2008 Overview

Posted: May 05, 2017

It was a successful 3 week inaugural trip to Sydney, Australia where the Lord sent Robert and Greig in mid January. Our friends, Gavin and Josie, were wonderful hosts, even taking Greig to the 3 Sisters view in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney for a day after Robert returned to the US. The 2 of them had just arrived back from being called to southern Spain where we met them last Fall. They did a valiant job of helping them out while still working on getting themselves settled back in Australia. We suspected we would check out the Hillsong ministries, famous for their worship music, before they left the country. But it turned out that Hillsong would become our principal connection.

Their chief mission this trip seemed to be establishing friendships and ministering to some key leaders. It appears that the Lord has future plans for our ministry in Australia.

Most of March was spent in Spain working with our apostolic-evangelist friend, Pedro, in several parts of the region known as Andalucia, which is along the western Mediterranean cost. This is the same region where we spent time ministering last September, although in some new cities. After ministering in Granada, our base, they traveled with clothes and food that we left at a Muslim outreach, which Pedro is overseeing in Almeria. They ministered to a fellowship whose primary outreach is to street people and drug addicts and prayed for several HIV positive people.

Traveling to the west, they stayed in a complex near Malaga, which we also need to withhold details on because of their mission not only to Arabs in Spain but also into North Africa. It is humbling to see what some people are risking to get the good news of the Kingdom of God through Jesus Christ into Islamic strongholds. They took a day trip to the North African Spanish city of Ceuta on the south side of the strait of Gibraltar, a base for ministry into Morocco. Returning to Malaga, they ministered in 2 different Nigerian immigrant lead congregations during Easter week.

On the last leg of our journey, we traveled northwest to the city of Huelva near the Portugal border, specifically Palos de la Frontera, from where Columbus started his journey to America in 1492. There we worked with the Apostle/Prophet team of Ricardo and Suzy Senna, who the Lord sent from Brazil in 1990. They are committed to help the body of Christ work in harmony as one church with many tasks.

Greig was in Argentina for the month of April getting the last things in order with our apartment base in Buenos Aires and connecting with some of our extended team there.

According to the Lord's leading, Greig left once again for Australia at the end of July until mid-August to work more with some of the Christ following leaders in that country. He met with English and Spanish speaking small groups and he discussed the things that it appears that the Lord wants to do with the church right now. God gave him prophetic words to deliver to several people. Greig met with several pastors including Ben Houston, the son of Hillsong's head pastor who is leading a great new and young fellowship.
They just began meeting at a Golf club that, unknown to us, happened to be located just a couple blocks from my mates' Gavin and Josie's apartment. They are shown here with Brian. Theirs is a model fellowship that grew from the roots up. Several small groups were planted in the northern beach towns of Sydney. After a time, they wanted a place to come together although they still consider their small groups, or as they call them 'connect groups', their prime fellowship. They truly are the connecting points for that net the Lord is weaving together as He brings His body together as one. The Lord wants us to look at our family and friends' groups where we live as our primary fellowship like Jesus did. That is why that fellowship is growing exponentially.

Another pastor couple, who I won't name, a few years ago was led to start a coffee shop in a suburb in southern Sydney that has the highest Muslim population in Australia. A fellowship hall was connected in the back of the shop. Not much happened until they ripped out the pulpit and pews and turned the hall into a giant living room that doesn't look anything like a church building. Several former Muslims in the community now come together there in the Holy Spirit of Christ; I had a great visit with them! It is wonderful to see the new things our family is doing 'down under.'

At the end of August, Ed Araiza and Greig traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina where they met up with our friend Ivan from Patagonia to go on a heavily scheduled trip to Peru. Ivan did not have his passport in order so instead of 3 of us, Ed and Greig took on the full load of that heavy schedule. It was an incredible trip filled with the power and favor of God. Thank you Lord! On arrival, I immediately preached for 3 straight days to multiple church groups in a big tent evangelistic type meeting that lasted through Saturday night. Several people came off the streets into the meetings out of curiosity because of the people they saw being touched by God inside.

