Displaying items by tag: leadership conference

Wednesday, 18 August 2010 01:59

Journal from Santo Domingo Part 2

The retreat was to start at 11:00 AM, however many folks were delayed in travel because of an accident on the highway leading to Santo Domingo. The meetings were held at the Balneario Ficus Water Park, which is owned and operated by one of the families of the church in Santo Domingo, pastored by Roberto Rios. This was a really nice place for our meetings. The meeting


	Balneario Ficus Water Park, location of leaders' retreat. Sto Domingo, Ecuador

room was an open-air facility and proved to be a great place for the retreat because of the weather conditions. The weather was overcast the entire time with some rainfall. Because of this, the air was cool and there were not many visitors to the park during our meeting.

The meeting finally got underway around 12:30PM with some great worship. Everyone tied up in the traffic mess was safe and came in just fine. During the retreat Pat wanted to have a different pastor or leader from Ecuador open a session with prayer or close with prayer. As the host pastor, Roberto Rios opened the meetings with prayer and welcomed everyone to Santo Domingo. Fernando Ubilla was the Master of Ceremonies (and Comedy I might add!) throughout the weekend.


Worship at Leaders' Retreat

After an introduction of the team from USA and Ecuador, we broke for lunch. After lunch, the first session began with Pat speaking on being a servant leader. As long as I minister, I will always need to be reminded that Jesus has called us to serve and not be served. I think this session really set the tone for the entire weekend meetings. We then prayed for the Lord to guide our lives in such a way as to live as a servant leader, just as Jesus did.

Dr. Frank spoke in the second session about being spiritually healthy and developing good habits to maintain a strong walk. The part that got to me was when he shared how the Lord showed him to memorize scripture and that he has committed himself to that ever since. Pat and I looked at each other and knew we were both under heavy conviction to learn more of the Word.

After a short break, we separated the men and the women into separate groups to facilitate discussion on how to have healthy families, even though we are in the ministry. I remember that during the ladies session, they all started shouting some time into their meeting. I found out from Becky that a lady, diagnosed with a brain aneurism, was touched powerfully by the Lord. So much so, that there was a noise in their camp for several minutes! They began singing and shouting and then praying some more! I inadvertently led the men’s session as Pat, suddenly, was not feeling well. We talked about balance between family life and ministry; raising children; authority; order in the home and church and hearing God’s direction. It was a great discussion. The men were hanging out after and talking about the meeting with each other. Then we broke for dinner.


They asked me to practice a couple worship songs

After dinner and some worship, Becky and I spoke on Unity and Agreement. We used some material from our Marriage Mystery Bible Study. We spoke on the power of agreement and how it can invoke the blessings of God into our lives, our marriage and our church. As I was speaking on the blessings of God, I had a young man sitting in front of me come up for a demonstration. I was talking about Deuteronomy 28 and through our obedience to the Word, the blessings of God will come upon us and overtake us. As I was saying this, The Holy Spirit came all over me and I realized that this was about this young man. I began to prophesy over him that, as he is obedient to the Word of God – and comes into agreement with what the Lord has said – the blessings of God would come upon him and overtake him. Then, I came behind him and wrapped my right arm over his neck and across his chest and held on to him. The Lord showed me that this was to encourage him that the only thing in his past is the blessings of God coming after him, for his past is broken off of him! This man began to weep and could no longer stand. He sat with his face in his hands almost the rest of our session. Pastor Pat had a testimony time the next day and he came forward and said that he had a rough childhood that always haunted him and told him he could not be in the ministry. His father left him as a very young boy. He said that when I held him, he felt the love of God wash all over him and the torment of his past being broken off of him! He said that he finally felt free. What a great God we serve!

After our teaching session, we had a time of ministry for everyone. Many marriages were touched as well as individuals. The whole team prayed for anyone needing ministry. I prayed for the young man that the Lord would fill him with His love. The Lord really touched this guy and you could see it on his face afterward. We also had some encouraging prophetic words to some as the Lord lead.

TEAM IS BACK FROM ECUADOR

The team is back, tired but happy that they got to see God do so many wonderful things for our Ecuadorian friends. Emily and I greeted them at the airport last night and they couldn't stop talking about the love of our team, the miracles God did, and the growth of the good works our Ecuadorian friends are doing for the glory of the Lord.

In the next couple of days we will have their reports and photos here. Here's a sample of what I heard:

Monday night a blind woman received her sight in CEAD, our host church in Guayaquil.
Our Santo Domingo feeding program has now expanded to 3 locations in poor neighborhoods.
Judy Saez is doing much better after her second surgery.
Last weekend about 50 people participated in our Leadership Retreat in Santo Domingo. Here's a short video with Becky Blystone ministering at the Retreat:

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We also had the privilege of having with us author and doctor Frank Bruyere from South Carolina. This was Dr. Frank's first trip with us. Frank travels on missions very frequently, especially to Kenya and Ghana. He has written 9 books and is a gifted teacher. Here is a excerpt of one of Dr. Frank's teachings at the conference:

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While we are at it, let me show you just a short video of Chuck Blystone talking about how to have a good marriage:

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