Tijuana/SD Leadership

Development ~ Jan 2007

This was a leadership development trip with Randy Fontaine, the new CFCI director of US Ministries and my good friend businessman Steve Rife who has a heart and gift to pray for people.

God answered prayer in awesome ways. Each trip seems to be the best ever and this one was definitely one of the best. I've learned over the last seven years that things in Tijuana and Southern California are very fluid...What I schedule and plan for is seldom what I find. The Lord usually reveals His deeper purposes along the way so I now set a basic plan, then go prepared to adapt to what He is doing.

In San Diego we ministered with the CFCI Ministry Base Director Craig Duhs in Ocean Beach to business leaders who met to pray at a local Ice Cream Shop. They have setup prayer boxes all over town and meet weekly to pray over the requests...See photos.

In Tijuana the last few trips had involved speaking and ministering at many of the pastor's prayer groups meeting around the city, this trip focused on personal meetings with key leaders and couples all over Tijuana/San Diego and ministering to the deeper things they were struggling with. 

We began first with the leaders at our orphanages ant then city leaders.... For example: Raphael, the president of the Tijuana Ministerial Association invited us to attend a breakfast with the combined Tijuana and San Diego Ministerial Associations... We felt a little awkward being the only "Gringos" in the room...  The Lord not only gave us many new relationships but then Raphael cleared the rest of his day and we consulted and prayed with him for the next four hours regarding issues he was struggling with in leading the city-reaching movement in Tijuana. 

The Lord is assembling a very special group of leaders in Tijuana and we had personal ministry times with almost all of them. While Randy and I have some experience with city-transformation concepts, I was amazed at how the Lord repeatedly used my businessman friend, Steve Rife, to speak prophetically into situation after situation where I knew he had no previous knowledge…  everywhere we went  

A new friend we met is Pastor Alvin, a Puerto Rican who planted a church in Tijuana eight years ago and was with Raphael. Alvin invited us to minister at his church on Sunday where we walked into the most amazing service I have ever been in outside the USA. There was an unusual since of the Lord's presence from the moment the music started...Alvin later told us that the worship was unusually anointed and that this was one of the most powerful services they had ever had. I preached on the "Waiting Father," which is the story of the Prodigal Son from the perspective of the father and what he did to bring his son home. At the end I invited people to come and pray for family and church prodigals, then for the next hour the Lord ministered in powerful ways... 

Pastor Jesus Rodriguez and Steve Rife began to minister to those who came forward, but I felt led to go out into the congregation and pray for some couples that I felt the Lord was leading me to... Pastor Alvin assigned an elderly man named Arthur to translate for me.  I was led to four couples and during ministry discovered that all four couples were living together and raising children outside of marriage...as the Lord spoke to them about getting their families right before God, I discovered that Arthur was a Christian Marriage Counselor who not only knew the couples and was counseling with them, but had scheduled a "Wedding Day" at the church next month to marry couples who wanted their unions right before God!  WOW! 

The Bible says that those send out missionaries and support them in prayer share in the blessings, joy and spiritual rewards from the Lord...Thank You in the name of the Lord Jesus.

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