The idea of doing a retreat for pas-tors and their wives in northern Mex-ico sprang from a letter we received from Pastor Jorge Moncada, who is our host pastor in Mexico. An excerpt from that letter follows.
“We have detected great wear and tear on the pastoral body because of the Covid crisis. We have seen a very considerable increase in nervous breakdowns, anxiety, depression, sud-den changes of character, marital and ministerial problems in a great number of pastors. I believe that, as we count the damage to the pastoral body, the real problems that pastors have faced during this year of crisis have emerged.
Two very close pastor friends passed to the presence of the Lord because of Covid, 12 pas-tors in total have passed to the presence of the Lord in Ensenada, 18 in Tijuana, 4 in Tecate, 6 in Mexicali and this only counting the pastors of Baja California.
For this reason, I put to your consid-eration the great need to carry out a retreat of pastors with the purpose of helping them to heal wounds, strengthen their faith, help them over-come their emotional, spiritual, physi-cal, and psychological crises that some are facing. The vast majority of pastors have mourned at least one member of their church who has gone to the Lord’s presence because of Covid, or some other illness but because of the pandemic they have not been allowed to do a memorial service or farewell to the brethren, just one day they were taken to a hospi-tal and no longer seen.”
We set a goal of inviting 30 pastors and their wives from the Baja peninsula. We planned to bring them to the Hotel Mission Santa Maria in San Quintin, Mexico for 3 days of refreshing. Pastor Jorge quickly found the 30 couples who wanted to attend, and they were invited. As word got out there were other couples who asked to attend. Two weeks prior to the retreat Pastor Jorge asked if we could afford to invite 15 more couples. Through a generous dona-tion from one of the friends of His Healing Hands, the funds were provided, and we invited all 45 couples!
We invited Pastor Pepe Selem and his wife Cristina to be speakers as well as bringing our own Director of Leadership Development, Pastor Randy Bossom. Thursday thru Saturday morning Pepe, Randy and Cristina shared messages that directly ministered to these couples. There were so may tears of joy!
One pastor and his wife told us they were one of the couples added at the last minute. They said they really did not want to come because they were struggling so much in their lives and ministry, they were thinking of leaving the ministry all together. They shared that their infant grandson had recently died. Their son, the child’s father was speaking of suicide and his wife wanted to divorce him. They tearfully shared that after.
