Jesus Encounters on the Road

Two days ago I headed out with my Isuzu Trooper across the North Cascades Highway for an overnight trip to Winthrop to speak to a group of Christians about things God is doing and to pray for healing.

As I headed up the steep highway into the mountains steam began to pour out from under my hood. An overheated radiator soon forced me to pull over, high in the mountains far out of cell-phone range. Still a good hour from my destination and barely on time without this inconvenience, I grabbed my backpack and began hitchhiking. The first car stopped and dark-haired Native looking woman motioned me in. I squeezed into the back seat as the driver’s heavily-tattooed arm moved piles of clothes off my seat. He was headed right past where I needed to go, and soon we were off, throbbing rock music blaring out of speakers tirades against injustices. “System of a Down” she said.

Since I had been worshipping and praying the whole way to that point I continued to pray, now for this couple. All I could see most of the time of the driver was his long pony tail. Occasionally I caught glimpses of his eyes in the rear view mirror. They looked like pools full of pain and sorrow.

Thirty minutes later we crossed Washington Pass, passing snow drifts and granite faces that caused the driver to turn down the music and slow down. “You ever been through here?” He asked.

“Yeah, fairly often. Beautiful isn’t it?” I said.

“So what do you do for a living?” he asked.

When I told him I was a pastor he kept asking several more times, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. I told him I minister to inmates in Skagit County Jail and to others on the margins. I told him how much I enjoy working with people who feel like they’re damned, like no one cares, like they’re too bad for God to want to help. I told him how I am convinced that God has special affection for violent men, and then asked him what he does.

“Tattoo artist,” he said. “Just did one for this young lady who I hardly know. Now we’re off on a drive for a few days. Maybe we’ll head on down to Mexico.”

“Where did you learn how to tattoo?” I asked.

“In prison,” he said, knowing now that I was at least somewhat safe. Turned out he’d been out 2 ½ years after doing 21 years, beginning when he was 17.

“Been through every prison in the State,” he said, and went on to tell me how “effed up” the whole prison system is. “Doesn’t do no good for nobody,” he said. “I taught classes for ten years to new inmates on how to survive doing time.”

I told him how I longed to see churches welcoming ex-offenders, helping them when they get out, like we try to at TN’s Family Support Center. We arrived where I needed to get out and I offered to pray for them.

“Not while I’m in the car,” he said, half joking. It seemed to me he really wanted prayer but didn’t want to look weak in front of his new girl friend. I blessed them and ran up to my meeting, only 15 minutes late!

That night I taught on Jesus’ ministry of welcoming outcasts, preaching life and healing, focusing on Acts 10:38, where Peter tells “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” At the end many people came up for prayer for empowerment by the Holy Spirit for the ministry of Jesus. A number of people received healing for different physical problems too.

The next morning my friend Patty drove me back over the pass with radiator patch and gallons of water to my car. It started right up and she took off. A few minutes later it was overheating again and died. Unable to start it, I was once again stranded in the mountains, until a Forest Service worker stopped by. He arranged for a tow truck already in the area to tow me home. Then we talked for the next hour all about how much damage methamphetamines had done to his community. He had seen a lot of good people bite the dust and was moved by stories about of how Jesus is finding and healing broken, hurting people. He’d once been an idealistic hippie and seemed still quite open to a big but realistic vision like the one Jesus preached and practiced.

The tow truck driver finally arrived and we were off on another adventure began. This guy had worked security in a casino for 16 years, taught karate and was a lead guitarist and singer in a rock band. I sensed he had lots of physical pain and after telling him a few stories about healings in the jail he told me he too could use some healing for his right shoulder, left elbow, and neck. I prayed as he drove and he kept checking himself out until he dropped me off, saying the pain had all gone away. Though he’d been outside the church since he was a kid, he knew he needed to forgive lots of people and wanted peace and joy in his heart to replace resentment and anger. “I’d like to come to your church he said,” as he dropped me and my Isuzu in the Tierra Nueva parking lot.

Now I’m home again and excited to see what God wants to do next. Please keep us in your prayers:

• My son Luke and I leave for two weeks in Mozambique where I’ll be teaching in Heidi Baker’s Holy Given School. Pray for our protection and Presence with us on our journey.
• Finances for New Earth Refuge—we’d like to finish construction on our prayer center but still need $125,000.
• Finances for Tierra Nueva for our May payroll—still need $14,000 in the next ten days.

