Missions Stories

After 26 years of ministry and 32 trips (as of April 2025), God has allowed me to personally experience, and hear from other missionaries, amazing manifestations of His providence, grace and power. I’ve verbally shared many of these stories, in different settings, but have been encouraged to document them in writing as a testimony to the greatness and goodness of God. I will collect them here, and hope they will be an encouragement and blessing. Please feel free to share with anyone.  

The Miraculous Multiplication – 2017

In 2017 a team traveled from Las Vistas, a Colonia in the northwest outskirts of Guatemala City to Nuevo Tulate; an aldea (village) of just a few houses 5 miles down a very bad road from Guanagazapa, which was down a slightly less bad road off the highway from Escuintla, southeast of Guatemala City. Nuevo Tulate is one of 3 aldeas next to each other; the others are Guaymango and Brasil. The later two are primarily Nativo; Pocomam &  Xinca.

Pocomam ladies brought us dinner after we arrived; very likely feeding us some of the few chickens the families had.

There were two churches in Brasil (the results of a church split) with some animosity between the 3 churches in the community. And there were brujos (witches) in Guaymango who threatened each church and had significant influence in the community.

The people were quite poor and Pastor Elfre asked us to bring a dozen eggs for each family as most didn’t have chickens. We had shipped clothing collected in Phoenix and Los Angeles, and the team had prepared bags of food for the families.

We set up in Pastor Elfre’s house; families came in the front door, received a bag of food and eggs and then could choose clothing for each family member. Pastor Elfre asked us to prepare 30 bags of food: rice, beans, pasta, cooking oil, fortified powdered milk and some treats the people would not buy for themselves. When we arrived, however, a member of the church said there would be 40 families so we rearranged the bags.

Pastor Elfre at the door, Lourdes holding a bag of food for the next family and her mother (Betty’s sister) Hanny

Grandma and her grandkids. The boy is holding a polo from Mountain Ridge Baptist Church in Phoenix.

Pocomam mom and kids, Pastor Elfre and clothing on right

It of course took some time to move everyone through the house and we gave the last bag of food to the last family that was waiting! 

A church member had been outside recording the names of each family and came inside and announced “You gave food to 60 families!” We explained that we only had 40 bags, and he said “I’ve got the names of 60 families recorded here” and showed us the paper with the names.

The bags of food had been in one of the large transport boxes used to ship clothing from L.A. and Lourdes said she did not keep count but simply kept reaching in the box until there were no more.

We were stunned and had no explanation but that we had just participated in a Matthew 14:13-21 “5 loaves and 2 fish feeding the 5,000” miraculous multiplication. Most of us, including me, were crying tears of wonder and joy.

I witnessed the event, and even while sharing the story it is hard to believe what I and the other 10 team members had seen.

We spent two nights in Nuevo Tulate and had a church service which was attended by almost everyone in the 3 aldeas, despite heavy rain.

Pocomam teens performing at the church service

But God wasn’t done. After returning to Las Vistas the team attended the evening service at Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo. We had prepared small gift bags for the children; treats and toys. At the end of the service, the kids, LOTS of kids, lined up for their gifts and I was sure we were going to run out. We gave the last gift bag to the last kid in line!

What are the lessons from the miraculous multiplication we witnessed?

1.     Ephesians 3:20 God “is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.” That power is the Holy Spirit.

2.     But the Holy Spirit didn’t organize the trip, collect the team, buy my & Betty’s plane tickets, ship the clothing, purchase the bulk commodities and organize them into bags, prepare the gift bags for the children, purchase the eggs and other supplies we brought (including cots and food for the team), and drive us and everything to the middle-of-nowhere Guatemala down a very bad road. 

WE HAD TO DO OUR PART IN ORDER TO WITNESS THE MIRACLE. We had to go.

God delivered Noah and his family, but Noah had to build the ark (Genesis 6:9-22, Hebrews 11:7)

3.     John Flavel, one of my favorite Puritan pastors, described the “gap principle” in his The Mystery of Providence: “Providence so orders the case that faith and prayer need to be exercised to close the gap between our needs and supply.”

God always leaves a gap between our resources & abilities and the need, to keep us humbly dependent on Him, and looking to Him alone (usually when we are at the end of ourselves) for a miracle.

Our “gap” was 20 bags of food – and 20 very disappointed families.  God filled that "gap".  

And on the topic of miracles – one more.

When Pastor Elfre was at the church in Las Vistas a gang member didn’t like the fact the lives were being changed, men were being delivered from drug and alcohol abuse and returning to their wives and children, and this was hurting his “business”.

Gang income is mostly drug sales and extortion of businesses for “protection money”. If a store doesn’t pay, it gets firebombed, sometime while the proprietor is inside, or the owner is murdered and the body left in the street in front of the store.

The guy decided to firebomb the church, filled with people, during a service.

One morning he came up to a church member and said “Where did you get the money for bodyguards? You don’t have money to feed yourselves!” The church member asked what he was talking about. He said “I came last night during the service to bomb the church and there were two big men in uniforms holding M16s at the doorway so I left!” The church member explained the church had no bodyguards. The gang member said “I saw them with my own eyes!”

The next week he was found dead in the street.

But God in His sovereignty doesn’t always protect the pastors. Pastor Juan is in a small church in Aldea Ijorga, Iglesia Evangelica, near San Juan Tecuaco in SE Guatemala. He was serving with another pastor, who the local criminals did kill in 2022, and told Pastor Juan he would be next if he didn’t leave. He and his family are still there. 

Would I be so courageous and faithful?