A Big God Does Big Things

Leslie Basham: Patricia de Saladin has watched the Lord take regular people and use them to accelerate a movement across Latin America.

Patricia de Saladin: I believe God is going to do something bigger than what we are expecting or hoping, because I see God’s hand in this. We believe in a great God, and a great God does great things.

Leslie:  This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Tuesday, December 3.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Yesterday we began to hear how the Lord can take ordinary people and do more than they could ask or imagine. In 2008, two friends from the Dominican Republic, Laura Gonzalez and Patricia Saladin, came to the True Woman Conference hosted by Revive Our Hearts.

They came with a group of over a hundred women, and it still makes me smile to think how vibrant and connected and engaged those Latin women were at that True Woman Conference. The size of their group alone shows that God was stirring hearts in the Dominican Republic.

As they sat through that conference, Laura and Patricia had some burdens on their hearts that seemed humanly impossible. What if a ministry like Revive Our Hearts could be launched in Spanish, in their country? Yesterday we heard the first part of their story, and today as we listen to part two—what burden has God placed on your heart? Are you believing Him to draw people to Himself in your community?

Maybe you feel small and inadequate for that kind of task. Well, that’s a good place to be. We’re about to hear what God can do when His strength meets our weakness. Let’s listen.

Leslie: This fall, Laura and Patricia met with some friends of Revive Our Hearts. Bob Lepine, a Revive Our Hearts board member, interviewed them.

Bob Lepine: When the program first went on the air . . . Patricia, you’re the voice, right? How hard is that, to be the voice of Nancy Leigh DeMoss? Let us hear a little. Just preach a little for us, will you?

Patricia: Like I start the programs, yes?

Bob: Yes, how do you do it?

Patricia: [Gives her opening line in Spanish] and then I just go on.

Bob: That sounds good to me.

Patricia: I never thought I was going to be the voice. We had some other voices, and a lot of us read for tryouts, to see which voice was it. But at the end, we needed commitment, we needed love for the message, we needed time, and I just said, “Lord, I have a mouth; I can speak. If You want to use me, just use me! I’m as ready as I can be, just use me, if you want.” 

Bob: There are a couple of pictures on your table. Tell us, Laura, what we’re looking at in this picture.

Laura Gonzales: This is in our make-shift office. It’s a little room in the radio station at her church, and it’s their meeting room. We meet there every three weeks or once a month as a team, because we all work from our homes. What’s awesome is the way God put that team together.

We all resonate with the same heart, the same love for the message and the ministry, and it’s our life. It’s all the time we’re talking and just thinking and planning and praying and dreaming about this ministry for Latin America.

Bob: You say you resonate so much with the message. What is it about this message? Because you’ve heard other preachers, you’ve read other books—why this message?

Patricia: There’s the good solid teaching we hear—with a lot of good theology—but this is just for women. The whole idea of revival and biblical womanhood, it’s very particular with Revive Our Hearts. That’s what really grips our heart.

I also think—and I’ve seen it—that the programs have (I want to be careful using the word). . . but it is some kind of anointment. I have not seen any other material that, if it goes to the translator, the translator would say, “Oh, that program you sent was just what I needed to translate, the day that you sent it.”

Then it goes to Laura and it ministers to Laura, and then it comes to me and it ministers to me. I told Anita, the girl that I record with, “Anita, we need to keep a notebook here. We need to journal what’s happening inside these walls with both of us.”

You’re going in the car and suddenly the program is there. That was the experience of a lady two weeks ago who wrote. She said,

I was crying. I was desperate, in my car, driving. I was full of resentment and anger. Then Aviva Nuestros Corazones aired, and God brought that word for me. It was about forgiveness. I knew the text in Hebrews 6 before, but it never came to my heart like it came now, and I could see the anger and resentment I had toward my husband. I praise God for Nancy and for Aviva Nuestros Corazones.

I don’t know any other program that does that.

Bob: You’re getting letters and emails from people listening to the program.

Patricia: Oh, yes, a lot of that. There are a lot of letters and emails—and yes, on Facebook, and all that.

Bob: And you’ve got to respond to those folks who are writing to ask questions. . .

Patricia: Yes! In fact, in the Revive ’13 conference, there was a group of six Hispanic women from different states that when they saw me they said, “Oh, you are Patricia, from the Spanish broadcast. We listen every day to the program, and we call each other in different states to ask the other, ‘Have you heard the program today?’”

“We wrote to you at Aviva Neustros Corazones, and we thought you were not going to write back, but you did answer! We were surprised to see the next day or so, we had the response of our email!”

