Dear Prayer Partners,

Thank you for keeping me in prayer for this last trip to El Salvador! I always say it, because it is so true and I am so grateful – when you stand in the gap for me, it really makes a difference! When I got home, someone asked me, “What happened in El Salvador? You were on my heart all week. God even woke me up in the middle of the night to pray for you!” When I hear things like that, I am deeply touched.

I really enjoyed connecting with Pastor Victor Linares in La Palma again. La Palma is about a three hour drive from the capital, San Salvador. It is a little town wedged in a mountainous area of the country.

As I shared with you, it was our intention to go to a remote village where there is no church and no known believers. The challenge of this unreached area is that it is steeped in syncretistic Catholicism and witchcraft.

One of the church members was from that area, so our plan was to go and visit his relatives, take bags of gifts for children, and then talk and pray for people in the village. We spent the entire day driving up the mountain. Where the road ended, we were to get on horses and continue to the village. But at that point we received a call from the relatives in the village saying that we better not come because there was a group of men waiting on the trail for us with machetes. After much prayer and deliberation, we felt it was best not to continue. We were very disappointed, but we were thankful for God’s protection and the warning from the people. 

The next day I preached on a radio station that covers that remote area in the mountains. I shared that we had attempted to bring toys and gifts for children, but we had been rejected. I didn’t share the details about the machetes, I just said how much we loved them and that if they disagreed with those that rejected us, to please send a message to Pastor Victor and invite us to come.

People started coming down off the mountains. At the meeting on Friday night at Fe y Esperanza, the church was packed out. Pastor Victor put up a tent outside the church for the overflow crowd. I preached on the theme that truth is more powerful than facts and that God can make the impossible possible. People of every generation flooded the altar. I stepped off the platform and then the Wind of the Holy Spirit blew in from the left side of the building. The next thing I knew people were falling like dominoes. Women with rosaries were being blasted by the Holy Spirit, weeping and falling to the ground. When I made the call to be born again, some of these precious people from the mountains stood trembling and crying as they made a public confession to follow Christ. So in the end, God turned things around for His glory.

When I got back to the States, Pastor Victor called me to tell me that a man from that village came to see him. He shared that he had heard from the family in the church that we were coming to his village with gifts for his children. He had been waiting for us that day. When we didn’t come, he thought we had got lost on the trail, so he went looking for us. He said there was a group of extremely hostile men with machetes waiting for us.

So thank you. Thank you for praying. Thank you for listening to the Holy Spirit, even in the middle of the night. Thank you for standing with me in faith.

It was an honor to serve Pastor Victor and Roxana in La Palma. They are a precious couple and they are serving the Lord faithfully in that region. I am also grateful to Pastor Chris Gonzalez (who oversees Fe y Esperanza) for trusting me to minister.

Thank you for helping us bring HEALING TO THE NATIONS…
In His Grip,
Pastor Eric Lehmann