with the invitation “rise up and worship!”
I ask the Filipino people for forgiveness…

I confess and repent of American missionary ignorance of and/or agreement with US imperial interests, and of American Christians benefitting from favor according to the flesh for the purpose of expansion of their missions.

I confess and repent of the sin of labeling Japanese human beings made in God’s image as “the Enemy,” of taking their lives rather than loving them, praying for them, and evangelizing them. On behalf of American Christians I ask forgiveness from the Japanese dead and their relatives and people for any confusion they have about Jesus due to Christian agreement with violence and war.

Confession of sin on behalf of Filipino people (led by pastor Ferd)
On behalf of the Filipino people I confess the sin of believing the lie that General MacArthur and the Allied forces liberated the Philippines, eradicated the enemy and restored liberty. I declare the truth that only Jesus liberates, saves and restores freedom through his death on the cross, where he took upon himself the sins of the world, forgiving humans and defeated the Ruler of this World, the Enemy, Satan.
I confess and renounce the sin of rallying to a human savior, and embracing General MacArthur and the USA as liberators—of putting confidence in man/humans rather than in God.

I confess and renounce the sin of subservience, of letting ourselves be dominated and controlled.

I confess and repent of benefits our people have received from subservience and accommodation of empires (Spanish, USA, Japanese). (security, dependency, not taking responsibility, passivity, corruption).

I confess and repent of the sin of hatred of Japanese enemies and the Japanese people, and the sin of harboring resentment, bitterness and the sin of discrimination.

I choose to turn away from any perceived benefits from this Bible College’s association with USA, the “White House” and the action of the Allied Forces (status, financial benefits). I turn towards Jesus and choose to turn over this land to him as Prince of Peace, Savior and Lord.
Time for others to confess….

On May 2nd I returned home from a week of teaching on the Island of Leyte in the Philippines. I took the 16 hours of flights (each way) to help out with the Holy Given Mission School, a two-month induction into the ministry of Jesus. These schools are designed for grass-roots leaders, bringing them into the bigness of Jesus’ vision for the Kingdom of God, and into the intimacy of fellowship with the Holy Spirit.

The Filipino leaders-in-training were mostly under 30: earnest, open, ready to give their lives as pastors & teachers, evangelists, prophets, or apostles. One morning I felt led to speak on the importance of forgiving our human fathers. I have been struck by the relevance of the last few verses of the Old Testament, where Malachi writes:

“Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. and he will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse” (Mal 4:5-6).

My first day of teaching focused on training students in proclaiming Good News to inmates and others on the margins. Our second day was spent putting the teaching into practice in a steaming hot 600+ inmate prison in Tacloban City, where Filipino inmates gathered hungrily for worship, Bible study and prayer ministry.

Conditions were worse in this prison than many I’ve visited, with inmates sleeping on cement floors and having to supply their own food or settle for filthy prison rice slop. But the men’s reports of abandonment, neglect and violence at the hands of their fathers echoed what I’ve heard in France, Mozambique, Guatemala and in our own county jail. I borrowed a club from a guard for Bible study on Psalm 23s “rod and staff” verse, which is a “toxic text” for most, who do not associate these words with images of God as protecting, comforting shepherd.

“How many of you have been beaten by something like this when you were a child, or at other times?” I ask, holding a wooden club worn from overuse.

Nearly everyone raised their hand, including many of the Holy Given students. Unresolved trauma and hurts from human fathers most certainly affect people’s ability to trust God as Father. Distrust sabotages close communion with God, which erodes our relationship of trust, dependency and love as God’s children—which in turn disempowers us in life and ministry. Certainly the world is reeling under the curse coming from unforgiveness– and pastors and leaders-in training are also often in serious need of extending forgiveness and seeking reconciliation.

On the third day I taught and ministered on extending forgiveness to our human fathers. Here is a testimony from Richard, one of the students. (You can see more photos, updates and testimonies on HG Leyte school on the HG school website – www.holygiven.org)
 


“I just want to thank God for the privilege He has given me. I am set free from anger towards my father. My earthly father is the reason why I am affected like this. He planned to kill me when I was in the womb of my mother. He didn’t want the responsibility. He told my mother – just kill that baby so we can be set free from the responsibility and the shame.

