Transformation is a potent word, a powerful concept.
But what does it mean in relation to a society?
Can the spiritual DNA of a community really be altered?
So, what kind of features does this new blueprint produce?
In this program, we'll attempt to answer these and other important questions.
We'll visit several communities whose streets and institutions have lately been rattled
by the power of the Holy Spirit.
We'll examine both the causes and the effects of this most impressive phenomena.
To take us on this journey, we join noted investigative researcher George Otis, Jr.,
a man who spent years reading signposts on the road to community transformation.
Community transformation is a concept that many Christians struggle with.
But where does this tentativeness come from?
My own observation is that it derives largely from the limitations of our own life experience.
If you ask believers if they've experienced spiritual revival, most will say yes.
Ask if they're convinced that large-scale church growth can happen, and they will invariably
cite specific examples.
But what almost no one has experienced, at least in the Western world, is a profound
and pervasive transformation of their community.
And as a result, we're inclined to think it's unattainable.
But is this a valid assumption?
I'd like to invite you to journey with me to four communities that have been dramatically
altered by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Four communities that offer a shining example of what can happen when God comes to town.
It was well known as the drug capital of the world, and along with that all the violence
and corruption, sin of every kind you can imagine.
The violence was getting worse.
The church was really feeling the pressure of what was going on.
So here in the Amazon, which is the Columbia Amazon, Brazilian Amazon, and Peruvian Amazon,
this is where many of the laboratories, cocaine laboratories are.
Marcy and Randy McMillan are veteran ministers who have lived in Cali more than 20 years.
At least 10 of them have been spent in the shadow of the city's infamous drug lords.
They've seen the devastating effects of the cartel's ruthless control, and they've seen
it right in their own backyard.
When illicit drug money began pouring into Cali in the 1980s, the cocaine lords moved
into the McMillan's upscale neighborhood, buying up entire blocks of luxurious haciendas.
Hey Randy, this is an unbelievable place here over to the right.
This wall looks like it's 20 to 25 feet high.
Who lived here?
The Orvuela Rodriguez family, which are heads of the Cali Cartel.
During that period of their control over the country and cocaine and exportation involving,
they said 500 million a month, was what they were doing every month, just on a regular
month.
That's unbelievable.
Yeah, without anything special.
And during that time, I mean, security and walls were everything for them.
I mean, paranoia, fear.
For years, Columbia was the world's biggest exporter of cocaine, sending upwards of 1,000
tons a year to the United States and Europe.
The US Drug Enforcement Agency called the Cali Cartel the largest, richest, and best
organized criminal organization in history.
With billions of dollars at their disposal, their reach was pervasive, especially in Cali
itself.
They really controlled the whole socioeconomic situation, the political situation, and even
very much the religious.
It was terrible.
At that time, drug trafficking in Cali was one of the most powerful in the world.
People would die easily if you were riding around in a car and there was a confrontation.
It was a miracle if you or the driver weren't killed.
And people walked around full of fear.
I personally saw five people killed in Cali.
There were many journalists who were killed for denouncing what the mafia was doing in
Columbia.
Importing political decisions for the country were manipulated by drug trafficking money,
influencing all aspects of society.
It touched everything, absolutely everything.
This is just one of 1,200 properties that they had in Cali.
To freely walk the streets that once held so much terror is testimony to the remarkable
changes that have come to Cali.
But where did it all begin?
This story, like all transformation accounts, is rooted in the hearts of intercessors, men
and women who had ears to hear what God was saying.
God spoke to us that we should come to Cali.
Ruth Roybal and her husband Julio came to Cali in 1978.
They were dismayed at the utter darkness that had settled over the city.
But Julio was convinced that if the people of God would join together and pray, the enemy's
grip would be broken.
There was just one problem.
No one wanted to do this.
It wasn't really unity among the churches.
You did your thing and I say, God bless you brother and have a wonderful time in your
church, but this is my church and this is what I do.
The pastors association used to consist of nothing more than a box of files.
Every pastor was working separately on his own.
No one would join together.
Following a disagreement, Julio pulled out of the already weak pastors association.
But then he realized he was contributing to the disunity.
God spoke to him and told him, you don't have the right to be offended and you have to forgive.
And he took that message and he realized, he said, if I'm going to reflect Jesus, I
cannot be offended anyway.
Julio went back to the pastors and begged their forgiveness.
They could not afford to walk in disunity, not when their city faced such overwhelming
challenges.
We started realizing, well, what hope do we have?
We had all these international organizations plus all the Colombian authorities against
the Cali Cartel and nothing ever happened.
Being concerned for this, we started praying and interceding and asking the Lord to show
us how to pray.
