Fifteen years ago Gracie and I moved an hour North of Seattle to Burlington and launched Tierra Nueva del Norte out of our home. Chaplaincy in Skagit County Jail and in area migrant labor camps put us into direct contact with people in crisis: addictions, warrants, homelessness, relationship conflict, immigration troubles, unemployment…. far more needs than we could ever meet on our own. Thankfully has been sending us more and more colleagues.
We now have a cadre of 15 or so co-workers engaged in TN’s ministries and growing English and Spanish/Mixteco worshipping communities and still others in Honduras. Gracie and I continue to share a full-time position as pastors with Tierra Nueva.
We feel increasingly called to raise up ministry workers both here and abroad. Seven years ago an opportunity came up to buy a 35-acre forested refuge on the Skagit River near La Conner (see photos at http://bobekblad.com/newearthrefuge.html . Here we receive God’s empowering love in ways that strengthen us to both write/reflect and go out like never before.
In partnership with Tierra Nueva, where we focus on direct outreach to people on the margins, God has given us a vision to establish a refuge to bring encouragement, healing, and equipping so leaders can be raised up and sent out refreshed to minister to the “least.”
Already we are offering lodging, hospitality, training and spiritual support to our staff, seminary students and many others engaged in ministry to society’s least who are often discouraged and at risk of burnout.
We established New Earth Refuge as a Washington State Non-profit Corporation and now have Federal 501c3 recognition allowing us to receipt tax-deductible donations. The buildings all belong to New Earth Refuge. With help from many generous friends we have completed a retreat center that can house 25 guests. We are committed to:
1) Refreshing, encouraging and launching ministry workers and church leaders: through spiritual retreats and personal ministry appointments for vocational, healing and deliverance prayer.
2) Equipping future leaders: for transformational ministry to people on the margins of society nationally and internationally. Plans are underway for regular Schools of Transformational Ministry.
3) Gathering leaders: for prayer and conversations about theology and ministry strategy.
We have completed construction and have been in full operation since June 2009. Due to growing exposure to the global body of Christ through Bob’s writing and teaching we’ve seen an increase in people coming our way for courses and conversations, like the following:
• “Our Religious Impulse: Encountering Religious Otherness,” Mars Hill Graduate School, June, 09.
• “Set the Captives Free”—a course on finding freedom from spiritual oppression that drew over 50 participants & included swimming in the river, July 26-30, 09.
• “Breaking the Chains: Biblical Perspectives on Resisting Personal and Structural Evil,” Regent Weekend School, (Oct 2-3; 23-24; Nov 20-21, 09).
• “Reading the Bible with the Damned,” (Jan 15-16, Mar 9-10, Apr 9-10, 2010)
• Weekly Tuesday Tierra Nueva council meetings, staff prayer & training.
• Monthly area pastors prayer gathering.
• Weekend retreats for area churches.
• Gathering of 20 regional leaders to pray and envision together (Sept., 09).
• Healing prayer appointments with many people from the USA, Canada, and with missionaries serving in Africa, Latin America, the UK, Korea, Cambodia & Singapore.
We are already receiving donations from guests that cover utilities, taxes and upkeep for New Earth Refuge. Our biggest need is for a final $148,000 to pay off a line of credit used to complete construction.
We share this vision with you to both to let you know about this new dimension of our work and to request your prayers. If you feel led to help us meet our final financial challenge gift are tax-deductible. You can donate online through PayPal by clicking on the donate button under New Earth Refuge on our website at http://bobekblad.com/donate.html or through regular mail at:
New Earth Refuge
19438 Best Road
Mount Vernon, WA 98273
Please come by for a visit if you are in the area!
May Jesus bless you with peace and joy this Christmas!
Yours in Christ,
Bob and Gracie Ekblad
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Redemption not Deportation
For the past 15 years I have served as a pastor of Tierra Nueva, ministering to immigrants from Mexico and inmates in Skagit County Jail here an hour north of Seattle. I regularly see immigrants suffer terribly due their inability to become legal residents or avoid deportation on account of sometimes even minor criminal activity. Immigration reform is critical at this time and must include far more than an opportunity for the millions of undocumented immigrants residing in the USA (12-20 million) to become citizens. Reforms are also desperately needed to overhaul the failed 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA) to give young men and women labeled “criminal aliens” opportunities for redemption.
