Chile, Living out the Gospel

Answered Prayers

We are now in the cold, brisk south of Chile but it took many long days of driving through hot, arid deserts to get here. Our Durango is still in northern Peru being repaired and our Ford van had been consistently overheating in the deserts because of pulling the Durango’s pop-up trailer. As a team we came to the consensus that it was time to let go of one of the pop up trailers to avoid motor failure with our van which has already had its transmission rebuilt twice on this journey. The camper trailer was nowhere near peak condition because of the hundreds of times putting up and down these past seven months and we did not have the ability to attempt to sell it. We prayed that God would show us a poor family we could bless there in Chile with it. So many people live in grass and dirt houses there in the deserts that it would be as luxury for them to live in. We had crossed the border from Peru into Chile and still had a couple thousand Kilometers of desert to drive through before we arrived at our destination in Santiago. I felt the urgency to find a place for this camper trailer soon and kept praying the whole journey for the Lord to give us a place where we could leave it and I was honestly really tempted to leave it on the side of the road somewhere. Then I found myself turning off the road at a small house standing alone at a crossroads in the desert. It had a small family restaurant that served as a rest stop for truck drivers passing through. Our whole caravan pulled in there and I went in asking for the owner of the house and asked the woman there if she would like the camper for free. She looked surprised and shocked and I brought her outside and we set it up to show her. She said yes without hesitation and her husband and family seemed more excited and thankful with every little gadget on it that we showed them. The husband shared with us how his wife had been praying for a camper for I believe two years and had seen them occasionally pass and always had always wanted one. Chile is actually the first country on this trip where we have seen other tent trailers and frequent motor homes, so before here no one would of actually knew what it was. We pulled it around back for them so that they could set it up as part of their home and then all took photos together with it. They made sandwiches and refreshments for all of us as a way of saying thank you before we continued on our journey. That day our prayers and the prayers of that family met and were answered together as we became the answer to their prayers and they for ours. God is so good how He works things out!

Living Out the Gospel

The journey to Santiago had drained our finances with all the fuel and travel expenses from such a long trip. Chile is the most expensive country so far in South America and we needed a break from spending money. A local pastor from the poorer side of the City invited us to come and stay at his church and minister with them. It was just a small simple church and most everyone just slept inside the sanctuary together on the floor. Every day the women from the church would come cook us wonderful meals and they never wanted anything in return. We ministered at their services and many people were healed of illnesses and filled with the Holy Spirit. We preached about living out the Gospel and carrying the glory of Jesus in every place we go. After a great night of Holy Spirit blowout a few of us took a late night walk up to the gas station to grab some snacks before bed. Ben called me over to the cash register to help him translate something in Spanish to the girl attending. He began prophesying life and destiny over her and immediately tears began to stream down her face. She became overwhelmed by the love and presence of God and later had to call someone else over to attend the cash register while she rushed outside weeping. Who knows what she had been going through previously but that night she encountered God’s love for her as we applied what we had been preaching right there in the gas station supermarket in the middle of the night. On our way back to the church we passed by a couple men drinking in the park and stopped and talked a little bit. Ben started prophesying over one of them about what he had been going through in life and what he needed to do. At first the man was offended saying, “How do you know these things about me?” but afterward he seemed thankful that we stopped when we explained it was the Holy Spirit revealing these things and he said he would really think about it. It is so good that missions and living out the Gospel can be more than just arranged meetings and programs, but it is a lifestyle of being the Love of Jesus extended at all times available for His Holy Spirit to speak through and His hands to heal.