And that's how he took us to understand our spiritual roots.
To gain God's perspective on their city, local churches began to examine the spiritual
dynamics in their immediate neighborhoods.
One of the things we would do was Randy would give out maps of the city and the government
has it divided like in different areas, zones.
And within those zones there are many neighborhoods.
So we would divide the church up into these zones.
And according to the neighborhood where they lived, then they had to bring back information
of all of the problems that they saw that were occurring, that were reoccurring, very
strong problems within their area.
One troubling discovery was the city's deep involvement with the occult.
Even the macho drug lords were active clients of mediums and spiritual guides.
Had very strong roots of occult practices and that was mixed in with the religious leadership
and that gave them power aside from the power that they already had with their money.
As they began to address specific strongholds over the city, Cali's pastors felt God leading
them to assemble their people for an evening of joint worship and prayer.
At the beginning the problem was people saying, it won't work, the people might not come.
And many opposed it but we had leaders that dared to do things.
They dared, understanding that it was God's will.
In 95 we had our first all night prayer meeting.
And they prayed against principalities and powers, they prayed for unity, they believed
in God to see him move in the churches.
The mayor at that time got on the platform, prayed for Cali and said, Cali belongs to
Jesus Christ.
And with those words, when the Christians heard them from the city authority, that was
a confirmation of what the Holy Spirit was doing in the city.
Forty-eight hours after the event, the daily newspaper headlined, No Homicides.
For the first time in as long as anyone could remember, Cali had gone an entire weekend
without a single murder.
A newsworthy event in a city used to seeing upwards of 15 killings per day.
After these major prayer events, united prayer events were going on, that's when we started
seeing the results.
And ten days later the first drug lord fell and God was changing the city.
Encouraged by the spiritual momentum generated by the first all night prayer vigil, church
leaders decided to rent the largest venue in the city, the 55,000 seat Pasquale Guerrero
Soccer Stadium.
Their faith was amply rewarded when more than 60,000 believers showed up to pray and
worship across denominational lines.
During the summer of 1995, the Colombian government declared all out war against the drug lords.
6,500 elite commandos were dispatched to Cali with explicit orders to round up the cartels
ring leaders.
There were seven top drug lords, six had fallen in those nine months when we really started
praying together.
The whole spiritual atmosphere of the city of Cali has changed.
While Julio was encouraged by God's handiwork, he faced opposition in his own backyard.
A neighbor angry over disputed property rights threatened to kill him.
So Julio said, I'm going to fast and pray until I know what's happening.
So he was fasting and on the third day God spoke to him and he said he will do you great
damage but from what he does the revival in Cali was sprang forth.
I want to tell you people this is a very dangerous thing that we're doing here tonight.
He had a meeting with the pastor's association, the board.
I was waiting for him with the other pastors at two o'clock that afternoon.
He told us to drop him off.
The chauffeur kept saying no let me take you to the door let me wait with you.
But no just leave me here I can walk.
He got out he started walking towards the church.
Two hitmen were waiting in ambush for him.
That was the last time I saw him.
I got a call and they said they just killed Julio.
And I said nah how can they kill a pastor?
So I went to the place thinking he was just hurt.
But when I got there he was lying on his side like a baby.
Julio the noisy one the active one the man who just never sat still.
There he was lying like a baby.
When they first told me about it it's you're in shock.
You can't believe it really happened.
And as I arrived his body was still on the street there was a pool of blood by his head
where he had been shot.
The verse that came to me just by the Spirit of God was precious in the eyes of the Lord
by the death of the saints.
And as I just stepped out and sat next to his body I knew I was on holy ground.
And I just said Lord I know that you know everything in our hearts but this I have to
say it is well with my soul.
This is what you wanted and it is well with my soul.
In shock and struggling to understand God's purposes in this tragedy hundreds of Christians
gathered at Julio's funeral including many pastors who had not even been speaking to
each other.
And all the pastors came forward and we embraced each other and we made a covenant of unity
saying that we would not let things get between us.
Today this covenant of unity extends to some 200 pastors and serves as the backbone of
the city's high profile prayer vigils.
It has led to an absolute transformation of this city.
Corruption has been reduced dramatically.
The cocaine drug cartels have been shattered in this city.
There are about 60,000 people and they've come here to spend the entire night praying
that God would continue the marvelous work he has been doing in this city for 36 consecutive
months.
While thousands of exuberant worshippers lit up the inside of the stadium, staff security
was forced to turn away an additional 15,000 participants at the gate.
Undaunted the late comers formed an impromptu praise march that circled the stadium for
hours.
