August 30, 2005

Dear ——-,

How’s everything with you? I hope much better than what I recently experienced. In mid-July I underwent an unexpected appendix operation (but maybe all appendix operations are unexpected) that came right at a time when we were swamped with very agreeable work.

Two visiting prophetic ministers from the U.S. were in the middle of their conferences with us when I needed to be whisked off to the hospital. I also had to cancel a workshop and forum at the International Convention of Youth Leaders, plus the Verbo Central American regional conference had to be postponed.

To add to the fun, Lynn was in California with her mom while her sister was taking a well deserved vacation from being the principal caregiver. Happily our youngest son, James Tomás, juggled helping me with his teaching job at Berlitz Language School and his university studies.

Unfortunately, the incision became infected, the stitches broke open, and I had to go back to the hospital. So my recovery is taking an extra two weeks, but at least now I’m almost fully recovered and starting to get back to some of my regular exercises.

The good thing was that the operation happened in Guatemala where the cost, with all exams from x-rays to ultrasound, private hospital room fees for three nights, the doctors’ honorariums, medicines, and two extra trips to the hospital (one to clean the infection and another to be anesthetized while the doctors sewed the wound a second time) came to around $4,000. Can you imagine anything that inexpensive in the USA?

Before this forced rest (I’m not a patient patient) Lynn and I had been traveling to various parts of Verbo’s ministry. We visited churches in Reynosa and Ciudad Victoria, Mexico, in the early part of the year, and attended the Verbo International leadership conference in Monterrey, Mexico. Usually on these trip Lynn shares at women’s events and I preach/teach in the public events. We both spend time individually with the leadership or training small groups of leaders.

The highlight of our journeys was when we officially recognized the Verbo church in Madrid, Spain. A vibrant congregation of about 50 is putting down the base for our first congregation in Europe. Our pastor and his wife in Spain have their work cut out for them: Spain has one of the lowest percentages of evangelical Christians of any nation in Europe.

Those who are converted are mostly gypsies or Latin American immigrants, though by God’s grace our church has a growing number of local residents. Spaniards are overwhelmingly cultural Catholics, but, in fact, mostly modern materialists.

On that trip we and the Madrid pastor went to visit missionary friends in Morocco, where we eventually hope to open our ministry’s first outreach in a Muslim country. Missionaries can work in social projects or as health or teaching personnel but they are not allowed to evangelize, nor is it legal for Moroccans to convert to Christianity.

We’re looking to a very long term work of seed planting, anticipating a harvest when political and religious conditions change in the Muslim world. Until—and most likely after—the day when we can establish a Verbo work, probably in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the Moroccan Mediterranean coast, we will continue to support missionaries from other groups.

Back home we held in July what is becoming an annual youth conference for all our churches in Guatemala and for the ones in Central America that can make the trip. Nearly five hundred youth—mostly adolescents, but some older ones—spent three days strengthening their faith and just having fun. This is the second year that we put on an innovate program (for Central America) that included team sports events, an exhibition and practice of skateboarding and other alternative sports, a fashion show by young Christian clothes designers, and a battle of the Christian bands.

I got the bands idea from back in the ‘60’s when it was a big deal in Southern California to go the “Battle of the Surfing Bands” in places like Huntington Beach. The winner was the band that got the most applause (the judging was obviously very subjective, but a lot of fun).

I was introduced at my conference session with a video sequence done by our Verbo Communications, a group of young people who work with me putting out basic “preacher-talking-to-the-camera” television programs.

They dressed me up in levis and a long black leather coat and bandana and had me drive a big motorcycle in various locations, finally stopping to say, “Don’t be conformed to this world’s system, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Then I came on stage with a suit and tie on and told everyone to get out their Bibles and get serious and start taking notes. The lights went dim and my voice was drowned out by the projection on three screens of the first half of the “We Don’t Need No Education” sequence from Pink Floyd’s ­The Wall.

When it ended I reappeared in jeans and a tee shirt and began talking and displaying visual material on the screen about how the world is continually putting us in a system, and even though we think we’re different, we’re still in bondage until we give our lives to Jesus and he sets us free indeed.

Since the young people ­never expected the director of the ministry to drive a motorcycle, play rock and talk plainly about the pressures they face internally and externally, they paid a lot of attention and at least two/thirds of them came forward to dedicate themselves to really serve the Lord (not to get saved, but to be transformed living sacrifices as the Word says in Romans 12:1-2).

I repeated the dose in August at Verbo’s U.S./Canada youth conference to another 225 young people, but on a more subdued level because I had just been stitched up for the second time after the appendectomy. That conference was also a super success as all those young Hispanics learned that they really did have a future in America as faithful followers of Jesus. One of the motivational speakers was a U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Education. He and his family were migrant Mexican crop pickers at one time, so he could really motivate the young men and women to overcome the odds.

Another was a Harvard law student whose parents were converted to Jesus through our work in Guatemala in the late ’70’s.

As you can probably guess, I’m really excited about ministering to youth and about youthful ministers. Here in Latin America about half the population is younger than 21, so involving youth in the church’s mission is not a rhetorical question; it’s an absolute necessity!

On the other end of the spectrum, Lynn’s recent protracted stay with her mom in California reminds us that our ministry should not be limited to one age group or type of person, but to all who are in need of whatever kind. As the Scripture says in Galatians 6:10, “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

We hope all is well with you. Let us know how you’re doing and if you have any prayer needs. We appreciate your love and support.

Much love in Jesus our Lord.