I have spent a great deal of my time explaining to people what Passion Life is all about, and I usually like to use an apple to explain it. Today, I’ve got my Passiòn Vída t-shirt on as well to explain the fact that a great deal of my work right now is being done in Latin America and in the Spanish speaking world. In fact, this month in particular, we are focused on Cuba.

For the last two weeks, we have had two of our brothers in Cuba, pastors Sandy and Anderson, have been traveling from Havana to Santiago, Cuba, meeting with pastors and teaching the Word of God to them about the sanctity of human life and building some relationships of trust. They are really trying to develop a strategy with the Christian leaders across the island for raising up an army of Christian, good Samaritans who are going to rescue the innocent ones, one mother at a time. That’s a great deal of what we do.

And as things happen in Cuba, we’re telling that story in places like Colombia, Argentina, Honduras, Nicaragua and other places throughout Latin America. Most of our work now is in Spanish. We have a complete website called Pasión Vida in Spanish. We have this book that I wrote with Focus on the Family some years ago called Answering the Call in English. It’s now available in Spanish, called The Question of Life and Death. We hand this out to many pastors and leaders in Latin America to help them think through what the Bible says about the sanctity of human life, the shedding of innocent blood, how to see abortion as an entry point for the good news of the gospel (both to those who have experienced the trauma of abortion and need to know that forgiveness and freedom from guilt and those who are facing abortion are being pressured into it) and this helps them to lead people to put their hope in God.

We’re in Cuba this week and we’ve just sent two of our sisters there, Sister Jeanie Pernia and Tammy Diarmus left this morning for Cuba. They’ll be there all week. Their focus in Cuba is to interview young mothers who have experienced the intervention work of the Christian community in Cuba that have been trained through Passion Life.

How are people actually being rescued through the ministry of Passion Life and those who support it and pray for its advance? What kind of pregnancy help ministries are being started in Cuba? And are they being done in a way that it can multiply and spread across that island? There’s a couple things about Cuba you might want to know about.

Number one, Cuba is number one in the world in terms of abortion rate. Obviously there’s a lot more abortions in places like China, India, Vietnam, and so on. It’s a small country, but the rate of abortion, compared to the population, is number one in the world. It’s the most oppressive place and the most dangerous place for an unborn child to try to survive.

It seems appropriate that we at Passion Life would target the neediest places and go there with a kind of a “whatever it takes” attitude. I’m always hoping that more and more people will join us in this effort. And that’s why I bring out the apple to explain what we do in places like Cuba.

Here is a picture of Passion Life’s ministry. To grab hold of it, all you need to do is cut this apple into two pieces. Half of our mission is the Bible and Christian leaders and teaching them how to teach the people of God the will of God using the word of God. It is very simple. That’s their job as pastors and leaders is to teach the Word of God. So we want to equip them to be really good teachers.

The other half of our apple is how the church is being called and equipped to be rescuers of the innocent and to form those ministries that we typically call pregnancy help clinics or pregnancy help services depending on where we are in the world. What are they doing to

organize to help women and how are they doing it? Right now we are trying to focus both halves of the apple on Cuba. We are training pastors, using the Word of God, to equip their churches to go out in their community to rescue mothers who are in a pregnancy related crisis and bring them the hope and the practical help of a good Samaritan in their life.

Together, I think it makes a pretty good testimony. Of course, apples are not to be studied and analyzed, they are to be eaten. It is the same with the gospel. We don’t need to analyze the gospel so much as we need to taste it. It is also the same with missions. Most people I know believe that we should be spreading the gospel all over the world. We should actually invest in a specific work that you can follow and see the stories, the struggles, the setbacks and the breakthroughs, that point to the call of God being good in our life.

That includes getting involved with world missions and particularly a ministry like Passion Life, if you are so led. I just want to encourage you to pray for the work going on in Cuba. Those people have suffered greatly under 70+ years of communist rule and great poverty. We are going down there to figure out what we can do more of and what we can do better. If you have any money that is dedicated to the kingdom of God and you’re not sure where to put it, then please consider Passion Life as a good place for that kind of investment.

We’re going to be finishing up our fiscal year in the month of September. I would love to see any last minute partners come forward. Again, if you have something that you want to give and you want to invest in the kingdom work, come and taste the apple that is Passion Life and the work that we’re doing in Latin America. I think you’ll find that it’s worth the sacrifice and it tastes pretty good.