What you're seeing here today in this stadium is a miracle.
You know that some years ago it would have been impossible for evangelicals to gather
like this but God is raising up his church and we're going to meet that need in the name
of Jesus.
This is what's happening today in Columbia.
This is something that pastors and intercessors in the United States, in Europe, all over
the world need to witness.
This is what God is doing in our day.
As the kingdom of God has descended upon Cali, many prominent citizens have come into relationship
with Christ.
Rafael Araujo Gámez is Columbia's leading sports commentator.
For years he's broadcast championship soccer matches from the stadium.
I am here today because six months ago I came to know Jesus and I accepted him as my savior.
I have been worshipping him and praising him ever since.
How does the excitement of what's going on in the Gilead compare to the soccer matches?
There is no comparison.
With the soccer games it's just a lot of yelling and screaming.
Here you enjoy it from the heart.
Are you a pretty happy man the last six months?
Yes, very different.
I have been changed.
I am very joyful.
It's a different life.
Mario Gennete is a prominent attorney and motivational speaker whose radio program is
heard throughout Latin America.
After searching for peace in various new age and self-help organizations, he finally came
home to Christ.
From that moment on I started to find a real peace inside of me.
I definitely believe that even though I am a spiritual baby the answer is here in the
Bible.
I feel I lost 41 years of my life but I know now that God has a plan for me.
Mario's new passion is to learn the ways of God and serve him through the media.
I understand that God is saying to me, it's not the way you want it, it's the way I want
it.
And I say, yes, so be it Lord.
It's what you want.
But use me.
I want to serve you.
For the unsaved people, all of a sudden they are coming to the place, hey, what do we have
here?
Where are we going?
What hope is there?
There is corruption here.
There is fraud there.
There is every place they look.
It's always coming up to a dead end and all of a sudden they are saying there's got to
be an answer.
There's got to be an answer.
And you combine that with a church saying there is an answer.
There is an answer and you've got an explosion coming.
In the city, officials acknowledge the positive effects of the gospel.
The government officials were saying to the president of the pastors association, hey
listen, you know, we need more of you guys in the government.
We need honest people like you guys.
And the mayor had said, I can't charge you for using the stadium because you're doing
us a favor.
So now they're looking at the church like we are bringing something positive.
When local churches wanted to offer a spiritual alternative to Cali's traditional fair, a
10-day event usually accompanied by drunken debauchery, city officials agreed.
Not only would they give the Christians rent-free use of the 22,000 seat velodrome, they would
also pay for the advertising, sound support and security.
This new openness to the gospel is affecting all levels of society.
Nowadays, it is no longer viewed as strange to have the Lord in our daily lives.
Upper class people are accepting that Jesus is a need in their lives and they don't view
it as something ridiculous because before they thought it was a joke.
That was the worst thing that you could bring up in a conversation.
Nowadays you can speak about God and everybody will respect it and is interested.
Positive church growth is happening all over the city, across denominational lines.
Ask pastors to define their strategy and they say, we don't have time to plan.
We're too busy pulling the nets into the boat.
And the numbers are growing.
One church hosts more than 35,000 people.
They can't all fit all at once.
So what they do on Sunday, they have seven services.
They have one at seven in the morning, one at nine in the morning, one at 11, one at
three at five and at seven at night.
It has really been an explosion, especially in this church.
And is this happening in some other churches in the city as well?
It's happening in other churches.
Almost every church in Cali is growing.
There's a hunger for God everywhere.
You can see it in the buses, on the streets.
You can talk to anybody, anywhere you go.
Church leaders believe this spiritual hunger is a direct result of their unity and fervent
prayer.
It's a process that continues with repentance and reconciliation, sweeping away barriers
to evangelism.
I believe that now the church is very united and that it is not just these problems that
have made the people draw closer to God, but it is God himself moving in the city.
It is interesting that the Lord picked the city of Cali, a city that was controlled and
manipulated by illegal monies, by drug lords, by corruption.
That would be the most unlikely city that you would pick.
And yet God picked the city of Cali.
And I believe that God did that purposefully to show the entire world and the leadership
of the cities of this world that God can transform a community if the community repents.
The revival Julio prophesied before his death has begun.
As his family celebrates the church's newfound unity and the throngs of people coming eagerly
to Christ, they are comforted and honored to have played a part.
And we realized that God had entrusted to us the greatest thing that anybody could ever
do and that's give the very closest as a martyr for Jesus Christ.
And we realized that put a big responsibility upon us as well to exalt his name in this
because we knew that God was doing something greater.
With his death it's like it encouraged us to like to want to do the same, to lay down
our lives for the Lord and not just die for him but to live for him that can be harder
than dying for him.