My anger became bigger as time went by as I was affected by what they had done to me. My eyes were damaged because of the medicine my mom took to abort me. My height was affected too – I am 31 this coming May, but still my height is like a 13 year olds. This is because of the medicine. I am thankful because my brain and my senses were not damaged.

It was very hard going to school, I suffered very much. When I was in elementary school I could read, but by the time I was in High school my eyes deteriorated into college. 
 
In college I met the Lord Jesus Christ and I realized that He has a great plan in my life. I said, “Lord, why did you allow that my father did these bad things to me if you had a plan for my life? If you loved me, why did you allow this to happen, why was my father hard on us?

When I was in grade 1, my father left us, and he abandoned us. From that time until now, the only person supporting us is my mother. She is in Hong Kong now working to support us. I am thankful that my siblings and I have finished studying. I am thankful that the Lord got me, and that He has a purpose for my life. He gave me a task that is easily fulfilled.

Yesterday, I recalled those hard times that I had in school – the teasing of my classmates and relatives. I told the Lord that it’s so hard, my situation before is not easy, but look at me now, I am here and I’m on the top, and you’re using me, and you moved in my life. 
 
Do you know the song ‘God will make a way’? That’s a very encouraging song, I hold on to the promises of the Lord, and he will make a way in my life.

Yesterday, I totally released the anger I had towards my father. I said, “Lord, thank you for sending Brother Bob – you moved even in the very private things of my life. Thank you for teaching me how to forgive my father and for moving on. I am totally 100% set free from the anger – I plan to call my father and tell him I’m sorry and that I love him so much despite what he has done to us. I plan to share the love of God. I want my father to be saved – as God had done for me, I want it done for him as well.

I want him to serve God in spirit and in truth. Lord, you are very very good, you fixed everything in me. I am very much blessed because I am set free. My heart seems 70 kilos lighter since I prayed for my father. I am thankful to the Lord, to God be the glory.”

The Bible tells us that as followers of Jesus we must view ourselves as aliens and strangers and exiles on the earth (1 Pet 2:11; Heb 11:13). Yet simultaneously in God’s eyes we are “no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household” (Eph 2:19).

Yet as a US citizen whose primary identity is citizen of the Kingdom of heaven, my calling includes advocating for those suffering under actual stranger/alien immigration status so they can freely live and minister “on earth as in heaven.” The following is a prayer update on three important cases.

On Wednesday April 7 my colleagues Chris and Bethany accompanied our 52-year-old Mexican pastor friend Feliciano down to Seattle to our meeting with Claire in Senator Maria Cantwell’s 32nd floor office. We told Claire that our aim was to win her over to become Feliciano’s advocate on behalf of our Mixteco immigrant workers who need his pastoral presence. Feliciano is currently in deportation proceedings, but pastors a 600+ member church in the Skagit Valley.

Claire seemed won over by Feliciano, and supportive enough to pass our petition on to the next level—the Washington DC office. Our hope and prayer is that Senator Cantwell will choose Felicano and his family as a sort of poster family for immigration reform—which is so desperately needed in the United States at this time. Please continue to pray with us that Senator Cantwell will agree soon to submit a Private Bill for Feliciano Lopez and his family to be granted permanent residency status.

That same Wednesday I continued south to Tacoma to the regional immigration detention facility to testify in a hearing before a federal immigration judge on behalf of a 25-year-old Russian immigrant named Andrey. The detention facility is a private prison surrounded by razor wire that houses 1,200 immigrants in deportation proceedings. This was a powerful experience for me. After passing through security we met with 25 of Andrey’s Russian Pentecostal immigrant family members and the attorney before proceeding through three prison doors into a courtroom at the heart of the prison.

Andrey’s wife asked if her grandfather could pray before we entered the courtroom. He put out his hands and began to pray in Russian. I felt a strong presence of God descend over my head and shoulders, causing my eyelids to flutter and cheeks to heat up—and then I couldn’t keep from crying. Many of Andrey’s family members couldn’t hold back the tears—and I thought of Jesus before Lazarus’ tomb—lots of love, but a suffering sort of love.

