I had the opportunity to speak via WhatsApp this week with my dear Cuban friend, Pastor Arnaldo Peña Muñoz, and a young church member, Beatriz, who translated.
We talked about the recent protests and the “boiling over” pot that is the Cuban people right now. The pandemic has pushed them to the limits of their endurance. Their lives, already so untenable, have been further crushed and oppressed by government restrictions due to the coronavirus.
One pastor friend wrote to me how he and some church members had gone out to dig up yucca roots because their food was becoming so scarce in current times.
I do not think the world knows well enough just how much the Cuban people suffer under the communist system.
For those in America who are deluded into thinking communism would be an enlightened move toward fairness and supplies for all, they need to take a week’s trip to Cuba and stand in a dirt-floored shack and decide if they would choose that for themselves.
I remember a few years back, being taken around a town with a friend who traveled with me to Cuba. Our guide was head of the women’s ministries in her church, a lovely person.
We had asked her to take us to 10 of the families or people in the church who could really benefit from a visit, prayer and some money being given to help them.
We stopped at one “home.” It was a very tiny wooden structure. I remember I could not really stand up straight in it.
There was a cookstove in a corner, a bed and two rickety chairs that the woman who lived there and her friend were sitting on. We talked with them and prayed for their needs. Then the visiting friend took us to her home, just behind this first one.
Again, it was a small wooden structure. In the house, the woman’s adult son was in an ancient wheel chair positioned by a window. He was moaning, making guttural sounds. We could see that his body had deformities. His mother, a small woman, appeared to be his only caretaker.
We prayed, handed her an envelope with a little money, embraced her and left.
My traveling companion, who also has a disabled adult son, said to me, “I can hardly bear to see this. We have such a team and medical and financial support in America to care for our son. How on earth does this woman manage?”
She manages because Jesus Christ is her hope, and He is ours. She manages because the cry of the Cuban believers is, “We love the Holy Spirit!”
The church in Cuba, though regarded as a “thorn in the side” by Cuba’s communist leaders, is Cuba’s hope.
The pastors and missionaries of Cuba work tirelessly and give so much to reach the nation, to overcome the spiritism and atheism around them with the message of the gospel.
And many who love Cuba partner with these marvelous leaders. My husband and I are among them. We have been able to see many projects completed in our ministry and in other people’s ministries.
One wonderful opportunity came to us to help a missionary named Carlos. He lived in a small home outside of his town and had to travel on foot many miles to reach the mission that he served. His house had two rooms. If a hurricane were to strike, this wooden house would be wiped out.
Carlos’ three girls slept on one mattress in the front room, and Carlos and his wife slept in the cooking area in the back room. We, along with the team that was with me in Cuba at that time, were able to help Carlos receive a bicycle, a phone and to have a new concrete home that would be safer in the hurricanes. Each little project completed improves lives and builds hope.
Please continue to pray for Cuba. To hear my conversation with Pastor Arnaldo, Beatriz about current conditions in Cuba—from Cuba—listen to Episode 70 of Rooted by the Stream on Charisma Podcast Network. {eoa}
Dr. Pam Morrison is a pastor who has both led churches and also ministered in the inner city and elsewhere with recovering addicts as a pastoral counselor and as part of a healing rooms ministry. She has seen much physical and inner healing. Pam loves ministering overseas and has had a special relationship with people in Cuba for many years. She is the author of Jesus and the Addict: Twelve Bible Studies for People Getting Free from Drugs, available in English and Spanish. Her website is pammorrisonministries.com. Her podcast with Charisma Podcast Network is called Rooted by the Stream. You can email her at [email protected].
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