Do you feel like some of that vision that your father had is living on through you?
Yes, it's very much a part of it.
Julio used to say, I am immortal until I've done everything God has for me to do.
And if you would ask Julio if you could talk to him now and say was it worth it, he would
say yes because that's where his heart was.
What everyone thought was impossible.
What everyone thought was totally, virtually, humanly impossible.
I bear witness before God and you this evening that nothing is impossible for God.
Nothing is impossible for God.
I think God is doing something new not only in the city of Cali, not only in the nation
of Columbia but all across the face of the earth today.
If this is what the church has to look forward to in the years ahead, I want to be a part
of it.
Kiyambu was a town which had very bad history.
In fact it had the worst history in our country.
The murder in terms of rape, violence, it was well known.
This town was not growing.
The churches were not growing.
Because of the bad reputation of the town, nobody wanted to go out.
By the late 1980s, this distressed suburb of Nairobi had become one of the most dangerous
and oppressive places in Kenya.
Bars and illicit stills outnumbered churches and grocery stores.
Fueled by a river of alcohol, Kiyambu's crime rate rose to worst in the nation.
Nobody, especially women, dared venture out after dark.
Civil servants routinely paid bribes to avoid assignments in Kiyambu.
Despite years of effort in this town of 65,000, no church had ever been able to grow beyond
a few dozen members.
As one weary pastor put it, we preach the gospel here, but the people don't get saved.
The Lord spoke to me and my wife back in 1988 and told us to come to Kiyambu and plant a
church.
Itinerant ministers Thomas and Margaret Muthi weren't exactly thrilled when God called them
to the town of Kiyambu.
They knew church planting in this notorious ministry graveyard would not be easy.
In fact, ministry colleagues in Nairobi thought the whole idea was crazy, and they didn't
hesitate to say so.
But the Muthis realized that to be successful, they would need to identify and confront the
source of Kiyambu's spiritual oppression.
You find in the Bible, saying in Ephesians 6, 12, we do not wrestle against flesh and
blood but against powers, principalities.
So our problem was not the people in the town.
Our problem was what is the devil doing to the people?
Why is he keeping them there they are?
For six months, the Muthis committed themselves to fervent prayer and diligent research.
So we asked God what's the root cause.
We prayed, we fasted, the Lord showed us a spirit of witchcraft resting over the place.
We discovered that many of the things going on in Kiyambu were linked to a powerful woman
named Mama Jane.
Although she pretended to be a Christian, and even called her divination house, Emmanuel
Clinic, her business was pure witchcraft.
Mama Jane's clientele included the town's top business and political leaders, who came
to have their fortunes told.
Realizing that Kiyambu was in the grip of powerful, evil forces, the Muthis began to
press in to God.
And at the end of six months, we got an assurance in our spirits that the spiritual power over
the town had been broken.
Seizing this window of opportunity, Thomas conducted his first outdoor crusade.
By the end of the first week, more than 200 people had committed their hearts to Christ.
Soon, healings and conversions were commonplace.
When the municipal hall could no longer accommodate the crowds, Thomas moved his congregation
into the basement of a nearby grocery store.
Filled with round-the-clock intercession, it was promptly dubbed the Prayer Cave.
Distressed by these developments, Mama Jane began to counterattack through targeted witchcraft.
A thick oppression descended upon prayer and worship services.
It remained until elders discovered Mama Jane's handiwork outside the church.
Realizing they were dealing with demonic influences, the believers took authority over the situation.
Just raised up our hands one morning, and we prayed that she either get saved or leaves
town.
Within days, Mama Jane was stripped of her power.
Within weeks, she packed up and left town.
Once this power of witchcraft, the principality that was over Kiambu, was broken.
Then the presence of God started to hover around the town.
The entire atmosphere changed.
Where once people used to be afraid to go out at night, Kiambu now enjoys one of the
lowest crime rates in the country.
Local bars have been closed and remodeled into churches.
The town has flourished.
We have seen actual change.
And with the presence of God, of course, there comes a lot of changes.
Favors, prosperity, that's what we are seeing today.
Now that Kiambu has a good name, people from Nairobi are flocking to get houses there.
The population is up by 30%.
There has also been a dramatic increase in the number of conversions.
The Kiambu Prayer Cave, otherwise known as the Word of Faith Church, has expanded to
more than 5,000 members.
Not bad in the town where congregations previously averaged only 30 to 40 people.
We are seeing God do great things in this town.
We are seeing lives changed.
Criminals coming to Jesus, prostitutes, robbers, all kinds of people coming to Jesus.
