WEDNESDAY MARCH 29TH

CITY TRANSFORMATION MEETING IN TACOMA

and

THE INTERNATIONAL FELLOWSHIP OF TRANSFORMATION PARTNERS
SUMMIT 2007


We were picked up at 7:45 and taken to a church in the centre of Tacoma called Trinity Fellowship. It is right in the central area of Tacoma surrounded by large shopping malls. We had met the pastor (Ralph) the evening before.. The main drawcard for the meeting was Ruth Ruibal and there must have been more than a hundred pastors and intercessors gathered there, mainly from the Tacoma area. Many of you would know Ruth from the first of the Transformation videos. She and her husband were pasturing a church in Cali, Columbia. Cali was had the sad reputation of having the greatest number of homicides and kidnappings for the whole of South America (and perhaps beyond). It was also the centre of the largest and most influential of the drug cartels in South America.. You may remember that her husband was shot and his very sad death created a catalyst for the pastors to come together and begin to pray, and call the people from the churches to pray. They drew together 20,000 then 30,000, then 40,000 people to all night prayer meetings in the largest stadiums in the city. So many people showed up that they had to shut the gates. While the prayer was going on inside the people outside were walking along the roads around the stadium praying and worshipping the Lord as well. The unity, prayer and the following actions by the churches working together saw the power of the cartels broken, homicides spectacularly reduced and the churches begin to see sovereign increase of people coming to the Lord. The churches also began to work alongside the civic leaders to attack the problems that were not able to be solved in the city. That story was first told at the turn of the century. It was good to hear that all of those things have continued to happen. It was also good to hear that the process has continued with all kinds of challenges, but that the church there is meeting those challenges on the basis of unity, prayer, humble service and spiritual power.

Ruth spoke for about two hours and then Mirce and I spoke for about ten minutes each, sharing one or two things that were happening in our areas.. MIrce sng this great song in Croatian. He told us a story of when he was in one of the war torn areas and was speaking with a bunch of people in the basement of a monastery. Everyone was afraid and without any food. While he was speaking a soldier came in and sat in the back just looking around with wild and angry eyes. He had his gun at his side and Mirce thought he might shoot everyone. It happened a lot in those days. Mirce kept on preaching and then concluded by singing the song. It was made up of the words from John’s gospel “Peace I give you. My peace leave with you, not as the world gives. Do not be troubled and do not be afraid.” When the meeting finished the soldier came and said in a very rough way, “These people are starving and have no homes to go to or food to eat. You have given them something they need even more than that. Keep on speaking about this peace of yours.


They prayed for us and we prayed for them. It was a good time.

After lunch Mirce wanted to buy some clothes before going to the Summit, so one of the pastors from Trinity took us over to the mall and he was able to get some things from there. Mirce is a big bloke and has a problem with diabetes. He is on a strict diet and has lost more than 20 kilos in the last two months. His is still a big man, so he has a way to go. We have a lot of fun together. The pastor who was looking after us was a great guy as well. For an American he had a very Aussie sense of humour so before very long we were paying out on each other pretty avidly.

At around four in the afternoon Dennis Fuque (pronounced “foo-kway”) came to collect us and we were drove north on Interstate 5 to a turn off somewhere between Tacoma and the Sea Tac airport that took us east into the hill country. Washington state is full of large conifers and beautiful hills and valleys that rise up to very impressive snow covered mountain peaks. We tracked around some of these hills until we reached a Christian Conference Centre called “Berachah” which is a Hebrew word for “blessing.” There are about fifty people here from all parts of the globe: Canada, Columbia, Brazil, Uganda, South Africa, Romania, Switzerland, Macedonia, Denmark and then Japan, The Philippines, Fiji and Australia.` It was great to meet and talk with some of them over the evening meal and then to hear some of them begin to share in the first session of the Summit.

I will have a copy of the sharing on video to show people at home, but the stories were amazing. We heard a young Philippino talk about a revival that has been going on in the Chang Mai area of Thailand. Thousands of young people, sometimes as young as ten have been gathering to pray at 4 in the mornings and they have seen visitation after visitation or the glory presence of God. As a result hundreds and hundreds of people are being healed, saved and transformed. We heard a great bloke from South Africa called Dawie Spangenberg talk about prayer gatherings of leaders from African nations and then similar gatherings of Christian leaders from the Arab nations in the north. As a result of all the things that are happening across the churches on the African continent, for the first time an however long, the statistics show that the increase of Islam in the continent have turned around and are becoming less. I’m not sure about the exact details, but the figure I remember was 51% going down to 47%. We heard about a guy from Uganda being involved in meetings in Burundi where one of the rebel leaders became a Christian and began to travel around the nation repenting to the people for the things they had done. He eventually was elected as the President and has personally sponsored large crusades to see Burundi people coming to the Lord. On top of that, the leaders have held a large meeting where they committed the nation to the Lord and vowed to walk in obedience to him.

All of that is very exciting. None of this is perfect, nor does it produce perfect results, but to hear the passion people have to fight for the God ordained destinies of their nations and with a view to their nations taking their place in God’s purposes in the world. That is powerful. On top of that, there is a profound and tangible kind of fellowship here created by humble servants of God preferring one another in love. There are no big egos and very little pride. These are humble but determined people. Many of them have suffered greatly and you can see the purity of God in their attitudes and postures. It is extremely refreshing.

My love to you

Brian