Bob: Are the programs in Spanish on the Internet?

Patricia: Yes, we have a page just like the Revive Our Hearts page.

Bob: So people in Central and South America, Latin America—really world-wide—are able to listen to Revive Our Hearts in Spanish from nearly anywhere.

Patricia: Right, and when we started with this dream, we were thinking “radio programs in Santa Domingo,” and we would have been very happy. But God had more in mind. It was going to be world-wide. And then we said, “We want a web page.” We thought we were never going to have that—it was never going to happen—and then it happened, and it is exactly the same web page as ROH.

We have the same resources, we have the transcript as well, along with the audios, and we also have a blog. The blog is for young girls and for older women, too, so we’re serving everybody in one web page.

Bob: The program in May went to five days a week. So now every day—Monday through Friday—you are heard in Santo Domingo and beyond. Tell us a little bit about where the program is being heard.

Patricia: Right. Yes, it’s being heard in nineteen countries in Latin America, Spain, England, Canada, and the United States. And it’s on about one-hundred-fifty stations right now; it could be more. The last time we got a report, it was one-hundred-fifty stations or so.

Bob: Patricia, you hear directly from people—people you know, people you see, people who know you’re the voice for Nancy. What kind of feedback do you get about the program?

Patricia: Well, I get a lot of good feedback. The only thing is, though, that sometimes the women think I’m Nancy Leigh DeMoss [laughs], and that’s way beyond myself! I get invited to speak and when I go . . . The other day I asked somebody who contacted me and invited me, “How did they hear about me?”

They said, “Well through Aviva Neustros Corazones.”

I said, “They think they’re getting Nancy!” It’s hard in a sense, but I have been blessed.

Previously you asked me about that. I think the greatest blessing is regarding the message. I am the one that receives that. I get the privilege of not only recording those programs, but having to sink into them and get into those words many times before I go and record them. That has transformed my life. I say I am the privileged one—I get all the blessings.

Bob: Are there times when you’re reading the transcript and you’re being convicted as you’re reading?

Patricia: Yes! That why when I said we need a notebook, I mean that’s what we need. I need a notebook because when I’m doing it I cannot stop. I mean, I could stop, but I won’t stop because we’re doing something we need to finish. But many times, it’s the Word convicting me.

I was telling Nancy that before Aviva Nuestros Corazones, before Revive Our Hearts, I was a Christian—of course—for many years. But I was so self-righteous, and grace wasn’t in my life. Now I see my sin. Those programs help me. It’s like many women say, [the programs] were painful. Many times I see my sin.

I was sharing with Laura. We were doing the series “How’s Your Love Life?” 1 Corinthians 13. I saw myself full of boasting, full of envy, full of pride, full of anger, and that is something that Revive Our Hearts has done in my life. I went through the passages in the Scriptures and even listened to the sermons on Sunday, but the words didn’t get inside my heart.

Revive Our Hearts is like a needle, pinching those bubbles inside my heart—showing me my sin, and I am grateful for that.

Bob: Laura, when you think of the most pressing issues that are facing you, in terms of the things that need to get done, are there two or three that are the most pressing?

Laura: Well, we do need more staff, and we need more human resources to work. We are in a Red Sea experience every single day, but we see God coming through every single day. We praise Him, and we know it’s because He wants this ministry to go forth. But we do need more people on the staff.

We need a studio and office space, because right now we are very limited where we are at the radio station. We share the studio at the radio station, so we have limited time and use of the studio and office space, so that we can all work together. That's a pressing need.

Bob: You’ve mentioned letters. I’ve got a few of them here. This is a note from one of the translators. How many people do you have that are translating the program?

Laura: I have about twenty at the time.

Bob: So they’ll take the English transcript, they’ll translate it into Spanish and send it to Patricia, and she reads it.

Laura: They send it to me. I distribute it, They send it back to me. I do the rough editing, then I send it to Patricia. Patricia edits it again, listening to Nancy, and then she records.

Bob: I’m just curious. In the translation, are there ever any illustrations or idioms that Nancy will use where you’ll think, “I’ve got to fix this.”

Laura: Yes, a lot, a lot. 

Bob: Could you give us an example?

Laura: I don’t know . . . when Nancy goes into “rabbit trails” for example. First of all, the translators usually  translate it more literally, exactly, and you can’t do that. You cannot say “rabbit trails” in Spanish—so you have to reword that.