As Thomas is quick to point out, the recipe for continued success must also include prayer.
Prayer is communicating with God.
It's that simple.
It's talking to God who has the power to change situations.
Now there is so much prayer in this place that helps us, that way it helps us to not
only maintain what we gave, but also to gain more ground.
Each day, more than 400 intercessors gather to pray.
The routine begins at 6 a.m.
They call it their morning glory.
This is supplemented by Friday night prayer vigils and Wednesday evening gatherings called
Operation Prayer Storm.
Prayer generates a power that I mean is extraordinary.
It's a power that transforms.
I've seen it transform the city.
If God can do it in Kiabu, he can do it anywhere in the world.
This town was in serious trouble.
Lots of Satanism, witchcraft.
We had the Moonies in the valley, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, TM Transcendental Meditation
Facilities, Church of Scientology.
We discovered that we were a methamphetamine manufacturing capital of the west coast.
There was a spirit of competition that reigned and ruled within not just the churches, but
at the head of those churches within the pastors.
For years, this sleepy retirement community near the San Jacinto Mountains was known as
a pastor's graveyard.
People came to the valley to live out a life of ease and they wanted to be left alone.
But underneath this laid back lifestyle, there lurked a dark side.
The community's problems had an underlying spiritual basis to them.
The valley was very seated in occult and occultic activity.
Cults weren't the only problem.
Neighborhood youth gangs had played the hemet suburb of San Jacinto for decades.
The Gordon Huston's San Jacinto Assembly of God Church sits on the very street that's
home to the town's notorious First Street Gang.
There are kids whose dads and grandfathers were a part of the First Street Gang.
And so this is something that has perpetuated itself throughout the generations, literally.
The danger was so great around the First Street area, the police refused to go there without
substantial backup.
We got a phone call in the middle of the night.
It was about two, three o'clock in the morning.
Gordon experienced firsthand the gang's destructive nature when his church was vandalized one
night.
And at the base on the inside, there was this large pool of blood.
I mean, it was massive.
And that is when the police told us who it was that had broken this window.
It was one of the family members of the home right across the street who was the central
part of the gang structure here in San Jacinto.
It turns out the Hemet Valley was also a major drug center.
At least nine methamphetamine labs operated out of the area, each benefiting from the
dry climate, remote location, and friendly law enforcement.
I've actually had law enforcement officers transport methamphetamine for me in their
in their in their police cars.
Sonny often cooked up enough meth in a given month to supply more than a million people.
Much of the deadly powder was trucked out of town, disguised as forms of sheetrock.
Hemet's spiritual turnaround did not come easily.
Neither the Beckett's nor the Houston's were early valley enthusiasts.
And I never really wanted to be there.
I mean, we're out the middle of nowhere, 18 miles from the closest freeway in a valley.
My wife and I, Susan and I had our emotional bags packed all the time, waiting for the
day that God would somehow call us out of this valley.
The Houston's didn't even unpack their bags when they arrived in town.
We were we had our little baby, six month old baby in a panel runabout with no air conditioning
and vinyl seats.
And we drove down the street.
We looked at the church and said, no, thank you.
God began to speak to my wife and I speak to me one day and said, would you spend the
rest of your life in this valley for me?
And God couldn't have asked a worse question of me.
Would I spend the rest of my life in a valley I didn't love, I didn't care for, I didn't
want to be a part of?
And God said, no, I've got a plan.
I have got a plan if you will make a commitment to this place.
The Beckett silenced the voices urging him to leave Hemet by purchasing a cemetery plot
on the edge of town.
And I said, unless Jesus comes back, you know, this is my land.
I'm starting.
My commitment is right here.
Filled with a new passion for his community, Beckett joined several men for a night of
prayer and fasting in a nearby mountain cabin.
It proved to be a powerful experience.
We knew we had touched something in the realm of the spirit that would be very significant
for our valley.
It was at that point things began to escalate spiritually.
Researchers started to feed intercessors fresh information on the problems plaguing the community.
The intercessors in our church have been able to use spiritual mapping to help them focus
on issues.
If you don't know where the problem is, you can't evaluate it.
Spiritual mapping brings us to a place of knowledge and information.
If I have a base of issues that I know are strongholds within my city, then God has the
ability to speak something into my heart to say, gather the intercessors and go after
this now.
Soon, a chorus of informed intercession was yielding impressive results.
Spirit membership, once a serious threat, has sunk to less than three-tenths of a percent
of the population.
The Church of Scientology is still present, but many other groups are long gone.
The Transcendental Meditation Training Center was literally burned out.
Shortly after believers prayed for its removal, a brush fire started in the mountains on the
west side of the valley.