Sunday morning they flew Ed and Greig from Lima to Tarapoto, a city of about � million people on the east side of the Andes Mountains at the beginning of jungles of northeast Peru. An hour after we landed, Greig was preaching to a large, and rapidly growing, church there. The pastor asked people to invite whoever they could for the next night. We believe all the new people that came that night came to the front to publicly proclaim they were surrendering their lives to Christ. After all this, Greig remembered that when I was in Australia, an anointed leader said to me that the Lord was telling him to pray that I would have the strength to preach 5 days in a row on the next trip. I thought to myself then, 'I'm not going to let that happen'. Well, it did, it was the Lord's plan, and He gave me the strength to do it!

Tuesday they hopped a plane from Tarapoto, via Lima, to Cusco, Peru. They were hosted by a pastor and seminary teacher there who showed us all around and connected us to other leaders for future work there. They were able to take a day to go to the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu and also see how the old Catholic church buildings of Cusco were built on the foundations of the altars to the Inca sun god.

They finished off their mission in Peru by ministering Friday, Saturday and 4 times at 4 different churches in Lima on Sunday. We ministered 12 times over 11 days; Greig really didn't think that was possible, but thanks to a team of intercessors praying for us and God being faithful, He made it possible! To top it all off, everywhere we ministered, the response was, “Please come back as soon as the Lord allows.” Greig arrived in Argentina back in mid November. On the trip there, he sat behind Claudio Freidzon, whose ministry fills stadiums throughout Argentina and the world. He was scheduled to say a quick ‘hello’ to me in Australia, eight months earlier, but the meeting never happened. God did one better and put together a one in a million chance meeting with him that would never have occurred if I would have used my logic instead of His leading in my seat assignment. Shortly after Greig arrived, he was blessed to spend a few days in Buenos Aires (BA) with his sister and brother-in-law, who are the owners of the condominium that is used as our base. Ed Araiza arrived 2 days after my sister and her husband left for the US. The day before Ed and Greig left BA, everything seemed to go wrong including a first time attempted robbery at Greig's house in Phoenix. God used my brave neighbor Betty to stop that crime. We have learned to rejoice when I see the enemy hitting hard.

On Dec. 2, Ed and Greig flew to the capital city of Rio Gallegos in the Province of Santa Cruz in Patagonia (southern Argentina). Ivan Vargas, our contact from southern Argentina, met them there and traveled with us to Rio Turbio, a city on the border of Argentina and Chile. They ministered in Rio Turbio that night even though we were quite tired. It was a smaller group that night but the next night it was completely packed because people saw what the Spirit of God had done the night before. Several pastors from this city, and the city nearby, were there and many were touched. They went into the city of 28 de Noviembre the next day and, afterwards, they presented us with the flags of the city of 28 de Noviembre and province of Santa Cruz. They traveled next to the port city of Santa Cruz, where we were hosted by our old friends, Hector and Mirta. In Piedra Buena, our base in the south, pastors Javier and Margot were wonderful hosts as they ministered there on Sunday and Monday night. Heading north, we stopped at Puerto San Julian where we ministered at a beachside civic hall for 2 nights. Several head pastors and their people showed up. There was a tremendous presence of God touching many, quite visibly, as the Lord made good on His promise to bless His church when the brothers and sisters dwell in unity.

They left Puerto San Julian by bus at 2:30 AM Thursday morning and traveled 6 hours to Comodoro Rivadavia, in the next state to the north. Ivan left from there to return back home to his city of Sarmiento, as planned. Ed and Greig met up with contacts from there who traveled with us by bus to finish our trip in the beach resort city of Puerto Madryn. Greig's voice was almost gone from a viral attack that following Sunday, but it got miraculously stronger as Greig preached the morning service to a much larger than expected crowd. As soon as people saw the first people that came up for prayer overwhelmed by the presence of God, everyone wanted prayer; Greig prayed for hundreds.

Thank you Lord for sending us out to work with you in expanding your Kingdom in 2008!

“And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous-to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:17 NIV) We are the John the Baptist generation! He’s coming back soon!!