It turns out I knew the judge. She had been present when I had preached in Seattle United Methodist Church years ago. In that sermon I clearly remember describing our ministry as inspired by our experience of the Holy Spirit as Advocate/Comforter before the Satan/accuser, who manifests through internal voices and external powers. I gave some examples of external powers like the Department of Homeland Security prosecutors, and county prosecutors who’s job it is stand with the laws over and against people.

I had preached about the need for followers of Jesus to stand with people before powers that accuse, defending them so they may experience relief– more abundant grace and life here and now. A woman came and introduced herself to me after the service as a prosecutor for the Dept of Homeland Security—and there she was last Wednesday as presiding judge in Andrey’s case! She recognized me with a nod and smile as I took the stand beside her to present my testimony.

My 45-minute testimony felt like a prophesy over Andre—who has repented, gone through a profound conversion and has responded to a call into pastoral ministry during his year in our jail and subsequent year in immigration detention. The other family members testified—and I heard the hard news the next morning that the judge saw not legal way to keep Andrey from being deported.

Only one option remains—which involved me approaching the local county prosecutor here to try to get him to lower the official amount of time Andre was charged to serve from 14 months (he’s already served over 2 years) to 364 days—which according to complex immigration law would take him out of the “aggravated felon” category and save him from deportation.

Please pray for our local county prosecutor, and for me. The last time I approached him on Andrey’s case he refused to help. It would be tragic if Andrey was deported back to Russia with a lifetime bar to re-entry—as his entire extended family now lives in Washington and Alaska after a long struggle as a persecuted minority during Soviet times in Russia.

On another front, the three Guatemalan gang members made it through Holy Week without incidents thanks to many prayers from people all over the world. Please continue to pray that they will be transferred to a safer prison—and for funding, wisdom and protection for their beloved chaplains.

All of these cases involve people who God has called into pastoral ministry who are experiencing their stranger and exile status in harsh ways. While I am sure that God can work through them anywhere they end up, we pray that the ruler of this world will in no way detain them from stepping into their most fruitful lives and ministries.

For over 15 years now Gracie and I have ministered among Mexican migrant farm workers here at Tierra Nueva in Burlington, WA. We have seen many immigrants suffer terribly– and things are only getting worse. 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.

Four Biblical texts need to be remembered and heeded these days by followers of Jesus who are about announcing the Kingdom of God. After all, we ourselves, regardless of our legal status, are invited to consider ourselves as “strangers and aliens” in this world (1 Pet 2:11) and citizens of heaven– of which we are ambassadors.

“You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt (Ex 22:21).

“The Lord protects the strangers; he supports the fatherless and the widow” (Ps 146:9).

“I was a stranger, and you invited me in” (Matt 25:35).

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Heb 13:2).

Last month while in Honduras 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 to the USA. 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 him 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 (an “aggravated felony”) has been dramatically lowered to include any theft or violent offense that receives a jail sentence of 365 days, even if the sentence is “suspended.” Shoplifting a pack of gum can thus be equated with the murder of a policeman or rape of a child). At the same time the ability of immigration officers and judges to offer forgiveness 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 county and municipal public defender systems, which are chronically underfunded. Prosecutors now hold all the cards in can determine what charges to file and what plea agreements to accept, often well aware that what might be a great “deal” for a US citizen will impose a horrific “collateral” immigration consequence upon the immigrant: exile from work, home and family. This is coupled with 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 make amends and reintegrate as a productive member of society. 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, 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 hear their stories and learn how oppression in America is sustained by laws and economic forces that encourage immigrants to come here but then force them to remain in the shadows. Personal relationships with immigrants will motivate ordinary Americans 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.