Bob: One of the translators says,

God has a special way of ministering to me, sending me—through you—these wonderful transcripts. They always arrive in the most precise time, just when I need to hear what God has to say. Many times when I’m translating, many times I have to stop and pray. Sometimes it’s just an answer to a prayer that comes through the material. Sometimes it’s comfort or just a timely word. You really bless me by sending me these transcripts to translate.

Laura: That’s all the translators. They all say that.

Bob: Here’s a woman that wrote to you from Argentina. You had a vision for Argentina when you started this, right?

Laura: Yes . . . for the whole world!

Bob: She says, “I’m twenty-eight years old. I’m married, and I have two children. I started listening to these programs.” Was she listening online?

Laura: Online . . . and they have radio stations in Argentina.

Bob: “I eventually left a church I was attending because we learned the true gospel. We found out about this ministry through a group from Bahia Blanca, Argentina, in Buenos Aires.

Laura: God has raised ambassadors—we call them—in many parts of Latin America. How we discovered them is that there are women who fall in love with the ministry. They resonate with the message, and they write and say, “We want to help. I want to distribute the message.”

We say, “Okay, you’re an ambassador.”

This lady that is writing got a book from one of our ambassadors in Argentina that showed her Nancy Leigh DeMoss’ ministry.

Bob: Wow. Okay, so she says,

I found out about the ministry through this group in Argentina. I’ve learned so much through these programs. I’m happy that the teachings have affected my whole family. Before listening to these messages, I was a secretary at church. I was a church leader. I taught both men and women. I regret that part of my life.

But today, I can see God’s work in my life each day, and the beauty of my design as a woman. We use a lot of your books and resources to teach women. Your ambassador in Argentina has shared some books with us. Through these resources we have been rescued from a false gospel and we are now walking in the truth.

I’m so grateful for Nancy and this ministry and blessed for God’s provision to us. We’re currently airing the "Seeking Him" series right now. The testimonies are pouring in, relationships are being restored, and the church is doing the study together in Colombia and Mexico.

Patricia: Yes, that study has been unreal, the letters we’ve been getting. We get a lot, but the other day this one just touched my heart so much. It was a daughter that had been estranged from her mother for years. After listening to one of the clear conscience messages from "Seeking Him," she said, “I need to call my mother.”

The mother was ready to receive her, and she sent a picture of them hugging. The only thing the testimony said was, "You cannot be right with God and not be right with men. I just thank Aviva Neustros Corazones for showing me that." Those are ladies from Mexico.

Bob: Let me borrow the microphone from you, because I’m going to put this truth to the test and ask your husbands to stand up over here.

Fausto Gonzales: We can understand their enthusiasm, because in Laura’s case and in mine—I’m a pastor of family life, marriages, and counseling (immense women’s ministry)—we do a lot of the marriage counseling and pre-marital counseling. We deal daily with what our brother from Canada was saying—men’s lack of leadership and women’s lack of submission to their husbands.

As this ministry teaches women on how to live, their calling, their design, we have seen their marriages getting better and their families getting better. So, as their women’s minds are changed and they start to live—flesh out—these teachings, you can see now better marriages. Husbands are trying to do their part as their wives do their part. It translates to the whole family.

How can you not be for a ministry like this?

Bob: Eduardo, what’s your impression of this as a husband?

Eduardo de Saladin: It has a solid biblical preaching, it has very good applications, and they have the anointing of the Spirit. We have seen lives transformed through the preaching of the Word. The brothers of the church, they tell me, “Tell your wife I heard the program today; it was very good!” It has been a blessing to us, and what we have seen in the other Hispanic, Spanish-speaking countries, it has been a blessing, really.

Bob: Thank you, guys, thank you very much. Nancy, would you like to share a little bit about your own heart and enthusiasm for what God has done? I think your listeners have gotten a sense of this. This is one of those things birthed by God, engineered by God, directed by God where we just kind of said, “Okay, we’re following. We're not leading. The Spirit’s at work, and we’ll just go where we see the Spirit leading. It’s amazing!”

Nancy: I love living under Providence, because you just see God orchestrating pieces. My excitement about this first of all is Latin America has seven hundred million people—twice the population of the United States and Canada. I’m not a numbers person, but it’s something like that.

I really believe that in the several years, it’s possible that there will be more ministry taking place among the Spanish-speaking sisters through this ministry than what is currently taking place through the English language. 

My dad came to know the Lord as a rebel in his mid-twenties. God put in his heart a burden for Latin America. He didn’t speak any Spanish—he knew like three words, and he didn’t say them correctly! Talk about idioms. You have to be careful with translators. My dad was tickled to death when a translator would say, “He scratched him 'til he died.” So you do have to be careful.