Last week while in Honduras my wife Gracie called me about a close friend from Mexico named Ignacio whose 21-year-old son Jose was in jail charged with a DUI and possession of a controlled substance; as a result he was subject to a Border Patrol hold. If he is convicted, he will serve his time and then be deported back to a country where he has never lived, with a possible lifetime bar to re-entry. He will be separated from his US citizen wife, three year old daughter and family. “Is there anything we can do?” Ignacio asked in desperation.
I was talking with Gracie by cell phone, having just arrived in a Honduran town where we had lived for six years in the 80s promoting sustainable farming to stem the exodus from rural areas to cities. Two days before a 23-year-old man from a nearby village had been shot to death by someone he had threatened. The INS had deported two months before, after he served time for a minor crime in a US jail.
“He had been working for three years in different states but then was arrested and deported. Like many young immigrants who have been in the USA, he came back with a serious drug problem, all disoriented and not wanting to work for $3.00 a day,” said Angel David, Tierra Nueva’s Honduran pastor whom I joined to comfort his grieving mother. The US-based MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs were exported and rapidly spread throughout Central America when the INS deported vulnerable immigrant youth from violent American urban centers and prisons.
What could we do to keep Jose from being deported? Since he is married to a US citizen he might be able to apply for a waiver, depending on the seriousness of his conviction. However, people can be stripped of their residency status or barred from ever becoming a legal resident through committing a crime involving drugs or “moral turpitude”, which includes nearly every offense. This is because IIRAIRA created a terrible two-edged sword: the threshold for a having a crime be considered the most serious crime has been dramatically lowered (so that shoplifting a pack of gum is equated with the murder of a policeman or rape of a child), and at the same time the ability of immigration officers and judges to offer forgiveness to the truly deserving has been severely limited.
The law now puts tremendous discretion in the hands of our current prosecutors, and immigrants are too often left to the public county and municipal defender systems, which are overwhelmed and underfunded. Prosecutors can determine what charges to file and what plea agreements to accept, often well aware that what might be a great “deal” for a citizen of the US will impose a horrific “collateral” immigration consequence upon the immigrant: exile from work, home and family. This is coupled by the inability of our overworked public defenders to gather the resources needed to fashion resolutions of criminal charges, like drug treatment, community service and education, that allow the immigrant to pay his debt to society and reintegrate as a productive member. In contemporary America justice too often requires hard cash.
Ignacio and his wife Maria, like most immigrant workers, don’t have cash to pay for a private attorney for their son—who really needs drug and alcohol treatment and not jail time. They migrated to Washington State from Nayarit 15 years ago when Jose was 7, and other kids were 5, 3, 2 and 1. They had been unemployed and landless and were eager for work. Like many undocumented immigrants, they have struggled at the bottom of American society, taking on minimum-wage jobs in construction, slaughter houses, meat-packing plants, landscaping and field work.
I think back to a forum Tierra Nueva hosted more than a decade ago when a local berry farmer shared with the regional head of the INS his longing to see his many beloved workers be offered the chance to become legal permanent residents. “You know sir, that’s not what you really want,” said the INS chief. “If you give these people status and they will go after the America Dream. Then they won’t want to work for you anymore and there will have to be another wave of illegal immigrants to provide the workers to harvest America’s crops.”
Could the current political impasse that is keeping undocumented immigrants “illegal” be a deliberate mechanism to keep people in a state of perpetual slavery? Until ordinary Americans become aware of the desperate plight of immigrant workers, which is sustained by laws and economic forces that encourage them to come here but then force them to remain in the shadows, the sorry state of our justice system and shrinking pathways of forgiveness and begin to make their voices heard the plight of people on the margins will worsen. As people get to know immigrant workers as friends they will become motivated to put healthy pressure on prosecutors, judges and lawmakers to enforce laws in ways that favor all people and communities and change laws that don’t permit full consideration of each person’s humanity.
