One of the fresh perspectives we have recently discovered is who the real heroes are in the plot of this story that Prepare International is enmeshed in?  It seems that the Lord Jesus is working through us to pioneer many works around the world, cultivate and nourish new spiritual leaders, and then break down barriers among peoples, nations, races, and even genders.  Wow.  Sounds amazing, and it’s true.  As we are caught up amid this work, we could be tempted to think that WE are the heroes of this saga.

Recently in a meeting with some of our friends here at Betenbough Companies, they reminded us that the real heroes in this grand tale are the unknown, unsung, hidden faces we work with around the world.  THEY are the Frontline Pioneers and Shepherds of God’s great work abroad.  THEY are the ones who are the instruments in His hand.  THEY are God’s Hidden Heroes, and it is an honor to be their friends and co-workers in His nations!

Christian and Mieke Vermeire – he and his wife graduated from a Belgian school years ago, and now Christian has helped found and helps lead a disciple-making movement of young men – Hero!

Tony and Rosela Delrio – a young couple in Costa Rica who have founded a powerful YWAM base and three PI Schools.  They are pioneers for Jesus in their land and a fantastic witness of Jesus Christ – Heroes!

Gary and Yvette Makamba – a young couple who by absolute faith came from Zimbabwe to South Africa and pioneered 8-10 churches and helped lead our first PI school there.  – Heroes!

And the list goes on and on and on.  THEY are the ones.  THEY are His hands, His feet, and His face to the generations.  They deserve honor, applause, and acclaim!  But above all the real hero in this saga is Jesus.  What a King He is.  He can take a ragtag band of nobodies from nowhere and put them in His Hand and amaze.  Jesus – the Ultimate Hero of the epic tale called the Kingdom of God.  Bravo!   

That’s why we chose our method – equipping, mentoring, and fathering and mothering a generation of laborers in the nations of the earth. This simple method seeks to join Jesus in the second command, “Pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers!” Our ambition is to cultivate 1000s of Love filled Laborers who will become Leaders of 10s, 50s, 100s, and 1000s so that Life-giving expressions of Christ-filled community will be born, and the Lost might be saved as darkness is defeated!

Our team has traveled, served, given, loved, and sacrificed much this year. Callie and I are so proud of them and grateful they’ve joined us in this monumental task. Personally, we just returned from about a month overseas touching five nations while finishing our journey in Poland and Israel. In Poland, we convened about 60 leaders from nine nations to join us for three days of turning our attention to God’s heart for seeing His Jewish children come into His Kingdom and seeing Jerusalem become a praise on the earth again. It was tremendous as David McQueen, Michael Onifer, and Josiah Boyd taught us! Our hearts were caught up into the Father’s deep desire for His remnant people.

From there, we took 32 leaders and friends to Israel for a week, discovering the Land, reliving the Bible, and gaining His heart for His Jewish sons and daughters and the place that He has chosen to put His name. It was a tremendous adventure. We will never be the same. Deeper disciples of Jesus were born!

Through it all, He’s revealed this fundamental Kingdom principle: true ministry never begins with preaching, teaching, or counseling. It begins with knowing the Father’s heart. Knowing the Father’s heart leads to knowing the Father’s business, and knowing the Father’s business leads to living and ministering from the Father’s presence! This is how the Kingdom comes.

This is how laborers are formed. This is how the harvest is gathered!

I pray each of you discover our Father’s heart in a new way. I pray that He will lead you on to His business and not just your own. Above all, dawns the greatest treasure of all – His presence. This thing has always been about His presence filling the hearts of people and the world of men! Thank you for your part in this adventure.

– Randy Boyd

One of the beautiful aspects of seeing the Kingdom of God takes hold of someone is watching how it changes a person’s thinking.  It doesn’t matter what culture you are from; your mentality is the key to your destiny.  How you understand the world around you, how you view God, how you define yourself and how you interpret your circumstances; the Kingdom of God is a mentality.  It is THE mentality.  It is the answer to every culture’s deficit.  It is the answer to poverty thinking, it is the answer to traditional thinking, it is the answer to greed, it is the answer to mediocrity – it is the answer!

I’ll never forget as a high school history teacher, teaching on World War I.  One of the things that intrigued me the most was our government’s mobilization of the people at home.  One of the great slogans was Wheatless, Meatless, Heatless.  In those days, we had Meatless Mondays and Wheatless Wednesdays.  In WWI alone, 13 million families signed a pledge to go Meatless and Wheatless to win a war they would never see!  They became the great ‘unseen force’ sending the troops on their way to win a war.

Listen to Paul, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?”  Romans 10:14-15  Here, Paul gives us one of the great Kingdom principles, “How can they preach unless they are SENT?” He gives a clear calling for Senders!

