Our trip to Cuba
“Four days in a Communist home”
In July we were in Mexico conducting a pastor seminar when a pastor approached and asked if we would be willing to go to Cuba to do the same conference. I jumped at the chance to preach to people who had never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. He Coordinated it and we received our religious visas the first week of November. The spiritual battle was on, not just because we were going to preach to the captives but because we took with us a large quantity of the expositors study Bibles. Our Mexican brothers were occupied by the government at the airport for 4 1/2 hours before they were allowed to bring the Bibles into the country. Even then the communist Govt confiscated 11 of the Bibles. We arrived at the airport the next morning but with that information were able to arrange the bibles in our luggage and were allowed to enter with the Bibles. Actually the Lord had given Carolyn Giroux a word that when asked what these books were? we would answer “teaching material for our pastors conference.”
Please pray that the government will release the 11 Bibles as our host Pastor is making an effort to retrieve them.
The first day as we drove away from the airport we were surprised at the beautiful country. The roads are in excellent shape with three lanes going in each direction from Havana to Santa Clara where that evening our first meeting would be held. The pastor had been healed when he was 19 years old from a crippling disease, saved and called to preach. Churches established prior to 1959 were allowed to remain when Fidel Castro took power but no new churches are officially recognized. So this man is a modern-day martyr having been persecuted, told to stop preaching, his home was taken away and many other trials too numerous to relate here. But the joy of the Lord was his!!! The Spirit of God moved that night in a large crowd of over 100 and lives were changed!!
We finished the driving to our final destination that night and were ushered into a bed-and-breakfast.
The conference began in the morning and the reception was excellent. It is amazing to me how False doctrine finds its way even into a place where many books are banned and the gospel is not welcome. It’s because it’s not the true gospel. The gospel is not prohibited, we did receive our religious visas, but the gospel is not what the Communist Party wants us to bring. The pastors were very touched by the teaching and the simplicity of Christ and Him crucified. It was an excellent first morning as 60 plus pastors received the message of Justification by faith.
We returned to the home we were placed in around the corner from the church and began fellowshipping with the owners. We quickly learned that they were wonderful, friendly, intelligent people, he was bilingual and a mechanical engineer. But we also learned that she was an informant for the government. There were times when the government would ask her about this person or that person in their neighborhood and she would have to report. He spoke up and said “she always gives a good report of the people.”
We ended up talking for hours about how the government was formed, how the revolution went, what it was like to live in this communist country now. Eddie is 50 years old and a very intelligent charming man. As we walked around this 500 year old city he knew almost everybody. He also knew where to buy things that were not available in the state run stores. Steve, Carolyn and Dorene and I preached the gospel to Eddy from Thursday all the way through Sunday morning. His wife had been saved seven months earlier and he was remarking on the changes in her.
She used to be a dancer and the Lord convicted her and she quit dancing for the world and now dances for the Lord! The Holy Spirit was slowly getting through to Eddie as we continued to give him scripture after scripture. We were also told by the church that hosted us to be careful of what we might say in that home. But we had nothing to hide and there was no question as to why we had made the trip.
The pastors conference continued on Thursday night and Friday morning with many, many pastors giving testimony of this being the correct and ONLY TRUE message and saying they were going to go back to their church and repent of what they’ve been teaching. They also said they had been set free by the liberating message of Christ and Him crucified!
Sunday morning came and we had a big service in the main church and Eddie decided he wanted to come to hear what it is that we do. But as I have heard Brother Swaggart say many times if you stand around the riverbank long enough eventually you’re going to fall in. That morning as I preached salvation I watched this 6′-3″, 230 pound man born and raised in communism shed tears, raise his hand and come to the altar to be saved by the power of God!!!! Along with a dozen others he said the sinners prayer and was born again!! But the Holy Spirit wasn’t done!!! I gave an altar call right then for the baptism in the Holy Spirit. I have learned that the best time to teach and asked them to be baptized in the Holy Spirit is right then when they first get saved. They have no fear or inhibitions and many are ready to receive.
Eddie first was speaking in Spanish, but when I said “no Spanish” immediately his tongue began to roll and he was speaking in a new language! He was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke with other tongues!!!
This communist informant, was now a Spirit filled, Jesus loving, Christian! What rejoicing there was as his daughter and her husband and his wife all meet back at the house to fellowship with the new man! Salvation had come to that house that day. What will happen next I don’t know but I know that God has a plan.
This trip was so rich and so incredibly life-changing for me and there is so much more I could say. We have been invited back and we will believe God to continue to perform miracles as we preach the simplicity that is the gospel!!
Thank you for your prayers…
Brother Dan with Dorene
Preaching the cross to the lost and found