I will be flying into Cuba this Friday. When I get there, I’ll be joining Jeanie Peria, who is our director of Latin American Operations, plus one of our field members from the country of Columbia who will be traveling with us in Cuba this week with our national hosts. I am really excited about this trip. I hope that you will join us in prayer for this trip. This will be my 20th trip to Cuba since the end of 2016 and due to the impact of Covid that actually means we have only had five years in which we were able to make those trips.

Cuba has been a major priority for the work of Passion Life specifically because, if you look at all the countries in the world that have a population of 10 million people or more, Cuba leads the world in abortion. Cuba is number one in all of the world for abortion. There are lots of reasons for that. I am not sure that I know all of them, but I do know that the regime in Cuba has caused a lot of material want among the people. There is a lot of dissatisfaction because of the lack of material goods and food. Maintaining basic living supplies is not a very pretty situation to be in.

Cuba is a wonderful country with wonderful resources, wonderful people, and natural beauty that one would expect to find in the Caribbean. But the people have no hope. They do not like what they see when they look out into the future. They say, “why would I want to bring a child into this island?”

Nations, for whatever reason, are above average in promiscuity. We know that from statistics. I do not know what it is about island nations that tend to make those numbers higher, but there is a lot of promiscuity in Cuba. This tends to hit the teenage population who are very young to be pregnant and abortion is often the fallback as a contraceptive method for the Cuban people.

Some people would estimate that somewhere around 40% of all pregnancies in Cuba end in elective abortion. That is an extraordinarily high number, but here is the good news. The Church of Cuba is strong. It is vibrant. It is obedient. It is zealous to hear the Word of God, obey the Word of God, and share the Word of God with others, which is exactly what we are looking for as a ministry.

We are looking for people who will hear the word, obey the word, and share the word. There are many images we have of a room full of mothers, some of them mothers of young children, some of them mothers of toddlers, some of them are mothers who are waiting for their babies to arrive. This is just a representation from a small church in Cuba where we have been working. They have 80 members in their congregation!

During the two and a half years that we were unable to get to Cuba for Covid, twenty-two babies were rescued from abortion in that small community. Of those twenty-two babies that the local Christians were able to counsel the women to keep, fifteen of those families had at least one family member join that church. Now that is a pretty good rate of growth for a church especially when this is one of many evangelistic campaigns that they have going on in their church. They had their church grow by at least fifteen people, and if you can assume that many of those babies will also be raised in the church, then the church could have grown by as many as thirty members over a two year period. This is an 80-member church. That is a pretty good result from only one ministry that we are counting as far as evangelism.

The Ministry of Passion Life has two parts. We have a theology side and we have a practical application side which is pregnancy help work or pregnancy help ministries. We teach theology, we do not start with abortion. We start with the Bible. We teach pastors and leaders how to lead their congregations well. In response to that, people say, “what can I do to obey the Bible’s call to rescue the innocent?” This question leads many of them to start pregnancy help ministries.

In Cuba, we see a flourishing, practical application side of the Passion Life work The ministries and the pregnancy help work that is happening there is extraordinary. There are teams of people that have come together to pray, organize, and to go out into their neighborhoods to minister. They are providing free ultrasounds in people’s living rooms. They are providing free pregnancy tests, free counseling, baby clothes, diapers, classes for expecting mothers, and classes for first time and young mothers. They are just doing an extraordinary job with going beyond counseling women who are vulnerable for abortion.

We are really excited about the fact that these ministries are propagating all over Cuba because they certainly are making disciples. These local people are making disciples and are teaching other churches how to rescue their own babies. We are very excited about the work that is going on in Cuba.

Jeanie leaves for Cuba on Wednesday. I leave on Friday. We will be there next week. If you would like to support us, please pray for the work that is going on in Cuba while we are there and the ongoing work all over the island. Pray for the times when we are not there and when these congregations are being led by their local leaders. Thank you for your partnership with Passion Life. Thank you for praying with us for Cuba.