As many of you might already know, the Distant Islands team is on the pioneering journey of a lifetime. This year we get the chance to explore the island nations of the world as well as countries we have never been to. We started with Jesus as our tour guide and the Holy Spirit as our navigator, and the first country we were led to...CUBA!!
What picture do you get in your mind when you think of Cuba? Is it a picture of old colonial buildings, cars dating from the 1950’s, rum, Buena Vista Social
Club, communism and cigars? Well, this picture is quite accurate, except all that’s missing are the extremely friendly people, the hospitality, the growing church and people being forced to live by Faith because of a troubled political system.
One thing you must know...I’ve wanted to go to Cuba for quite a number of years now, so this has really been a dream-come-true for me and what I found underneath the surface of this almost ancient country, no guide book could have ever prepared me for. Cuba is truly one of the most amazing countries I’ve ever visited and it’s not only because of the country but because of the way I experienced God whilst being there.
As it goes with most pioneering journeys, we arrived in Cuba without a plan, without a strategy and without a clue of what to expect. The only thing we knew was that God wanted us there and that He had BIG plans and a BIG strategy, we just had to figure out where we fit into all of it.
In the 3 weeks we spent there, we were led to a city in the east called Santiago de Cuba. Here we met up with a whole community of believers so eager to learn more about God and to grow in their faith. Now, on the train from Havana God clearly told us that we would meet a lady who can speak English and she’ll be the one who will give us further instruction. Weeks earlier in Jeffrey’s Bay, we were told that we would meet a big man of influence who will be our future contact in Cuba. With this in mind, we got off the train and moved into a lady’s house in the centre of town. To little surprise, her daughter was fluent in English! She then invited us to her church and also
to meet her pastor, who was not only a pastor, but the president of the entire Baptist Convention of Eastern Cuba. Talk about accurate...
On a pioneering journey, the building of relationships is extremely important because it is the “job” of the first team to lay the foundations on top of which future teams will build. Man, did we build relationships in Santiago! I believe that if you make friends with a Cuban, you’ll be friends FOR LIFE!!
One of the biggest needs in Cuba is for people to go and help out at the (almost 45) summer camps that are organized by the church. On each camp, the church gets the opportunity of reaching 3000 people (especially children) of 3 different age groups ranging from 5-30. Can you ask for a better opportunity to spread the Gospel? To reach people with the
Love of Christ? To lead Cuba into a “new revolution” that won’t have anything to do with politics, but with winning souls for God’s Kingdom?!
We are, therefore, prayerfully trusting the Lord that He will send teams in the future to go and help with these camps. That He will send teams to go to a harvest that is so ready and to build on the foundation that was laid this year, so that we might one day hear of all the fruit that is being plucked on the island of Cuba!!
(The Distant Islands Team is currently in the British West Indies on the Island of Grand Cayman. We will be moving on to Jamaica on the 12th of April. Please keep us in your prayers.)