Deann Alford shares experiences from her book “Victorious: The Impossible Path to Peace” with stories that took place in Colombia, and the victory that teaching the Bible has had. “Colombia has been a quagmire even before the Spaniards; their history was warfare, murder, violence, and revenge.” What can stop this spiral of violence? Deann says that in a prison “were FARC guerrillas, paramilitary, common criminals, mafiosos, and dirty cops imprisoned” together, Deann continues, “Formerly the murder rate was 60 per month, people settling scores in the prison.” “A church pastor asked permission, after he and his church fasted and prayed for two weeks, to go in with white flags, singing hymns, to stop the violence.” Deann continues, “The pastor got on the loud speaker in the prison, praying, and speaking peace, and the prisoners started throwing down their weapons.” “They could have shot them dead. Instead they threw their weapons down.” Missionary Jeannine Brabon set up a Bible institute. Fewer than 10% became Christian, but it was enough to change the entire atmosphere in the prison, and then the murder rate dropped to one per year. What that shows is it does not take many people to change the atmosphere in a place.”
Podcast
A church that is not impacting a neighborhood will become irrelevant
Bob Moffitt interviews Pastor Wale Adefarasin from Nigeria, who shares many stories about how his church, in a relatively affluent neighborhood, chose to go into another neighborhood with 5 teams to meet the needs of the people, so that they could experience the love of Jesus. In one example, a local high school had just 2 toilets for 2,000 people and 10 staff, and the church built a block of toilets and replaced roofs. As they started meeting medical needs,