A few weeks later a dear friend and prominent pastor of Mixteco-speaking immigrants from Oaxaca, Mexico who lives across the river from us was picked up the Internal Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and put into deportation proceedings. Though he has lived in the US over 15 years, oversees a crew of field workers for a local berry grower and pastors his people tirelessly– there is no legal remedy available other than getting our congressional representative to submit a special bill to Congress for his family to be granted legal permanent residency status. We at Tierra Nueva are pursuing this option– and would appreciate your prayers for us, pastor Feliciano and his family.

Fifteen years ago Gracie and I moved an hour North of Seattle to Burlington and launched Tierra Nueva del Norte out of our home. Chaplaincy in Skagit County Jail and in area migrant labor camps put us into direct contact with people in crisis: addictions, warrants, homelessness, relationship conflict, immigration troubles, unemployment…. far more needs than we could ever meet on our own. Thankfully has been sending us more and more colleagues.

We now have a cadre of 15 or so co-workers engaged in TN’s ministries and growing English and Spanish/Mixteco worshipping communities and still others in Honduras. Gracie and I continue to share a full-time position as pastors with Tierra Nueva.

We feel increasingly called to raise up ministry workers both here and abroad. Seven years ago an opportunity came up to buy a 35-acre forested refuge on the Skagit River near La Conner (see photos at https://bobekblad.com/newearthrefuge.html . Here we receive God’s empowering love in ways that strengthen us to both write/reflect and go out like never before.

In partnership with Tierra Nueva, where we focus on direct outreach to people on the margins, God has given us a vision to establish a refuge to bring encouragement, healing, and equipping so leaders can be raised up and sent out refreshed to minister to the “least.”

Already we are offering lodging, hospitality, training and spiritual support to our staff, seminary students and many others engaged in ministry to society’s least who are often discouraged and at risk of burnout.

We established New Earth Refuge as a Washington State Non-profit Corporation and now have Federal 501c3 recognition allowing us to receipt tax-deductible donations. The buildings all belong to New Earth Refuge. With help from many generous friends we have completed a retreat center that can house 25 guests. We are committed to:

1) Refreshing, encouraging and launching ministry workers and church leaders: through spiritual retreats and personal ministry appointments for vocational, healing and deliverance prayer.
2) Equipping future leaders: for transformational ministry to people on the margins of society nationally and internationally. Plans are underway for regular Schools of Transformational Ministry.
3) Gathering leaders: for prayer and conversations about theology and ministry strategy.

We have completed construction and have been in full operation since June 2009. Due to growing exposure to the global body of Christ through Bob’s writing and teaching we’ve seen an increase in people coming our way for courses and conversations, like the following:

• “Our Religious Impulse: Encountering Religious Otherness,” Mars Hill Graduate School, June, 09.
• “Set the Captives Free”—a course on finding freedom from spiritual oppression that drew over 50 participants & included swimming in the river, July 26-30, 09.
• “Breaking the Chains: Biblical Perspectives on Resisting Personal and Structural Evil,” Regent Weekend School, (Oct 2-3; 23-24; Nov 20-21, 09).
• “Reading the Bible with the Damned,” (Jan 15-16, Mar 9-10, Apr 9-10, 2010)
• Weekly Tuesday Tierra Nueva council meetings, staff prayer & training.
• Monthly area pastors prayer gathering.
• Weekend retreats for area churches.
• Gathering of 20 regional leaders to pray and envision together (Sept., 09).
• Healing prayer appointments with many people from the USA, Canada, and with missionaries serving in Africa, Latin America, the UK, Korea, Cambodia & Singapore.

We are already receiving donations from guests that cover utilities, taxes and upkeep for New Earth Refuge. Our biggest need is for a final $148,000 to pay off a line of credit used to complete construction.

We share this vision with you to both to let you know about this new dimension of our work and to request your prayers. If you feel led to help us meet our final financial challenge gift are tax-deductible. You can donate online through PayPal by clicking on the donate button under New Earth Refuge on our website at https://bobekblad.com/donate.html or through regular mail at:

New Earth Refuge
19438 Best Road
Mount Vernon, WA 98273

Please come by for a visit if you are in the area!

May Jesus bless you with peace and joy this Christmas!

Yours in Christ,

Bob and Gracie Ekblad

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.