Blessings in Christ,

Bob Ekblad

Breakthroughs in Caracas, Ekblad Update #4

Bob Ekblad May 12, 2007

Dear friend,

I’m writing you a more detailed than normal report of my recent 8 day ministry trip to Caracas, Venezuela, because of the amazing series of events enlivened by God’s beautiful Presence. I lead a series of courses on the ministry of Jesus and Kingdom of God for a group of North Americans and Venezuelans living among and ministering to the urban poor in impoverished urban barrios. In the days before leaving National Public Radio labeled Caracas the most violent city in the world due to the high number of robberies and murders in the lawless, drug-infested barrios carved into the mountainsides surrounding the city where over half the city’s five million people reside. On my way to the airport a friend prays for me over the cell phone. He tells me a sees a picture of a rusty lock that looks like it could never open. Then he sees a rusty key inserted and the apparently impossible happens—the padlock opens.

I meet my Tierra Nueva colleague Chris in Caracas, fresh from travels through Mexico and Central America. We stayed with Innerchange workers John and Birgit Shorack and their three children and ministry worker Ryan Mathis in their home and ministry center, perched high in the heart of a maze of winding roads, alleys and paths through a ramshackle of brick cubes and tin roofs of barrio “Pedro Camejo.” The Shoracks are veteran ministry workers in dark and difficult places. They began their ministry to Caracas’ impoverished barrio dwellers five years ago after serving over ten years in inner-city Los Angeles. I counseled, prayed and taught their staff in the mornings. We led Bible studies and prayed with families and walking the streets where muggings and killings are commonplace in the afternoons and early evenings. We were all delighted to see Jesus free people from pain in every home we visited, as we gathered family members, ministry workers and neighbors around whoever needed relief and invited God’s Kingdom to come, right where we were "as in heaven."

Ryan, a 24-year-old American living and working there with Innerchange was attracted to the “bad guys” in a special Jesus-like way. Though he had been traumatized by numerous muggings and encounters with dead bodies on the streets, his love led him to boldly and respectfully reaching out to the hated malandros (no goods, hoodlums, thieves, scum), who terrorize the barrios with constant muggings, even in broad daylight, at gunpoint, and in taxi jeeps that come through.

Even though Ryan had nearly left due to the trauma of these holdups, he had been pressing in and interceding for the malandros and trying to make connections. Reaching out to the barrio outlaws is a particularly risky venture. Not only are they themselves armed and dangerous, but they have enemies seeking to kill them at all times, making you a potential target as their associate or a victim caught in the cross fire. Ryan invited Chris to go visit two of the most infamous guys he had befriended, hoping to find the worst of them, David, known as “Calimero.”

Calimero was a 19-year-old man caught up in drugs, thievery and violence. Calimero had on different occasions robbed nearly every one of the ministry staff and their children. He and his fellow bandits had held up taxi drivers, busloads of people and likely been involved in the killings that have been claiming growing numbers of victims every month.

Ryan took Chris with him to seek out and find Calimero. He had felt inspired to give something special to this guy who was always taking, offering him a prized poster of Jesus’ face made up of verses from the gospels. Calimero received Ryan and Chris into his tin-roofed shack hide-out, where he had lived alone since he was orphaned years before.

“We blessed Calimero straight out, while most of the neighborhood wants him dead, and he received it," says Chris regarding their visit. "I started getting words of knowledge and went for it, right there outside his shack house. Spot on stuff going into the voices he hears that torment him at night. Then his friend shows up and I immediately got an image of his wrist being yanked. Thinking maybe the police had grabbed him I asked. Yep, the police had tugged him by the wrist for blocks this week. I asked if I could pray for him. When he agreed to let me pray, I put my hand on his wrist and prayed for God to restore the respect the cops stole, and thanked Jesus that he’s about restoring the things the enemy steals and how God respects him and adores him, and knows these details in their lives and sends us to tell them because he is a good papi and cares a lot.”

Calimero then invited Ryan and Chris into his house, something unheard of as most people in the barrio didn’t know where he lives and "friends" don't even go in. When Ryan suggested that he wanted to bless his place Calimero shyly agreed, his ear is torn like a scrappy dog's off the streets from a fight.

