Dear Ones, no wonder we encountered so much resistance when we arrived in the Port City of Barranquilla Colombia.  We found out that there is a “well known witch” in this country who is situated across the street from the church with her 80 disciples.  That is nothing for our God.  We got our first session going and we noticed the picture on the wall, see the attachment.  You all know the hand illustration we use about the church wanting impact in a community.  We historically start with the programs to have an impact, but what we have learned is that you cannot have impact without a community of believers to support that work, you won’t have a community without unity that God builds through humility and humility only comes in Worship, as we see ourselves as compared to God and we become undone.  You know we usually start illustrating this with the thumb, the Colombians started with the little finger, BUT they are using the illustration and their motto for the women’s ministry here is “Women learning to Listen for God’s Voice” .  We taught last year in the School of Prayer that you can work from your Soul and maybe accomplish something for the Lord, or Work from a place where the Spirit controls and accomplish much.  They really GOT IT.  They are so excited about what God is doing in their midst.  One woman who came last year to the School of Prayer came home and the leaders asked her to lead the Women’s ministry in her area.  She said, like Moses, I am not capable.  She is shy and quiet, she came for prayer because she wanted to be commissioned by US as we were the one’s who taught her about listening to God.  She is the one who came up with the women’s ministry motto and they have a pin they where which she said opens many conversations with unbelievers and is leading to evangelism.  My heart Sings when I hear that!

Marriage RX has been incredible, they are drinking it up, taking copious notes and we are blessed by what God wants to do here with the Pastors that are in the class.  One observation was that with each session one of the pastors kept moving closer to his wife and finally ended the 4th session sitting with his arm around her.  God is at work.

When Jody finishes teaching this Sonship class, we will have planted 10 Sonship studies around Colombia.  People are so excited about learning to function in a spirit led life.

Gail got a word from the Lord about the articles in the Tabernacle in regard to healing prayer.  She didn’t want to teach what she heard because she had never heard anyone teach this, (She will tell you about it in debrief) but a Pastor who is in her class as she was teaching began to say exactly what she had heard, so she relinquished the floor and he taught it.  I captured a portion of it on Video.  So much confirmation for us, we are on the right track, we are following in obedience and God is bringing the spoils of war to us in the willing hearts of these believers to learn.  The missionary here said these are the poorest of the poor in this country…those that are at this school.

To illustrate that, Karen was teaching the worship track and one young lady didn’t have a bible with her.  Karen had brought a spanish new testament with her and let the young lady use it in class.  At the end of class she gave it back to Karen and Karen said, you’ll need it tomorrow so keep it.  The gal said yes but I don’t want to lose it.  Then Karen asked her if she owned a bible and she said, almost no one owns a Bible in our village.  We use the Pastor’s Bible at church.  Karen gave her the bible and she began to weep with joy that she could take it home.

Today as I was typing this one of the missionaries who is going through a particularly hard time right now as his mom is on her death bed in Denver, came over and thanked me for all the work I have done while here and with tears in his eyes said, “I am so sad this is the last day!”.  We have been able to minister to him about things in his childhood that have just come to light and he is healing from so much pain.  His wife is trying to understand all this pain and abuse and reconcile it with the people she has known as her in-laws.  This was a God appointed time for us to be here.

Though we are also sad it is ending, we are blessed that most of the people who came for prayer this time came because they see there ability and opportunity to minister in their community and wanted to be “commissioned” to go and minister what they have learned.  Jody taught in the churches here about stewarding what they have received, she equated the teaching to a seed you have received.  You can eat the seed and have a meal or you can share it and bear fruit.  They really understand the idea of planting what they have learned in others so that they bear fruit.

We could not do any of this without all of you praying for us and in effect holding up our hands.  We are blessed to have such a great team, who each knows how to function in their gifts to bless the Kingdom Body.  Be blessed as you share in this wonderful BOUNTY God is giving here in Colombia.

Love to each of you, we send a holy kiss!
Claudia

I talked to Jody last night from South America and the team has been able to navigate some of the challenges they had yesterday and things seem to be leveling out. Thanks for your prayers for the Baranquilla leg of the trip. Please remember them in prayer as they make their way through the last three days of the Colombia trip. They come home Thursday. Blessings! Dan

I just received this note from the Abide team in Colombia. Jody is with Claudia. Here’s the note:

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Dear Ones,
We arrived in Barranquilla this morning with much confusion and it was late for us to start.  The opposition is over the top here.  We are in the main port of Colombia, God alone knows what comes into this port daily.  There is a spirit of confusion and division amongst those coming in.  (took longer to drive here, things were not ready, etc. )  We need to be held up.