It burned only the TM facility and didn't touch any of the buildings on either side.
The gangs are another success story.
When I started here, guys working graveyard or swing shift, we could camp out on Main
Street where the bars are and just go from one fight to another, taking people to jail
all night long.
And now that doesn't happen anywhere like it used to.
Not long ago, a leader of the First Street Gang burst down the center aisle of Gordon
Houston's church during a morning worship service.
I'm standing up preaching and here comes this gang member and tattooed up and he's walking
right to the platform with some pretty intense force.
I didn't know what was going on, so I kind of kept preaching until he got real close
and he just stopped and he looked up at me and he said, I want to get saved right now.
Soon, all the inhabitants of the notorious First Street Gang house were converted, and
one of their first outward acts was to remove graffiti from vandalized church walls.
And we prayed, asking God to allow the opportunity to see their family come to the Lord, to see
their kids get out of drugs and get saved.
And you know, God did it.
The entire family, all the kids, everybody came to know the Lord.
They got out of the drug activity and the gang activity.
And it's really changing.
It's really amazing to see the change, you know.
According to Sonny, Hemet's drug trade has dropped by as much as 75%.
He gives much of the credit to intercessors.
It took a multi-million dollar drug corporation and they made it run with its tail between
its legs.
Sonny himself was apprehended by the Holy Spirit en route to commit a murder.
Driving to meet his intended victim, he felt something take control of the steering wheel.
He wound up in the parking lot of Bob Beckett's Dwelling Place Church.
So I got out of the car and I got a pistol laying on the seat, covered up with a blanket,
with a silencer on it.
And I'm thinking, oh my God, what am I doing?
So I end up walking into this prayer meeting and it was all over from that moment on.
That was the beginning of Sonny's journey home, a journey he says was brought about
through prayer.
If God can do that for me, He can do it for anybody because I was out there.
And this town's got a lot of people in it praying.
Drug dealers and gang members aren't the only ones getting saved in the Hemet Valley.
Church attendance now stands at about 14%, double what it was just 10 years ago.
Now we have a professing mayor, a professing police chief, professing fire chief, professing
city manager, down through the ranks.
Lately everybody's conversation to me has been, I don't know how you do it.
How do you do it?
The attack is great.
I feel God called me to this and He hasn't told me to quit yet or He hasn't shut the
door.
Instead I see Him opening doors to more churches, more people, more Christians to really bring
them together and say, you know, you want Christians in leadership, so now you have
them, now you have to support them.
And the only way to support them is through prayer.
Beckett estimates about 30% of local law enforcement and an exceptional number of high school teachers,
coaches and principals are now believers.
In fact, for the past several years, nearly 85% of all school district staff candidates
have been Christians.
You name it, God has just turned the school system around and to the point where we used
to be one of the laughing stock school districts, where nobody wanted to send their kids to
school in the San Jacinto School District.
Now our students have some of the highest academic ratings and one of the lowest dropout
ratings in all of the western United States.
And the school and all parts of the community have become a place where everybody works
together and it's a spiritual place and we've taken on the battles of the dark side and
drawn the line and said that we're going to reclaim the community and that's what we're
about, all working together.
And the churches in the valley are no longer squabbling, but are coming together in unity.
Now we're becoming, as churches, a wall of living stones.
Now churches aren't competing, swapping pulpits with one another.
They have Baptist and Pentecostal pulpits and vice versa and Lutherans with Episcopalians
and it's changed the life of the church.
It's begun to build a fabric instead of loose yarn.
Recently several dozen Hemet area churches co-sponsored a convoy of hope where thousands
of residents received free food, clothing and medical exams.
They also got a good dose of God's love.
It's probably without a doubt one of the greatest things to hit our valley in recent years.
This is what church is all about.
It's not about sitting inside the four walls of our building.
It's about going in and touching the lives of people where they are.
Attracted to this proactive love, more than 300 people gave their hearts to Christ.
This has been so phenomenal.
I've just been blown away by the number of people who have come and who have responded.
This is something that just couldn't be done with one church.
It took us all to be able to do this.
I'm not just going to be held accountable for how I treated my church.
I'm going to be held accountable by God for how did I pastor my city.
And now the atmosphere in our city has completely turned.
We recognize that it's building people, it's not building a church.
This is not a church growth issue.
This is a kingdom growth issue.
Here we see that God's young, that Tom won't you believe is coming.
When young and old returns to Jesus.
It's not a perfect town.
It probably never will be, but Hemet is definitely in the process of transformation.
Transformation is taking place.
It is not the same community it was in the past.
Ammononga was an extremely poor village.
