Last week I was in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico on a mission outreach with eleven other people from our church. As with most mission trips the schedule was very demanding to maximize our time and ministry effectiveness so I had no time to write a blog.
Our mission was threefold. We were there to put on a men’s conference, help two churches with construction projects and meet with local church leaders to gain their input for our future involvement there.
The sheer logistics of such an ambitious undertaking with just one vehicle stretched all of our sensibilities. The ninth beatitude, “Blessed are the flexible for they shall not get bent out of shape” became our maxim.
We hit the ground running the day of arrival by kicking off the men’s conference with a Saturday evening meeting hosted at the Alpha Y Omega church. We followed that up with three more meetings Sunday morning, afternoon and evening. We concluded the conference on Wednesday night. The main theme was the fatherhood of God and our purpose was to help men address and resolve past issues with their earthly fathers (and mothers) so that they could become rightly related to their heavenly Father.
From the very outset we sensed a powerful presence of the Lord and were awed by the way in which God had drawn a good contingent of men from several area churches accompanied by their pastors. It was unifying to see our worship team of four guys interchange songs with the Alpha worship team. In each of the sessions we also had our men share personal testimonies of the brokenness in their lives and God’s healing power to help the Cabo men identify and open their hearts to God.
Sunday afternoon we talked about the father wound that is the bane of every man. We planned to take an hour and half dinner break before going into the evening session focused on healing. But God had other plans. When the afternoon session was dismissed we asked all the men to take a least a half hour to wait on the Lord allowing Him time to speak to them about their wound. During that time we realized that those shopping for the food were not going to make it back in time provide a meal. Our only recourse was to reconvene for the evening session immediately after the half hour of silence which we did, and decide to feed everyone after that.
As we began the meeting the momentum from the afternoon session and anointing of the Holy Spirit carried into the evening session. God began to touch men’s hearts with His healing power. We led everyone through key steps of acknowledging the wound, declaring forgiveness for those who had inflicted it and then asking for God’s healing.
At the close of the session we opened the floor for testimonies and were literally blown away by the depth of emotion with which each man shared his story of woundedness and God’s healing. The testimonies could have gone on all night. One man shared how the moment he uttered forgiveness for his family members who had wronged him he felt God’s presence tangibly overwhelm him, something he said he had never experienced before. It shook him to his core. I don’t think I have ever been in a meeting where such a high percentage of men were so deeply impacted with God’s inner healing. We also had the opportunity to pray individually for many men at the close of the service and the ministry of the Holy Spirit continued with words of knowledge, healing and encouragement. At the conclusion we all enjoyed a late night grill-out of burgers and hotdogs under the stars feeding nearly a hundred people. It was awesome
Monday morning dawned too quickly. Our weekday routine began with a 7 AM devotion, prayer and breakfast, followed by packing coolers with ice, piling into the van and driving to our two work sites. With temperatures approaching 90 degrees and windy dusty conditions we had to discipline ourselves to keep hydrated and take appropriate rests. At one church we helped with the final site preparation and the pouring of a 750 square foot concrete foundation and floor for two classrooms. At the other location a smaller team spent the week helping a pastor complete some critical projects to make his unfinished home more livable. To God’s glory everything was completed in good order and on time.
On Friday we celebrated a fitting conclusion to the week. There at the tip of the Baja peninsula, in the gentle waves of the Sea of Cortez we had a baptism service for three of our men. Each of them had been baptized as infants but never made a public declaration of their faith through baptism since coming into a personal relationship with Jesus as adults. The joy of sharing that experience with them as a team along with a local pastor, his wife and daughter encapsulated the week for me. Serving Jesus on mission outreaches is about life change through the aegis of bringing the body of Christ together from diverse cultures to worship and work together for the furtherance of God’s kingdom.
Thank you Lord!
Your thoughts and comments are always welcome.
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