I also got a report from home that it’s all falling in there too.  Besides Dan being fired, my family at the farm is in an uproar.  One dear mother has had a major stroke and they found a mass in her head.  My cousin was told she has cancer for the third time and we don’t know where the source is yet, but it is in her tonsils and neck lymph nodes.

We are all tired and ready to come home, the hotel we are in is very old in Barranquilla where the temperatures are very hot.  We do have SOME air conditioning but all halls and dining rooms are not air conditioned.

We are standing firm in our call and our unity as the chaos around us is trying to tear us up.  God has blessed us with spiritual sight and discernment to know we are battling a port city with sentries at the gate, those sentries are fear and death and Jesus has conquered both.  We will be happy to receive your prayers…we are moving forward with the courage of the Lord.  Need to get to the next session…more later tonight.
Love you all.
Claudia

Dear Ones,

Thank you for praying. As I write, Karen is here worshiping with her flags and Jody is ironing. We are back at Gary and Mary Lou’s house and we have a day to do laundry, relax and regroup before we head for our last School of Ministry in Baranquilla. We have been so blessed here in Medellin. The school of Ministry has been accepted with such Joy. One person said ” You have no idea how much this teaching on Marriage is needed in our country. Our marriages are being devastated and we need to learn how to do things God’s way.” They can’t wait to get all the material to start marriage RX and the good news is I brought a video camera and one of the missionaries had one so we were able to video all of Marriage RX WITH translation which will hopefully speed up our ability to get all the information to them.

We were blessed with two more translators, gals who lived in the US and are now living here. In fact the gal who translated for Gail is actually coming to Baranquilla with us to help there; she was so good. Gail was bitten by a spider or something, Today she is going to the Dr. just so we are sure we don’t have a problem in Baranquilla. Her foot has been swollen and red…yesterday it was climbing up her leg but today it is only on the top of her foot. For precaution we will have her see the Dr.

Gail’s class was small which turned out to be a good thing. Within the first ten minutes of the class someone was crying. She had one woman who had a terrible headache and as they began praying for her she was spitting up blood. She lives in the mountains and it turned out generational stuff had to be dealt with. As you can imagine, there is a lot of idol worship and such in their history. Much individual ministry was done which served as an example of how to do healing prayer.

Sonship was so exciting, it seems the theme for Medellin is that the people need to learn to walk in their Godly Inheritance. Bogota was Setting Captives Free, here in Medellin, they have learned to listen to God, so now it is next steps. One gal who leads in her church has been designing a discipleship program for everyone in her church. They were going to have one for the new believers, one for single women etc. She sat in Sonship and said, “I could use this study for each of these groups.” And Jody, said if you mix the new believers with the older believers the young will get spiritual parents and their hunger will fuel the older believers to dig to be ready to feed the younger ones. We prayed over 8 people who wanted to start a group when we left. God has met us amazingly.

Karen did her Worship class and a woman who has been leading worship for 20 years said I have been doing it all wrong and this is such a blessing to learn. The people who were in Worship class all exchanged emails and phone numbers and they are going to continue to meet and go over the handouts and learn what God has for Colombia in Worship. Karen spoke of the problems in people’s lives that were in her class and said, “I listen to their problems and think we are such whiners in the US. These people are living with backgrounds of abuse, abandonment and poverty, and they don’t complain, they just ask for prayer.” It was truly eye opening to the grace of God.

EACH and every class really got it. They are excited to continue learning more from the handouts. and studying the material when we leave…at the end they had us up front and gave each of us a traditional Colombian painting. (Small enough to carry home) and while we were standing there they said we want to invest in your ministry as you have invested in us and we want to plant a seed that God will send you to other nations as He has sent you to us. THEN they took an offering for the ministry. We were undone! We were all crying and so blessed by this. When the poorest of the poor give you an offering it is just overwhelming.

Then we came home and Jody got the news that Dan had been fired from the church where he was pastoring. Dan has blogged about this at their website ‘tween2worlds.com She was shaken for a moment, and it was a bit disorienting for a time, but God is in control, not men. Please pray for God’s purpose in this event and we are specifically praying that while they are away from each other, God will speak to each of them as to what is next. It does cut their salary significantly so lets pray for God’s provision. We know God is in Control and we bless Dan for what God has in the future.

Once we leave Medellin the internet supply is questionable. We are not sure where we will have it and where we won’t. When we went to the school here it was in the mountains and we had none. So HOPEFULLY somewhere along the line we will encounter a connection again and I will send more reports. But if you don’t hear from me you will know we didn’t find a connection.

Thank you all for your prayers, we are so blessed to be on the field with the Lord and remember He gave us that scripture that You are just as blessed as you stay with the “baggage you get the same portion of the booty” I Sam 30:24. God bless you all.

Love you all and wish I could see your face to kiss it and say thanks for praying for us.

Claudia