Santiago, Chile

This afternoon I had a word from Holy Spirit about a person limping with a cane on a bus. Well when we stepped off our bus to take the Metro to a downtown area in Santiago, Chile we literally saw people with canes limping around everywhere we were walking! It was like instantly after I stepped off the bus I saw the first guy with that issue. We went after the first guy I saw and never found him, but we found three other people limping with canes and stopped for them. The first guy said he was in a rush but we said please, real quick we will pray for you. He had been paralyzed on the left side of his face from something like a brain tumor. I laid my hand on his face along with Liney Arciniegas and Kurt Weller; we began to thank Jesus for healing this man. He looked at us shocked; he said he felt an indescribable presence all over his face! haha Oh we told him what that was, blessed him and he walked away. He said, I have to go now in bewilderment. The next lady we saw and approached had a serious right back condition; I think it may have been from a pinched sciatic nerve. She also was walking with a cane. She said of course we could pray, so we did, right there in a busy, downtown intersection. Any place and at any time Jesus is longing and willing to move on behalf of the highest and most valuable of His creation. She began to weep as we began to receive personal words of edification in the knowledge of Jesus over her. She said, “No one ever speaks Life like that into me and over me. I could just stand here all day and listen to what you are speaking to me.” We then after Liney embraced her in her weeping through the touch of God, asked her how the back felt. She stopped and said she had felt something all over her back. We knew immediately she had received her full healing. We took her big crutch and asked her to try to walk and put her full weight on her legs. She took off like a gun and walked in full strength!! We were freaking out, jumping up and down because she walked back to us and said she has never been able to walk without pain and the assistance of her cane! She walked away from us holding her cane, not using it, because she does not need it anymore. She said, “I will give this to someone else”, as she bubbled up with joy. This makes Jesus look so worthy and glorious. It declares Him Lord and crowns Him as King over all creation. It is a platform where by He runs the person who has disqualified themselves the most down, confronting them with outlandish, unmerited, love and goodness; thereby securing what He has lovingly desired all along: their heart of love and admiration back to Him. He becomes most precious and treasured through the evidence of a sign of healing in His name alone, because the sign is just a sign pointing to this: that He truly does live forever more! He is risen friends. In love and unapologetically I will zealously pursue a life of miracles because Jesus did. I will do it by all the passion that He has for people as He produces it in me. It is a lifestyle in deed, but if I claim to know Him and abide in Him, I ought to walk as He walked (I John2)! Around 40 percent of the gospels consists of relating the healing and miracle ministry of Jesus! This is normal Christianity in the Kingdom of God which as of right now is within us, longing to break forth out of us like the ever flooding river of life it is (Luke17; John7). It’s called a sign and a wonder because its the signs that cause us to stand in awe and wonder of the majesty of Christ, who always does all things well! YEA Jesus!Much Love in Christ,Ben

