Remembrances of Training Leaders in Cuba by Winston Worrell

For 25 years, I was blessed to serve as Director of the World Methodist Evangelism Institute.  Through service to the local church, I was blessed to travel the world and see our good God at work.  It is good to remember the work the Lord has done.

In 2001, I coordinated with Dr. H. Eddie Fox of World Methodist Evangelism and with Cuba’s Methodist Bishop Ricardo Pereira to teach at the Cuba Methodist Church’s training seminar at their Canaan Camp for several Methodist pastors and lay persons from across Cuba.  At this seminar, we presented several lectures and workshops on evangelism. We worshiped together with wonderful singing, great music from several musical instruments, and great enthusiasm for evangelism. In the workshops I led, I was privileged to share the love of Jesus and to teach the pastors and laity the emphasis on practical faith-sharing. I remember handing out outlines of my presentations, which had been translated into Spanish, that focused mainly on a wholistic understanding of evangelism and faith-sharing. There was great receptivity to teachings on evangelism.

Then three years later, in 2004, I coordinated our Institute’s “Evangelism Conference of the Americas” in Havana, Cuba. The 250 pastors and laity who attended this conference on evangelism were from all the Americas (North America, Central America and South America). Again, we focused on presenting several lectures and workshops on different evangelism themes. Bishops, pastors and laity from across the entire Americas also presented lectures and workshops. Again, we worshiped with wonderful singing, great music, use of several musical instruments, and great enthusiasm for evangelism, and again, there was great receptivity to teachings on evangelism.

Under normal circumstances, once we have led a seminar in any country, we move on to leading seminars in other countries. After a season, we would normally receive follow-up reports from a few key leaders, but we didn’t often hear from regular attendees regarding the impact of our seminars.  We believed we were sowing seeds for a Kingdom harvest our eyes may never see. By the grace of God, this all changed a year ago during a return trip to Cuba after almost 20 years.

In February 2023, I returned to Cuba with another group of World Methodist leaders. Our time there included visits to several local congregations. It was truly refreshing to again experience the vitality of the Cuban Methodist congregations in worship. During this visit, we attended worship at one of the congregations which was packed to overflowing. We were asked to share with the congregation who we were. I shared my name, briefly about my former visits, and a general word of encouragement. The other leaders shared as well and the microphone was returned to the pastor of that local congregation, Pastor Armando. He shared about how God had been doing a mighty work through this congregation by the power of the Holy Spirit. He specifically noted how they were practicing evangelistic practices he learned at a seminar nearly 20 years earlier. I did not recognize him, but he was a past attendee of our 2001 training seminar in Canaan. He had immediately remembered me and was very happy to introduce me to the congregation as one of his former teachers. He thanked me openly for the training that he had received and said that he was still using some of the handouts that I had given him so many years ago to move his congregation forward.

Here is a part of the email that Pastor Armando sent me on my return to Atlanta from Cuba last year:

Dear Brother Winston, it has been a great blessing for me to be able to share with you after so many years of having met you at the Canaan Camp in May 2001. I thank our God for your visit to our church and for being able to testify how useful it has been for my ministry your ‘Workshop on Sharing the Faith.’ Thanks for praying for us. We will also be praying for you. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ fill your life and ministry.”  ~Armando

Thanks be to God for God’s blessings in our ministries, especially where God continues to multiply the witnesses for Christ through your ministry and mine for the sake of the Gospel of Christ and his Kingdom.