My time in Central America was amazing. In Honduras, I met an American missionary / business man and his staff of 150 Hondurans at a 2,000-acre ranch in the mountains of San Marcos De Colon. Mission Lazarus is reaching Hondurans in about a 150-mile radius within their region by teaching them leather making, carpentry, and sowing skills, creating jobs on their coffee bean farm, giving 50 orphans a home and education, all while sharing the gospel and planting churches. I don’t know if I have ever been more impressed with a leadership and their vision to reach their region for Christ.

When I was a boy, I saw my grandfather start, build and then sell a series of businesses and he always did it with a partner.  Some of them were very good but others never kept up their end of the bargain, but my grandfather believed you could accomplish more with the help of others than you could by yourself.  He wasn’t really walking with the Lord in those early days, but he always seemed to have such wisdom from heaven.  Partnership is an idea that He inspired in the hearts of men!

Our work began about 20 years ago as I traveled throughout the Czech Republic and Poland working in small church planting projects, equipping young leaders to build and multiply small groups within their local churches. In those early trips, two significant things occurred – 1) a portion of the Lord Jesus’ heart for Europe was injected into my veins creating the burden needed to start PI and 2) a simple strategy arose . . . find, equip, and hold up the arms of indigenous leaders to bear much fruit within their own lands! This is the heart and soul of Prepare International!

November and December were incredible months of travel for our team. We literally reached the four corners of the Earth by touching Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America with all of our traveling team deployed. Read more about the God stories that happened as they traveled!

We are humbled to report, Pursue Missions, the missions arm of Church on the Rock, invited Prepare International to be loved on at their annual banquet through financial and spiritual blessings.

Our ‘family’ has grown!  What to do when your family grows?  But not just grows, but grows with the adding of others from different cultures!  Hmmm… sounds like the Kingdom. What does PI do?  We get a strategy from God.  A strategy to ensure that PI will thrive as a family of families at home so that we can be an effective representation and propagator of the Family of God, His Kingdom.  Taking a trip with the ‘staff and their spouses’ was one part of the strategy!

In Poland:  We were with Josiah and Brandi (and Tommy and Lindsay Hood).  We were able to love on our kids, see their new home, Krakow.  Then I and Lindsay imparted Playing Around with PrayGround to KDM (their church) children’s leaders.

In Belgium:  I spoke at a Family Conference held on the North Sea to young families from various churches.  Maitlyn and Taryn gave testimonies.

What did you do in location: Worked with church planters and met with Partners in Bratislava, Slovakia.

What did you do in each location?

Romania- We had 4 PI schools each in a different location. The topic for the schools was Power Ministry Today. We also had 10 healing services in 9 different cities.

Budapest, Hungary- We had healing prayer training. Tuesday and Wednesday we had healing services.

Poltava, Ukraine-We had a Prepare School on Power Ministry Today. Sunday we had a healing service.

Because we have young children, rarely do Lindsay and I get a chance to travel together. So in September, I had the privilege of traveling to Central Europe with my wife. Our first weekend in Gdansk, Poland, a beautiful city along the Baltic Sea, was filled with hungry leaders intentionally advancing the Kingdom of God in a nation with under 2% Evangelical Christians.  

My daughter Aspyn and I went to Kenya August 18th – September 1st. I can honestly say it was amazing in many ways. First, it was our first trip to Kenya. Next, it was great to spend time with Aspyn in Africa. Then there were the people, the students in the Prepare International classes, the families, and the culture. We stayed in two main areas while we were in Kenya, Mombasa (southern Coast) and Nairobi (the Capital).  Discussion at both cities buzzed around the themes of church organization and leadership and the importance of raising up leaders to share in the ministry of the church. I was amazed at the hunger for God’s principles and their interest in discipleship/mentorship.  

I can’t remember the last time one of my teaching trips wasn’t amazing.  This trip to Costa Rica and Peru was no exception.  We launched our second school in Peru in the coastal city of Huacho.  It’s hard to describe the excitement of teaching a room full of students who are hungry for the training we provide!  It’s almost as if they are pulling it from me even before I have a chance to speak it out loud. Pastor Esteban shared that this training is what they’ve been desperately needing.  Thank you, Esteban, for your hard work preparing for the school.  It was a great launch!  – Drew Brown

Never thought I’d quote a line from the 1939 Gene Autry song, but “I’m back in the saddle again!” After much of the summer spent in sabbatical rest, it feels great to be back at the helm of Prepare International!

The New Testament tells us that Jesus went about preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God.  However, what nobody taught us is that the gospel of the Kingdom isn’t just about salvation! It’s not just about going to heaven!  It’s about the rule and reign of Jesus replacing, correcting and healing everything the devil did to mess everything up!