Revival with Ralph Blanco Refreshes Tucson

We just finished the production of our annual Easter play. This year’s presentation was Pastor Fred Rubi’s inspiration: a musical entitled The Alabaster Jar. The cast and crew did an excellent job, many visitors came out and a number of decisions were made for Christ.

Besides the fruitfulness of these drama productions, there is the added value of the saints’ involvement as writers, actors and actresses, set builders, costume makers, stage hands, those running lights and sound, make-up people, the director and musicians and singers. I don’t think there is anything else that we do that allows so many people to be directly involved in the ministry and I haven’t even mentioned the ushers, parking lot people, cleaning ladies or those who labored on outreaches and follow-up, or the altar workers.

These efforts really do involve the whole church, or at least as many of the saints as want to be involved. Because plays have become our most fruitful outreaches, over the past number of years we have increased the number of plays we present each year. We always do a play at Halloween, Christmas and Easter; but we have begun writing shorter half-hour plays to be used in our music nights. We also use dramas as our main outreach tool on our invasion teams and on our HARVEST outreaches during the summer. (HARVEST = Having A Radical Vision to Evangelize Souls in Tucson).

It would not be unheard of for us to do a concert where no visitors show up and/or where no one gets saved, but we very seldom or never do a play without visitors coming and people getting saved. This is our bread and butter right now, and we are milking it for all the souls we can.

We are gearing up for our annual Bible conference June 13-17 and everyone is excited about that. Unfortunately, due to other commitments, Pastor Mitchell will not be able to preach our Friday night service as he usually does, but to make up for that he came and preached a Sunday night service and Monday night discipleship class in March.

Here is a sad story, but it demonstrates how much people in our congregation love to hear Pastor Mitchell. The Sunday night he preached a man had his truck stolen out of the parking lot and when he reported it to the head usher he was told that none of the men would volunteer for parking lot duty because they all wanted to hear Pastor Mitchell preach!

We have had a number of revivals since our last report, our most recent being in April with Pastor Peter Ajala from London, England. He not only got to preach to the saints but was able to get into a high school and share the gospel with a large number of unsaved teenagers.

Previous to that revival we had a Spanish speaking revival with Evangelist Ralph Blanco in March and prior to that in February we had a revival with Evangelist Yaw Osei-Bobie from England. All of these revivals were a great blessing to those in our congregation and also saw many new souls added to the kingdom. Thanks be to these men for coming and sharing their ministries with us.

Pray for us that we would have a fruitful summer as we begin our HAR- VEST outreaches and as we send an invasion team out to three of our baby churches in California in July. We so need God’s favor and blessing on our efforts or nothing of any lasting significance will be accomplished. Without Him we can do nothing, but through Him we can do all things. One sows, another waters but it is God who gives the increase.

Thank God that we serve the God of Increase.