Last night I met with Jose during a bilingual Bible study in Skagit County Jail. His father Ignacio has spent the afternoon repairing my car after he and Maria had attended their son’s first court hearing. “We’re doing everything we can,” I assured him. “Esta bien, gracias,” he said smiling as they led him back to his cell.
Last week while in Honduras my wife Gracie called me about a close friend from Mexico named Ignacio whose 21-year-old son Jose was in jail charged with a DUI and possession of a controlled substance; as a result he was subject to a Border Patrol hold. If he is convicted, he will serve his time and then be deported back to a country where he has never lived, with a possible lifetime bar to re-entry. He will be separated from his US citizen wife, three year old daughter and family. “Is there anything we can do?” Ignacio asked in desperation.
I was talking with Gracie by cell phone, having just arrived in a Honduran town where we had lived for six years in the 80s promoting sustainable farming to stem the exodus from rural areas to cities. Two days before a 23-year-old man from a nearby village had been shot to death by someone he had threatened. The INS had deported two months before, after he served time for a minor crime in a US jail.
“He had been working for three years in different states but then was arrested and deported. Like many young immigrants who have been in the USA, he came back with a serious drug problem, all disoriented and not wanting to work for $3.00 a day,” said Angel David, Tierra Nueva’s Honduran pastor whom I joined to comfort his grieving mother. The US-based MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs were exported and rapidly spread throughout Central America when the INS deported vulnerable immigrant youth from violent American urban centers and prisons.
What could we do to keep Jose from being deported? Since he is married to a US citizen he might be able to apply for a waiver, depending on the seriousness of his conviction. However, people can be stripped of their residency status or barred from ever becoming a legal resident through committing a crime involving drugs or “moral turpitude”, which includes nearly every offense. This is because IIRAIRA created a terrible two-edged sword: the threshold for a having a crime be considered the most serious crime has been dramatically lowered (so that shoplifting a pack of gum is equated with the murder of a policeman or rape of a child), and at the same time the ability of immigration officers and judges to offer forgiveness to the truly deserving has been severely limited.
The law now puts tremendous discretion in the hands of our current prosecutors, and immigrants are too often left to the public county and municipal defender systems, which are overwhelmed and underfunded. Prosecutors can determine what charges to file and what plea agreements to accept, often well aware that what might be a great “deal” for a citizen of the US will impose a horrific “collateral” immigration consequence upon the immigrant: exile from work, home and family. This is coupled by the inability of our overworked public defenders to gather the resources needed to fashion resolutions of criminal charges, like drug treatment, community service and education, that allow the immigrant to pay his debt to society and reintegrate as a productive member. In contemporary America justice too often requires hard cash.
Ignacio and his wife Maria, like most immigrant workers, don’t have cash to pay for a private attorney for their son—who really needs drug and alcohol treatment and not jail time. They migrated to Washington State from Nayarit 15 years ago when Jose was 7, and other kids were 5, 3, 2 and 1. They had been unemployed and landless and were eager for work. Like many undocumented immigrants, they have struggled at the bottom of American society, taking on minimum-wage jobs in construction, slaughter houses, meat-packing plants, landscaping and field work.
I think back to a forum Tierra Nueva hosted more than a decade ago when a local berry farmer shared with the regional head of the INS his longing to see his many beloved workers be offered the chance to become legal permanent residents. “You know sir, that’s not what you really want,” said the INS chief. “If you give these people status and they will go after the America Dream. Then they won’t want to work for you anymore and there will have to be another wave of illegal immigrants to provide the workers to harvest America’s crops.”
Could the current political impasse that is keeping undocumented immigrants “illegal” be a deliberate mechanism to keep people in a state of perpetual slavery? Until ordinary Americans become aware of the desperate plight of immigrant workers, which is sustained by laws and economic forces that encourage them to come here but then force them to remain in the shadows, the sorry state of our justice system and shrinking pathways of forgiveness and begin to make their voices heard the plight of people on the margins will worsen. As people get to know immigrant workers as friends they will become motivated to put healthy pressure on prosecutors, judges and lawmakers to enforce laws in ways that favor all people and communities and change laws that don’t permit full consideration of each person’s humanity.