This was a community in total poverty and alcohol addiction.
Violence, ignorance, witchcraft, the occult, idol worshiping.
The few kilometers we'll be entering the town of Ammononga.
The city's twenty-some thousand inhabitants have made a conscious choice to sever the
continuum with ancestral spirit worship.
As a consequence, Ammononga is today one of the cleanest, most prosperous towns in all
of Guatemala.
It's a city of churches.
Many cite Ammononga as a world-class example of community transformation.
It may very well be.
As many as eight out of ten residents now consider themselves born-again Christians.
But it hasn't always been like this.
Just twenty years ago, Almononga was a dark and dangerous place.
Suffered from poverty, violence, ignorance, and besides that, alcohol was the main problem.
If you would go to Ammononga twenty years ago in the morning, seven a.m., and walk the
streets of Ammononga, you would have encountered many, many men just lying on the street because
they were totally drunk.
We had many jails because there were so many problems.
Chief of Police Donato Santiago recalls that people were always fighting.
Officials built four jails, but even they couldn't contain the problem.
Overflow prisoners were routinely bussed to a nearby city.
Domestic violence was especially pronounced.
I talked to a woman who said that her husband would, if he didn't like the meal, that she
would be beaten and just kicked out of the home.
Pastor Mariano Orescaje, one of the key leaders of Almononga's spiritual turnaround, has similar
memories.
I was raised in misery.
My father sometimes drank for forty to fifty straight days.
We never had a big meal, only a little tortilla with a small glass of coffee.
My parents spent what little money they had on alcohol.
In an effort to ease their suffering, many townspeople made pacts with folk deities like
Pasquale Bailon, the Lord of Death, and Machimon, a powerful patron saint.
Machimon, he was the most important idol in Almononga.
When the Spaniards came to Guatemala five hundred years ago, they found that the indigenous
people, they were willing to negotiate certain things.
But there was one thing they were not willing to do any deal about, and that was Machimon.
That was too important an idol for them.
This syncretism created a powerful stronghold.
Although Machimon took on the form of a wooden mannequin, the spirit behind the idol held
tenacious power over the people of Almononga.
It's just a wooden mask, but it's very powerful, a terrible stronghold that binds people.
During these dark days, the gospel did not fare well.
Outside evangelists were commonly chased away with sticks or rocks, while small local house
churches were also stoned.
Evangelical Christians were a despised minority.
On one occasion, six men shoved a gun barrel down Mariano's throat.
As they began to pull the trigger, he silently petitioned the Lord for protection.
When the hammer fell, nothing happened.
Delivered from death, Pastor Rescaje called his small flock into prayer.
It was time to break the stranglehold of violence, superstition, and poverty.
As the intercessors lifted their petitions heavenward, they were filled with a supernatural
faith.
We told the Lord, it is not possible that we could be so insignificant when your word
says we are heads and not tails.
We kept fasting three or four days a week, and every Saturday we held a prayer vigil.
And that was what I think opened the door.
People started to be delivered, men started to be saved and come to church.
It was a tremendous, tremendous blessing.
A revival, I would call it.
And then after many signs and wonders started taking place and a lot of mass deliverances
from demonic oppression, churches started growing.
One
dramatic healing involved a woman named Teresa.
A botched medical procedure had led to the onset of gangrene.
Her internal organs were literally rotting.
I was in a lot of pain, so much that I couldn't walk.
My whole body was paralyzed and I couldn't even eat or talk.
She was very sick, and her condition got worse with every passing day.
There was nothing we could do, so we decided to arrange her funeral because there was no
hope for her.
The house was filled with family members and neighbors had gathered outside.
Everyone thought she was dying.
The smell of death was everywhere.
They called me to arrange the funeral, and on the way there, the Lord told me to pray
for her.
So I just went up to her bed and said, in the name of Jesus Christ, get up.
And she rose up instantly with no sickness in her body.
I felt a warmth and I saw a bright light above me.
Then I opened my eyes and I saw the pastor.
I rejoice before the Lord for my healing, and I give thanks to God for my life.
After they saw the miracle, my mother and all my brothers and sisters were converted.
With such dramatic testimonies, hundreds began giving their hearts to Christ.
When people saw that the gospel started changing lives, they started taking note.
People started becoming more and more attracted to the gospel because they saw the transformation
in individual lives.
Now there are more than two dozen evangelical churches in Almalonga, a town of just 19,000.
Mariana Rescage's El Calvario church seats 1,200 and is nearly always packed.
But the Holy Spirit's presence has not been measured by church growth alone.
A walk through Almalonga's bustling commercial district reveals the impact of the revival's
social transformation.