“He is dark, wearing nylon shorts,” recounts Chris, “old basketball shoes, a tank top and cap. Very shy, quiet. I would even say sweet-- but I hear he is the most feared around here. Kids with guns, man, not terrorists. We spend over an hour in this empty shack of rusted metal sheets nailed to scrap two by fours with the back wall blown out overlooking a great view of all the valley's barrios. We silence the voices. Even his hand is extended. We talk about how God is pursuing him, but not to hurt him like others in the barrio, but to embrace him. God knows that hurting people who aren't doing good is like burning a house down that has trash in it instead of just taking out the trash. God knows how to take the bad stuff out of us and cast it out, burn it like the trash around here. He likes this. Then Ryan gives him a really cool poster of Jesus' face made from scribbled words, passages." That night, on a risky beer run Chris sees Calimero on the corner. He smiles and the first thing he says is that the poster is up.

The next day Chris and I lead the staff in a session of prophetic worship and listening prayer, where we seek to come into God’s presence as a group to discern what God is doing in our lives and in their ministry. The Spirit is present powerfully, touching everyone in different ways that they hadn’t experienced. One gets hit with uncontrollable laughter, another with weeping, another begins speaking in tongues for the first time, someone ends up on the ground, hands and feel burning up as God’s presence comes with a feeling a weightiness. Birgit, the mother of the team who says she does get prophetic words or feels says has a vision where she sees Calimero’s body wrapped in the Jesus poster. Not wanting to affirm this after the breakthroughs with Calimero the day before, I awkwardly underplay it.

The next morning the whole team heads out of town with leaders of the house churches for a two-day retreat in the mountains. Nearly all of the 35 or so who attend the retreat live in impoverished barrios where violence is rampant. I teach on the ministry of Jesus and the Kingdom of God. At one point Chris sang a song he wrote in Skagit County Jail based on Luke 7:34, where Jesus is judged by his enemies as “a gluttonous man, and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners” that simply repeats the Spanish version of the refrain: “Jesus, friend of sinners, we love you.” After a few lines he replaces the Spanish word for sinners, pecadores, with malandros, causing some to visibly wince. I decide to lead a session on the relationship between forgiveness and deliverance from evil spirits based on the parable of the debtor who is forgiven and then refuses to himself forgive.
According to Jesus’ parable a slave owing ten thousand talents begs a king to forgive him his debt rather than selling his wife, children and all he has. The king feels compassion and releases him, forgiving his debt. The slave in turn seizes and chokes a fellow slave owing only a hundred denarii, throwing him in prison rather than forgiving him. When the king hears about this he calls him in and asks: “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?' (Matthew 18:33). He then hands him over to the torturers until he repays all that was owned him (18:34). Jesus ends his teaching with a stern warning: So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart" (18:35).

We discuss how living according to human justice rather than in the mercy of God leads to being delivered over to the accuser, who torments and tortures us, requiring us to live according to the harsh demands of human justice: demanding that we pay back everything we owe. I remind people of the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, where we pray: "forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). I briefly present Leviticus 19:17 “You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself.” I point out that the Septuagint version translates the end of this verse fittingly with “so thou shalt not bear sin on his account.” When we hold judgments against people in our hearts we are allowing their sin to infect us. We are carrying their sin rather than letting Jesus bear it.

I suggest that as we drop our judgments against people that are based on justice we will become free of any of their guilt or sin that we bear due to our resentment and bitterness from unforgiveness. When we confess our sin of judging and drop charges against others, any legal right for the torturers (evil spirits) to torment us disappears. I invite people to confess their bitterness, hatred and judgments and to drop their charges against enemies and others who have offended them. I insist that our forgiveness has nothing to do with our offenders confessing, asking for forgiveness or deserving our pardon. This is about extending the grace that has been offered freely to us by God in Jesus on the cross. I pass out paper and pencils and invite people into a time of listing names of people against whom they hold judgments, writing the specific offenses beside their names. We invite the Holy Spirit to come, bringing to memory people who God is calling us to forgive. For the next twenty minutes or so people write reflect and write. Some cry as they write. I am sure that many malandros stalking their barrios received pardon.

We end that session with a corporate prayer where we drop our charges against people who have offended us, forgiving them and blessing them in Jesus’ name. I place a big cast iron frying pan in the middle of the circle and invite people to crumple up their papers and place them in the pan. We burn the papers and invite God’s Spirit to fill us with love and the strength to live in a place of mercy rather than judgment.