Last night I met with Jose during a bilingual Bible study in Skagit County Jail. His father Ignacio has spent the afternoon repairing my car after he and Maria had attended their son’s first court hearing. “We’re doing everything we can,” I assured him. “Esta bien, gracias,” he said smiling as they led him back to his cell.
Fruitfulness in Honduras
Angel David is 52 and serves as Tierra Nueva’s Honduran leader due to his tireless service on behalf of the area’s most marginalized people. I have known him for 26 years and watched him grow fuller and fuller of grace and truth. Now he leads TN’s new initiative to establish “hogares en transformacion” (households in transformation)—a house church movement focusing on people in extreme poverty who are excluded from the church.
Two days before TN’s Mexican pastor Salvio and I arrived for a nine-day visit he tells us how he heard gunshots on the dirt road below his house. He ran down to find a 23-year-old man he had been a godfather to dying in a pool of blood, shot to death by someone he had threatened. He carried him to his mother’s house, his upper body soaking up blood and brain fragments, and they loaded him into a pickup to be transported to Tegucigalpa. He died en route.
“Like many young men from our area he had gone to El Norte looking for opportunities, worked a few years in different states before being arrested and deported back to Honduras,” explained Angel David. “He came back with a serious drug problem, all disoriented and not wanting to work for $3.00 a day. I used to invite him to play soccer with the other young men, and always insisted on holding his revolver for him as we don’t let people play armed, and now he’s dead and the young man who shot him is on the run,” said David.
Years before we had tried to intervene in his family’s life after a local pastor had insisted that his father return to his first wife to escape the punishment of eternal hell for adultery. The young man’s father had at that time left his current wife and eight children to return to a previous partner in another part of the county.
We held a four day leaders school to directly confront negative images of God and the Bible that often lead to disaster. Some 60 participants were involved, many from Angel David’s home gatherings. Afterwards we traveled from village to village to tell people about our new initiative and pray for them.
Last Sunday afternoon we visited our new 15-acre coffee farm high in the mountains of Yoro and met and prayed with old friends in the village of La Fortuna. It is exciting to see the tremendous potential of eventually being able to fund TN’s Honduran movement through coffee sales while at the same time providing quality coffee for our ex-gang members in Burlington to roast and sell Underground Coffee.
We then descended to Guachipilin, a village that runs up and down a steep mountainside. Back in TN’s heyday nearly all the famers there had converted their eroded lands into highly productive contoured terraces, winning them a national ecology award. We stood among a gathering of peasants overlooking a sweeping valley and Angel David introduced our visit.
“Tierra Nueva used to come with files and machetes and hoes to promote conservation of soils. We are still about this but now our first priority is to discover in the Bible about a God who loves sinners, to invite the Holy Spirit to fill us and to see Jesus heal people of their sicknesses.”
He described how our team were there to pray for people to be filled with the peace of love of Christ. He then prayed for the Holy Spirit to come and we began laying hands on people while Carlos from Catch the Fire in Raleigh played guitar and sang “Fire of God, fire of God, come breath on us” in Spanish.
Angel David, the six of us from Tierra Nueva in Burlington, Carlos’ English wife Catherine and other Hondurans who had attended our course fanned out an began praying. A whole line of peasant women were crying softly as they received prayer.
Next we prayed for those in pain and a woman who said she suffered from pain in her back, joints and throughout her entire body began to weep and loudly cry out as she bent over double. A bit worried I asked her what was happening.
“I feel heat in my whole body, and all the pain is gone,” she said.
Many others were healed that afternoon of all sorts of aches and pains. From there we jumped in our pickups and drove the bumpy roads to Las Delicias—where the local Catholic leaders who had all attended our course hosted a worship and healing service for the community.