Streets and buildings are named after biblical places.
If foreigners find this public display of faith extraordinary, Mariano sees it as perfectly
natural.
How can you say that you love God if you don't show it?
Didn't Paul say, I am not ashamed of the gospel?
Where once Almalonga was peppered with bars or cantinas, 36 in all, now there are only
three.
And as the drinking stopped, so did the violence.
For 20 years, the town's crime rate has declined steadily.
In 1994, the last of Almalonga's four jails closed.
The remodeled building is now called the Hall of Honor.
For police chief Santiago, these are the good times.
You don't have any jails in town now?
Because you don't need them?
No, because there's no people that do trouble.
Even the town's agricultural base has come to life.
For years, crop yields around Almalonga suffered from a combination of arid land and poor work
habits.
But as the people have turned to God, they have seen a remarkable transformation of their
land.
And Almalonga became a fertile valley.
It is so fertile that the land is so good.
They produce the best vegetables.
They get as many as three harvests per year.
They sell their vegetables to Guatemala, south of Mexico, and El Salvador.
Before the spiritual turnaround, growers were exporting four truckloads of produce a month.
Now they leave town 40 times a week.
Nicknamed America's Vegetable Garden, Almalonga's produce is of biblical proportions.
You have to see them to believe.
A beets is four and a half pounds.
A carrot is this size.
It is just unbelievable.
It is bigger than my heart.
It is the great grocer of Almalonga.
Intrigued by the dimensions of these vegetables and the town's 1000% increase in agricultural
productivity, researchers from the U.S. and other foreign countries have come to Almalonga
to learn their secret.
But the answer is not what they expected.
The wisdom that God gave the farmers in Almalonga produced better crops than the scientific
methods yielded.
The farmers constantly give the glory to the Lord for producing the bountiful harvest.
Before when we harvested the radish, it would take up to 60 days.
But when God came into town, it only took 40.
And now, quite often, it only takes 25 days to harvest.
You can see a parallel between the people's faith in improving soil.
At the same time people started believing in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the vegetables
started growing.
Once people were set free, they started working.
Once they began to work, they gained financially.
They started working the land better and the land started producing better.
Farmers pay cash for large Mercedes trucks and then emblazon them with Christian phrases.
It is wonderful and it is the result of the gospel transforming the community.
Idolatry and superstition have fled, leaving behind a people dedicated to fervent worship
and honest labor.
Traditional Stoicism has given way to heartfelt exuberance.
And you have 20 protestant churches, very active, very militant and very involved in
praise, worship, deliverance and so on and so forth.
Despite their success, believers in Al-Malonga have no intention of letting up.
Many fast three times a week and continue to assault the forces of darkness through
prayer and evangelism.
As neighboring towns celebrate the Day of the Dead, the people of Al-Malonga turn out
en masse to honor the Living God.
The town's born-again mayor welcomed a crowd of almost 15,000 into the market square.
They gathered to pray for a continued expansion of the gospel in their valley and around the
world.
The prize we pay for this is holiness and consecration.
Prayer and fasting gives us victories over principalities.
It wasn't a theological preparation.
It was simply throwing ourselves to the Lord.
I think in many cases when we talk about community transformation, we have a battle with unbelief.
Is our God and is the gospel powerful enough to truly impact our community?
Al-Malonga teaches us yes.
You had a community given to idolatry, witchcraft, alcoholism, disruptive families and now you
have a community transformed and that's a good picture to us that yes, God can do it
there and he can do it in my community.
God has lifted us and we need to take advantage of this opportunity.
We are a generation that God is going to use in the transformation not only of our community
but the whole world.
It is a beautiful spectacle to go and see the effect of the gospel because you actually
can see it and that's what we want for our communities, for our cities and for our nations.
For the last hour we followed the road to community transformation through neighborhoods
on three continents and along the way our eyes have feasted on the handiwork of God
in individual lives and entire social structures.
And not one of these stories has been an aberration.
Rather they are reflections of divine intent.
They are the way things are supposed to be.
Our journey has taught us that there are steps that we can and should be taking to position
our communities for a visitation of the Holy Spirit.
These include asking God to increase our appetite for the things that attract his presence,
most notably unity and holiness and faith and humility.
At the same time we must cultivate a crop of persevering leaders whose collective vision
for the community is watered by informed, sustained intercession.
What God has done in Cali, Kiambu, Hemet and Al-Malanga is indeed glorious but it's only
a hint of the story that is now breaking across the face of the earth.
We've laid down our lives that the triumph of Christ may resound in the earth.
Something is changing.
Did you feel the mountains are moving again?