The retreat ends and the bus arrives, driving us down from the mountain paradise and back to the barrios in Caracas. People seem full of joy, singing and chatting as we bump down the mountain road. I wonder what sorts of breakthroughs await us all as we re-enter the violent streets of the city. As we descend towards a nearby town a man stops our bus, warning us there’s been a tiroteo (shootout) just ahead. He suggests we go down the mountain a different way. The bus driver obliges, but after heading down another road he stops, realizing he’s completely lost. He decides to turn around and head down where the shootout happened. People in the bus are visibly agitated. Though they live with violence every day, someone begins vomiting and others are crying. We head past several groups of people where the shootout took place. They are visibly rattled: traumatized and angry looking. We make it back to Caracas fine, and take a jeep taxi back up to the barrio. Then we learn the bad news. An hour after we’d left Calimero had been stabbed repeatedly by someone just around the corner from the Shorack’s home. He’d staggered down the road where he fell and slowly bled to death below the corner of his most recent crimes.

We pray for Ryan, shocked and sobbing. The next day we have a final session and end with worship. We remember Birgit’s vision and are perplexed. We decide to embrace it as a sign of this community’s newfound ability to hear from God. We agree that Birgit’s picture of Calimero wrapped in a poster of Jesus’ face is an image of a certain kind of victory. Calimero “died not wrapped in hate,” reflects Chris, “but in so little time knowing Ryan, died with the one thing given to him that he didn't have to steal. This gift was a picture of Jesus’ face, the only thing on his wall he eagerly put up, and symbolically now wrapping him in the friendship of Jesus in a world that doesn't love orphans-gone-thieves like that.” I see Ryan’s gift to Calimero as preparing him for his buriel, much like the woman’s pouring perfume on Jesus’ feet prepared Jesus for his. We wonder and hope that Calimero will be the key to the rusty padlocked neighborhood where this team has been ministering for four years now with little fruit.

This seems confirmed that night as Ryan and John head off to attend the wake. Ryan returns late, sobered and more hopeful. He tells of hanging with other young men around Calimero’s still body, malandros like Calimero, who smoked a concoction of heroin and other drugs together in Ryan’s presence in memory of their fallen companion. Ryan’s deeper rapport with the malandros is certainly hopeful. His calling is deepened now and the stakes are getting higher. The need is certainly clearer and more urgent than ever to live out an embrace of these kids like Calimero, who's blood is calling from the street like an invitation to Ryan and others so seek a Gospel that has the power to truly save, heal and liberate the most broken and violent ones-- who rob by day and can trust no one. The team is pondering a vigil through the barrio for Calimero and all those dying in the streets, both innocent and perpetrators. Upon returning from the retreat one of the house church families found bullet holes across the front of their home. Others witnessed a woman shot and killed after throwing herself in front of her son’s assailants, taking the bullets.

Chris, who had weeks before hung with murderous gangster “mareros” sentenced to life in prison in Guatemala’s gang prisons sums up the heightened sense of calling he himself feels after this experience.

As in Guatemala, where I just was with the gangsters in the prisons, it is common for the community who feels understandably paralyzed in fear at the spread of such youth in their neighborhood to just wish these mareros and malandros dead. To wait silently, lock your doors, and hope that either the police lock them away somewhere darker or their own cohorts get to them first and kill them directly makes a kind of sense. But when you get to know one or two, the mention of a dead malandro that has the name of the one you saw with God's eyes hurts. It makes you weep and come together in prayer and feel like you want to do this for the rest of your life with Jesus, even if you catch a knife or bullet yourself. It’s funny how love works, and how Jesus gives it so heavily and points us with it in the oddest directions.

“Very truly, I tell you,” says Jesus. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:23-24). The worst that the enemy can throw at us, death, is paradoxically the very thing that emboldens Ryan and Chris following Calimero’s murder. God turns the enemy’s weapon into a catalyst for fruitfulness and victory as new disciples find themselves unable to resist the call.

Please remember the Shoracks and the entire Caracas Innerchange team in your prayers: for protection, breakthrough and fruitfulness. Pray for us here at Tierra Nueva (TN) too.
• For financial provision for Tierra Nueva during times of scarcity.
• For $125,000 still needed to complete the building of New Earth Refuge healing prayer and hospitality facility that will sleep 20+
• For Thursday evening and Sunday afternoon bilingual services in the jail and Sunday evening English and Spanish services at TN.

Abundant blessings in Christ,

Bob Ekblad

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