Victory in Jesus at Machu Picchu

The team that did not stay in Lima, which was around 13 people, got back from the jungle earlier than we expected. It was a pleasant surprise! We immediately started planning our trip to Cusco en route to Machu Picchu. Cusco is this beautiful, European like city. We had to go by bus from Cusco and then a two-hour train ride to a town that sits below the specific, Andean mountain region where Machu Picchu stands. The Lord had truly inspired us to go once again to a high place of sacrifice and worship where over 500 years ago the foundation of inquiring for power from other spirits was initiated. We were going with a very different goal in mind then the 2,000 tourists that visit that site every day! We were going to trade the blood and body of Jesus over the Land, and all the people, from the descendants of the first Incan civilization that started these rituals up to the present generations. We had experienced such breakthrough in Tikal, Guatemala when we took communion at the ancient, Mayan center of human sacrifice in the highest temple possible we could ascend. That was only our second or third country. We have had strong prophetic words about every border we cross there being a release and massive increase in the angelic army that travels, covers, and moves with us in battle. Peru is our 13th country, so the increase in power and authority was evident as we invaded the high place of Machu Picchu. Also, our family has experienced such a sovereign move of grace and unity since that time in Tikal leading up to the time in Peru. The Lord has divinely knit our hearts together in love in an unstoppable bond of a God orchestrated formation of not just “another ministry team”, but a family who fights for one another in the contending of each other’s destines in Christ Jesus. This is what Paul called fulfilling the law of Christ and not of the flesh: bearing one another’s burdens only in the grace that God supplies, thus fulfilling the law of Christ (Gal.6). And so the power of us all being in agreement and freedom as ONE, yet many, was a level of breakthrough in grace different then Tikal, refreshingly, exhilaratingly different. We had a couple of days of waiting in Cusco, the in between city, that would be the bridge to our time at Machu Picchu. During this time, we had the joy of having one of our fearless leaders back with us, who initially started the trip with us, our beloved Christian. It truly was such a personal blessing to me to have him run with us in this Peruvian season of the trip. He is a fortress of the Father’s heart of love and power to our family and a deep well-spring of revelation from heaven. I plan on being with this man in the future in the nations as we are sent out together. Shout out to you Christian, I reckon you bring heaps of blessings in the words of our roomie, Kurt! As we were ordering at Starbucks one of the days in Cusco, Christian and I felt to prophesy over an employee that was on shift there. I asked the shift leader if it was ok; she said, “Yes”! So we just took him aside and starting speaking the heart of Jesus over him. He was smiling brightly as he simply received the free love and grace of Jesus. The Lord had hinted to me earlier he had pain in his lower, left back from being on his feet for long distances. That was a true word from the Lord as he said sometimes he did as he looked at us kind of in this childlike awe of how good Jesus is. Christian prayed, there was no pain in that moment, and then we left to let Holy Spirit water and breathe on the seed planted.

As I ordered another time I just began to declare the love of Jesus over this young woman, Tatiana. She was lighting up by the end of it and said, “Hey, my grandma has terminal cancer and is in Miami”. She recognized Jesus as One having authority and actually able to heal. I grabbed Taylor and we began to release the presence of God right into her hospital room and then of course words began to come forth from both of our mouths for her as we were faithful to open them. I am beginning to really understand the phrase, “Open your mouth and I will fill it”. He did not promise we would have full prophetic revelation before we decided to open our mouths, but in the doing of it I’m always granted more of His heart in the accessing and engagement of the spirit of prophecy by faith. It’s like the process of digging a well in order that the living water of Jesus could fill it every time we step out. Every time we act upon the leading of Holy Spirit we are creating and digging in ourselves a greater capacity to receive and thus a greater authority and potency in the release of what we have received by grace will consistently happen. If the eternal, kingdom realm is unseen then I can manifest the reality of it by stepping out in faith which will result in many times external “evidence” of a kingdom that was not seen currently before the act of faith (Heb.11:1)! Jesus said His kingdom was not of this world, so the release of that kingdom to the world really does cause a shockwave of grace and life to flood over the one it is ministered to. So we can be the conduits by which an invisible reality of Truth becomes a felt, experienced reality to the world in need. Faith is by love and through love, faith truly works through love. Love simply moves and acts on behalf of the ones Jesus loves. Love is not love unless it has an avenue to be expressed through. Christian, Kurt, and I went out one day in Cusco. As we were sitting a conversation started with this lady. I had an intense word of knowledge about someone with bad hearing loss and pain in their ears before we sat down. I said, someone’s ear is messed up to Christian. We did not ask the lady if anything was wrong with her ears but out of nowhere she starts talking about her boyfriend who had a bomb blow up by his face and thus had problems with deafness and hearing loss. We got to pray with her over that problem. We left and were quite a bit down another street when she comes running up to meet us again. She said she did not believe her boyfriend loved her. We immediately knew this was not about her boyfriend but Holy Spirit had directed her back to us to speak her identity in the eyes of Jesus. She smiled brightly as we began to pray and speak that identity of love over her. She thanked us, not saying anything more about her boyfriend because she understood part of who Jesus was through us. That is what she really needed to know she just did not know it, so God set her up in order to awaken her heart to His love.

Gracious Jesus, He is the kindest One I have ever known.More to come!

In Christ,

Ben