Ted
& Juli Kautzmann... with
the Latin
American Training Center
November, 2000
Dear praying friends,
The Cuba trip was
very successful.
My purpose there was to give a weeklong intensive course in a seminary.
About a dozen students took the course, including several faculty members,
the seminary's director and the president of the denomination. These
people were as warm, receptive and committed to the Word of God as any I
have ever met. And we really connected in class. Most students picked up
very quickly on the concepts and began thinking through the implications
immediately. The leaders told me more than once that the subject matter
was extremely relevant for them, touching directly on key weak points in
their seminary. There's no question that God had guided the planning of
this course. The icing on this cake was that the weather was Hawaiian and
the countryside was lovely.
I also learned a lot
about the country and this particular group made up of about 170
congregations plus many other prayer groups. They face serious challenges
unique to their situation, including profound poverty. The average salary
is some $12 per month (as in "twelve"). But they can worship
freely in selected places and can share their faith one-on-one. Growth has
been very solid, doubling or tripling their numbers over the last decade.
They have a lot of faith and a good grasp of what is most important in
life. I suspect that Cuban Christians will spark a world revival. One day
they will be shocked to see how comfortable the Christians in the rest of
the world have become and God will give them something to say to us that
we need but may not want to hear.
God answered
another prayer
the day before I left for Cuba. While I was packing for the trip, our
15-year-old son Sam went into convulsions. I had miscalculated his insulin
dose, which he takes for diabetes. After a tremendous struggle, his sister
Sarah and I pinned him down long enough to give him squirts of glucose. He
recovered some awareness in about 15 minutes. Sam returned to normal after
an overnight hospital stay and a couple of days of rest. He doesn't
remember the experience, but the rest of us will never forget it. All in
all however, the doctors were very impressed with Sam's control of his
blood sugar. A test that shows his sugar levels over the last 3 months
(HbA1c) gave him a score of 6.8. This would be like shooting a 70 in golf:
outstanding for anybody, not to mention a 15 year old. But we never want
to repeat the seizure episode if we can help it. We did a lot of talking
to God during those minutes and He showed Himself faithful.
Now back at home in
Costa Rica, my colleagues and I continue working on LATN, the distance
training program for leaders all over Latin America. Please keep praying
for us that:
