OM CENTRAL AMERICA EASTER CAMPAIGN

OM International

The encouragement of the Holy Spirit continued to the Atlantic Zone of Guapiles, Costa Rica where Richard held a breakfast with 80 people and among the group were pastors, leaders and wives from different churches that were to receive OM teams and what a motivation it was to see them arrive, all with great expectations, in a spirit of prayer and anticipation to know all about the ministry and what was to take place in the coming week, a week that had been in great expectation for weeks. From the outset we could sense how the Lord was working with this group of pastors, we witnessed their spirit of commitment and disposition to serve sacrificially (though OM was hardly known to them) and this was a special blessing from the Lord to help us accomplish the work of evangelism that was to follow.Before the week concluded, Richard had opportunity to share a challenge to leaders on the local TV channel 36 with a listening audience that included the Atlantic zone of Costa Rica. Later he shared OM stories and the world-wide situation for 60 minutes with the TBN of Latin America and its audience of millions of Spanish speaking peoples in South, Central and North America respectively.

The ‘zero’ hour arrived and on Friday, March 30th the various country delegations began arriving by plane and bus to San Jose, Mexico with 49 participants, El Salvador with 45 volunteers, USA with 28 people and everyone with different expectations, some hoping to get to know other people, others to get to know another country, others desirous of the Lord to confirm the calling in their life and others fully ready to work hard in evangelism. The following day, Saturday March 31rst there were more to come, Guatemala with 70 people, those from Honduras traveled close to 24 hours with 45 participants, Panamá with 21, England with 5 and last but not least there were 54 Costa Rica. The final total came to 317 participants and breaking our ‘prayer goal’ of 300 people!

In preparation for the campaign, we held a series of plenary sessions that included:

1. New strategies in prayer (Richard Sharp, OM USA mobilizer and trainer)
2. The AIDS Epidemic (Dr. Patrick Railey OM USA, Medical ministries)
3. Sports and evangelism (Martín Bateman and Consuelo Rabanales, Sportslink)
4. The church and World mission (Rev. Pablo Barrantes, Pastor in Costa Rica)
5. Preparing for evangelism! (Pastor Mauricio Hernández OM El Salvador leader)
6. Men and women conferences (Duane and Margaret Grasman, Mexico)  We held a series of events, including reports and videos of India, live music with local bands, sale of typical souvenirs from Costa Rica and other countries, several mini-training seminars. Leaders met with the Lord at 5:45 am to prepare for the work of evangelism and teams came together to pray and prepare for the work ahead. In all we held three days for time to pray, train, plan and motivate one another for the work ahead.

    

A major event of the outreach took place on Sunday, April 1 in which presentation teams visited 47 churches in the area of San José, Cartago, Alajuela, Heredia, and the purpose was to share in services and Sunday school classes the ministry of OM using the word METAL and through the use of dramas, messages by various speakers, ministering with children and young people, sale of books to motivate the church to commit to the task of world missions.With our focus set on the Atlantic zone, from Monday, April 2nd until Thursday, April 5th, the fifty member team of medics, dentists and ministry workers departed to serve in four different communities and among the areas included Roxana, Guápiles, Sarapiquí and Pocorá. Each day this team had opportunity to give free medical service and creatively evangelize children, young people and adults through drama, soccer, painting the children’s faces, using the colored bracelet and Evangel Cube and sharing in song. More than 1200 people received personal medical attention and many more heard the Gospel in a personal way during four intense days. In addition the Sportslink team of soccer players held sports clinics, friendly games and evangelistic presentations to local teams and young people under the direction of Martin Bateman and Consuelo Rabanales. As for the remaining group of 250 young people the five chartered buses began to transport them through the mountain pass from San Jose to the Atlantic zone in the early hours of Tuesday morning and the teams were received by 23 pastors and leaders and taken to communities in a seventy-five mile radius, which include the areas of Guapiles, Pocora, Sarapiqui, Roxana, Guacimo, Río Jiménez, La Rita, Villa Franco, Humos, Cariari, Limon, San Martin. The teams assigned with literature, ministry plans and evangelistic materials left with high expectations to share the Gospel in the next three days.

We thank the Lord that the results proved to be a great success and according to reports and personal accounts more than 500 people came to knowledge of Christ and 4000 had the opportunity to hear and read more of Christ.The most exciting part of the campaign occurred as pastors returned with teams on Friday and many shared in tears over the experiences shared over the past few days, many knew that something special had taken place in their churches and among their people and as well team members were blessed in a special way and with many incredible experiences.One young man from Mexico City, Juan Esteban shared his first message in a church service and this after being saved for a year and two months and witnessed how the Lord brought blessing to the church congregation! There were stories of many local church members sharing in evangelism and others receiving a personal challenge to serve in missions and commit to further training. Many stories, pictures, videos, personal accounts continue to arrive to our office and it is so apparent that the Lord brought blessing to everyone – church members, team members, pastors, unsaved people, OM leaders, the sick, children and more!

Already a follow-up visit has been made to visit with pastors in the Atlantic zone and the month of May is dedicated to ‘report back to pastors’ and to dialogue together on new ministry projects that OM Costa Rica can join together, alongside local pastors. Please pray for this!

To bring this great event to a close, we celebrated an evening of cultural dance where each country had the opportunity to present an artistic presentation of dance, song or an event of historical importance. Later all 317 participants and many local church members received a challenge to World missions by Duane Grasman from México and how moving it was to have over 200 young people come forward for prayer and in this way these young people returned to their countries and churches with the challenge of personal sanctification and world evangelism.

We are thankful to the Lord for the many ways that He helped to administer this great event and for each person who made the effort to come to Costa Rica, for every pastor and leader and church and for the team the Lord allowed us to recruit and without their help this great evangelistic work would not have become a reality and to the many government institutions both public and private that provided support for this event.

Praise to the Lord that we were able

¨EXTEND OUR HAND TO THE HARVEST¨

Credit: OM International
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