There I felt led to have the children lay hands on people in need of healing. Six young kids came forward to volunteer. I invited them to lay hands on a woman with pain all through her head, neck, and shoulders. I had them send the pain away like they would order a dog trying to eat their dinner to leave the kitchen. "Vaya para afuera!" (Go out!) they said over and over. The woman began to cry.
"What is happening?" I asked her. "I feel heat all over... and the pain is going away." We kept praying until it was completely gone and the kids prayed for others too.
It was a delight to see the Spirit move so powerfully in our outreaches after having earlier in the week experienced God’s empowering presence in our course.
On the third day of our course after teaching on baptism/empowerment by the Holy Spirit we prayed for people and many were deeply touched in ways that I have never seen in Honduras. Adults, youth and children were overcome by the Spirit—surrendering themselves to God’s love without resistance. This was very moving and our leaders there were all very surprised and delighted.
There was healing happening every day-- nearly always accompanied by heat and often by tears. One man named Hector, an old friend and once TN promoter who is over 65 had severe back problems that have kept him disabled for 15 years. He had come with a cane that he used to walk everywhere. After going through a fire tunnel he began leap and was ecstatic:
"I'm healed! I'm healed" he shouted and jumped. He left his cane under his chair-- a souvenir I've brought back from the trip.
On the final day of the course we had a worship and healing service in the center of Minas de Oro-- which we never have done. Some 60 people came-- mostly our course participants, but also some others. The worship was powerful and many people experienced God in new ways. Nearly everyone lined up at the end to receive prayer to step fully into Jesus ministry of sharing good news, healing and deliverance.
On our sixth night I had a powerful dream where I met a Latino man in his office. He looked at me and began to prophesy in an ecstatic way: (esto va ser fructifero, pero muy fruitifero) "This is going to be fruitful, but VERY FRUITFUL! he yelled, pointing at me. I began to cry and fell to the ground in the dream. I woke up panting rapidly and heavily. I fell back asleep and the same Latino man came back to confirm the same message.
Our Honduran leader Angel David was amazed by what God is doing and sees unprecedented thirst. He's worried about how he's going to lead this new movement of the Spirit-- which is exactly what it feels like.
The six of us from Tierra Nueva got to assist in a beautiful new thing that is happening after 27 years of work there in Honduras. Please pray:
For Angel David, Ramiro, Elia, America and Dagoberto-- our main TN Honduran leaders. For wisdom, courage, unity and love to reign. Pray also for strategies to reach young men who are either contemplating heading to the US to work or those recently deported who are longing for new opportunities.
Two days before TN’s Mexican pastor Salvio and I arrived for a nine-day visit he tells us how he heard gunshots on the dirt road below his house. He ran down to find a 23-year-old man he had been a godfather to dying in a pool of blood, shot to death by someone he had threatened. He carried him to his mother’s house, his upper body soaking up blood and brain fragments, and they loaded him into a pickup to be transported to Tegucigalpa. He died en route.
“Like many young men from our area he had gone to El Norte looking for opportunities, worked a few years in different states before being arrested and deported back to Honduras,” explained Angel David. “He came back with a serious drug problem, all disoriented and not wanting to work for $3.00 a day. I used to invite him to play soccer with the other young men, and always insisted on holding his revolver for him as we don’t let people play armed, and now he’s dead and the young man who shot him is on the run,” said David.
Years before we had tried to intervene in his family’s life after a local pastor had insisted that his father return to his first wife to escape the punishment of eternal hell for adultery. The young man’s father had at that time left his current wife and eight children to return to a previous partner in another part of the county.
We held a four day leaders school to directly confront negative images of God and the Bible that often lead to disaster. Some 60 participants were involved, many from Angel David’s home gatherings. Afterwards we traveled from village to village to tell people about our new initiative and pray for them.
Last Sunday afternoon we visited our new 15-acre coffee farm high in the mountains of Yoro and met and prayed with old friends in the village of La Fortuna. It is exciting to see the tremendous potential of eventually being able to fund TN’s Honduran movement through coffee sales while at the same time providing quality coffee for our ex-gang members in Burlington to roast and sell Underground Coffee.
