Cuba is a fascinating country with a hard but hopeful history. It’s a land stuck between the third and first world, between 1950s’-style suburbs and concrete apartment buildings, between European streetscapes and two aisle grocery stores with only hot dogs in the meat section.

The island landscape is beautiful, but the people even more so! Few speak any English but their smiles and hugs and multiple kisses on your cheek speak volumes. They are friendly, hospitable, and kind.

We had truly productive and inspiring meetings with the regional leaders while there. During the meetings there was honest discussion and decisions were made concerning organizational leadership, funding, office roles, and unity of the team members.

The Lord also restored the vision and purpose of raising up one million laborers for the harvest fields of the world. Recently, most of our staff and leadership have gotten so bogged down in admin, details, issues, and funding that we had forgotten to look at the bigger picture, the grand horizon of training laborers who will bring the gospel message to the ends of the earth. The regional leaders were re-inspired to take up their roles as apostolic, visionary leaders and strategists who can help churches see greater kingdom vision within their countries.

Without vision, the people perish (Prov. 29:18); we thank the Lord that He renewed and granted vision again.

We had the privilege of attending house churches on Sunday and joining them in worship was refreshing. We also got to meet and encourage the facilitators of the first schools in Havana!

The facilitators were energetic and excited about their schools and many showed us their organized files with the one-page notes from every student! They are already half-way through the curriculum. When asked about their outreach, every facilitator wanted to share how they had done door-to-door or street evangelism and seen many come to the Lord! We had to stop the sharing time because there were so many stories! 🙂

Praise the Lord that Cuban believers are taking to their streets to proclaim the gospel!

Another team from Columbia came down to do facilitator’s training in a more remote village in Cuba that week as well. The church was ecstatic to see them as they had never had missionaries come to their village! The Lord granted the team incredible success in training and they have some amazing stories to tell!