But he had this burden for Latin America, even before he married my mother. He would go; he would preach; he would give his testimony with translation. He would walk out in the audience. He’d be in these little village churches in Mexico or other places in Latin America.

When the invitation was given, he’d walk out in the audience and say to the people, “Es Jesus Christo in su corazon?” And he would win people to Jesus—it was amazing. He had just such a gift for evangelism and such a passion for Christ. He took us on his mission trips when we were little, just to be there where the Lord was at work.

When he and my mom got married, they took a three-month honeymoon to Latin America. My dad was doing street preaching, preaching in little village churches. My mom was singing. She was nineteen, he was thirty-two. He was kind of semi-retired from his business (he hadn’t started his life-business at that point). So they did this three-month preaching journey.

Well, she got pregnant with me the first week of their honeymoon, in Cuba—before Castro came in. She’s pregnant that whole trimester. They were in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, British West Indies, all across some of these developing third-world countries, with her carrying me.

I just look back now and think of my dad’s heart for Latin America—the fact that that’s where I got my start. I grew up in this home with such a burden for evangelism and discipleship and a longing for the kingdom of Christ to come—particularly in Latin America. I just think of [my dad] Art DeMoss in heaven. This is a fulfillment of things that he longed for and a passion that was in his heart that God, through so many means, has been bringing about.

Then, in my own heart as a teenage girl (I don’t have time to tell the story), there was a point at which I just had this sense of compulsion, belief, faith. I don’t know how to even explain exactly what it was. I was in late high school, maybe college, and had this sense that God wanted somehow to give me the privilege of making disciples in every nation of the world.

I never set out to do that. It wasn’t a goal. This was before the Internet, this was before you could have imagined how such a thing could be possible. And now, I remember some of these things, and I look back and see what God is doing. The Internet has made it possible for me to minister in making disciples in every nation of the world, and to be doing that in Latin America with the Spanish-speaking world (and not just Latin America, also in the United States and Spain, with our Spanish-speaking sisters) . . . and I don’t speak Spanish.

God has raised up these sisters. I get around them—the whole team—and their precious husbands, and I see the anointing of God’s Spirit on their lives. I see them living the message. I see them loving the message. I feel they should be mentoring me. It’s just a privilege to sit at their feet and be blessed by their lives and by what God is doing . . . blessed by the power of God to get the message out!

Leslie: That’s Nancy Leigh DeMoss sharing her heart about what she sees the Lord doing in Latin America.

As we near the end of 2013, it’s exciting to look back and see what the Lord has done. We’ve been looking specifically at what He’s done to expand the Spanish language version of Revive Our Hearts to five days a week. Nancy’s here to explain how you can be a part of accelerating the movement in Latin America.

Nancy: This time last year, we were sharing with listeners the opportunities the Lord was giving us in Latin America. We were asking the Lord to expand the Spanish version of Revive Our Hearts from two days a week to five. I’m so thankful for all the listeners that wanted to be a part of that story and who helped us to meet our year-end needs.

As a result, Aviva Nuestros Corazones, the Spanish version of Revive Our Hearts, was able to launch as a daily program this year. It is now heard on over one-hundred-fifty stations throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

Now, nearly half of the donations that we need for the entire year arrive during the month of December. So, this year once again, we’re bringing our needs before the Lord and before you. We’re asking the Lord to provide the funds we need to keep our current ministries going—for instance, continuing on the air here in your community.

We’re asking Him for the funds to accelerate the movement of revival and biblical womanhood in new ways. This includes our ongoing support for Aviva Nuestros Corazones.

They need additional staff, and they need their own broadcast studio and office space. It also includes the possibility of translating Revive Our Hearts into new languages in desperately needy places around the world. That accelerated movement in the year ahead includes expanded ministry to young women and teens. We’re trusting the Lord to provide all that’s needed for these outreaches.

You play an important role in making that possible. That’s because, right now, your gift will be doubled by friends of the ministry who’ve said they would like to double each gift given during the month of December, up to a matching challenge amount of $530,000 dollars. Would you consider helping us meet that challenge?

Help Revive Our Hearts continue in your area, and help accelerate the movement around the world. There are a number of different ways you can give to support the ministry at this important time. You can reach us by mail, and here’s that address: P.O. Box 2000, Niles, MI 49120. You can give us a call at 1–800–569–5959, or you can visit us online at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Leslie: Thanks, Nancy. Tomorrow Nancy will be telling us fifteen things she’s learned in walking with God for fifty years. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts, with Nancy Leigh DeMoss, is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.