We then descended to Guachipilin, a village that runs up and down a steep mountainside. Back in TN’s heyday nearly all the famers there had converted their eroded lands into highly productive contoured terraces, winning them a national ecology award. We stood among a gathering of peasants overlooking a sweeping valley and Angel David introduced our visit.
“Tierra Nueva used to come with files and machetes and hoes to promote conservation of soils. We are still about this but now our first priority is to discover in the Bible about a God who loves sinners, to invite the Holy Spirit to fill us and to see Jesus heal people of their sicknesses.”
He described how our team were there to pray for people to be filled with the peace of love of Christ. He then prayed for the Holy Spirit to come and we began laying hands on people while Carlos from Catch the Fire in Raleigh played guitar and sang “Fire of God, fire of God, come breath on us” in Spanish.
Angel David, the six of us from Tierra Nueva in Burlington, Carlos’ English wife Catherine and other Hondurans who had attended our course fanned out an began praying. A whole line of peasant women were crying softly as they received prayer.
Next we prayed for those in pain and a woman who said she suffered from pain in her back, joints and throughout her entire body began to weep and loudly cry out as she bent over double. A bit worried I asked her what was happening.
“I feel heat in my whole body, and all the pain is gone,” she said.
Many others were healed that afternoon of all sorts of aches and pains. From there we jumped in our pickups and drove the bumpy roads to Las Delicias—where the local Catholic leaders who had all attended our course hosted a worship and healing service for the community.
There I felt led to have the children lay hands on people in need of healing. Six young kids came forward to volunteer. I invited them to lay hands on a woman with pain all through her head, neck, and shoulders. I had them send the pain away like they would order a dog trying to eat their dinner to leave the kitchen. "Vaya para afuera!" (Go out!) they said over and over. The woman began to cry.
"What is happening?" I asked her. "I feel heat all over... and the pain is going away." We kept praying until it was completely gone and the kids prayed for others too.
It was a delight to see the Spirit move so powerfully in our outreaches after having earlier in the week experienced God’s empowering presence in our course.
On the third day of our course after teaching on baptism/empowerment by the Holy Spirit we prayed for people and many were deeply touched in ways that I have never seen in Honduras. Adults, youth and children were overcome by the Spirit—surrendering themselves to God’s love without resistance. This was very moving and our leaders there were all very surprised and delighted.
There was healing happening every day-- nearly always accompanied by heat and often by tears. One man named Hector, an old friend and once TN promoter who is over 65 had severe back problems that have kept him disabled for 15 years. He had come with a cane that he used to walk everywhere. After going through a fire tunnel he began leap and was ecstatic:
"I'm healed! I'm healed" he shouted and jumped. He left his cane under his chair-- a souvenir I've brought back from the trip.
On the final day of the course we had a worship and healing service in the center of Minas de Oro-- which we never have done. Some 60 people came-- mostly our course participants, but also some others. The worship was powerful and many people experienced God in new ways. Nearly everyone lined up at the end to receive prayer to step fully into Jesus ministry of sharing good news, healing and deliverance.
On our sixth night I had a powerful dream where I met a Latino man in his office. He looked at me and began to prophesy in an ecstatic way: (esto va ser fructifero, pero muy fruitifero) "This is going to be fruitful, but VERY FRUITFUL! he yelled, pointing at me. I began to cry and fell to the ground in the dream. I woke up panting rapidly and heavily. I fell back asleep and the same Latino man came back to confirm the same message.
Our Honduran leader Angel David was amazed by what God is doing and sees unprecedented thirst. He's worried about how he's going to lead this new movement of the Spirit-- which is exactly what it feels like.
The six of us from Tierra Nueva got to assist in a beautiful new thing that is happening after 27 years of work there in Honduras. Please pray:
For Angel David, Ramiro, Elia, America and Dagoberto-- our main TN Honduran leaders. For wisdom, courage, unity and love to reign. Pray also for strategies to reach young men who are either contemplating heading to the US to work or those recently deported who are longing for new opportunities.
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