News

The container arrived in Cuba without incident and churches in Cuba have received our donations! Pastors are astounded and grateful!

Below are thank you videos from Grateful Pastors. Thank you to everyone who prayed and donated towards this unprecedented effort.

Thank you from Iglesia Bautista Resurrection – Subtitles in English (CC)
Using the brand new sound system we provided, Pastor Samuel Betancourt along with congregational members thanks us!

Thank you from Iglesia Bautista Dios es Amor – Subtitles in English (CC)
Pastor Dariel Llanes Quintana, current president of the Convención Bautista de Cuba Occidental, thanks us for the equipment we sent.

Thank you from the President of the Baptist Convention of Eastern Cuba – Subtitles in English (CC)

Pastor Josue Rodriguez Legra, current president of the Convención Bautista de Cuba Oriental and Pastor of the 1era Iglesia Bautista de Palma Soriano, thanks us for the equipment we sent.

Thank you from Seminario/Templo Bautista Nazaret de Cienfuegos – Subtitles in English (CC)

Pastor Everardo Hernandez Pino, former Pastor of Templo Bautista Nazaret de Cienfuegos and founder of thier affiliate Seminary, thanks us for the equipment we sent.

Thank you from Iglesia Bautista Enmanuel de Loma Colorada – Subtitles in English (CC)
Pastor Lisvani Morales from Iglesia Bautista Enmanuel de Loma Colorada thanks us for the sound equipment, computer, and chairs we sent!

With God’s help… WE FINALLY DID IT!

Thank you to everyone that helped load the container!

Fun fact: Hurricane Ida was churning just offshore while we were loading! God kept the rain bands off of us long enough to get the container loaded! Thank you Lord!

We are sending the container to Cuba and need your help!

If you are able to lift 30-50 lbs and would like to help the people of Cuba, please meet us at 11:00am. Loading can take anywhere from 3-5 hours.

Gospel Baptist Church (in the back near the bus barn)
24861 Old 41 Rd, Bonita Springs, FL 34135

Even if its just for an hour, please come and help! Food and refreshments will be provided.

We have just been notified that the Cuban Dignitary that will oversee the container loading has contracted COVID-19. He is receiving treatment and doing well.

As a result, the container loading/pickup has been rescheduled for Saturday, August 28th, 2021. Please continue praying that the Lord remove all obstacles!

The issues that came as a result of the deterioration of political relations between Cuba and the U.S. in addition to the Coronavirus Pandemic are now behind us and our Authorization for Import has been reinstated! PRAISE THE LORD!

Our container is currently scheduled for pickup on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2021!  We need your help!

During this pickup, we will need to transfer heavy items from our staging container to the container that will be shipped to Cuba. We will have a Cuban dignitary on-site to help us and perform a final inspection of items being sent. As items are being stored in 2 physical locations, the first pickup will occur at Cronin’s Porch and Patio and will take about 1 hour to load. The container will then be delivered to Gospel Baptist Church to load all remaining items, which should take about 2-4 hours. We need about 10-15 strong individuals who can easily lift 50-100 pounds to help us load. If you are interested in helping out, please contact the church office at (239) 947-1285.

We have also purchased and received 24 sound systems, 48 microphones, and other needed musical equipment that will be included in this shipment. This purchase is not yet fully funded by donations. The total investment was $7,974.75 and we still need roughly $6,000. If you would like to donate online towards this purchase, please click here and add “Disciples for Cuba” to the cart.

This effort was only possible through your prayers and God’s interventions. Our God is the God of the impossible!

We have always known that sending a container to Cuba would be a monumental challenge that can only be accomplished with the help of our God and people like you who have a heart for the people of Cuba. It has been a rollercoaster ride with extreme ups and downs! In our last communication in March 2020, we communicated that we had all approvals necessary to proceed with shipping the container. Unfortunately, during that time period the political relations between Cuba and the U.S. rapidly deteriorated as a result of Cuba’s alleged involvement in Venezuelan affairs. This political situation has resulted in an energy and food crisis in Cuba.

In response, the Cuban government has implemented new laws restricting the importation of electrical devices with high energy consumption in order to prevent additional burdens on Cuba’s electrical grid. As a result of these new laws, our approvals were unexpectedly suspended pending the submission of a report that detailed the power requirements of every electrical device in our container. In order to complete this report, we had to empty the contents of the entire container, open every box, and log the electrical details for every electrical device! As this would be a huge project, we attempted to appeal to the Cuban government to see if they would allow our first container without this report, but that request was denied after a long period of waiting for a response. We were left with no option but to proceed with this major project. Thankfully, we had the help of over 20 members of Gospel Baptist Church! Once that project was completed, we updated our computer systems to be able to accept these new requirements and submitted the report for approval. We are currently pending the approval of this report.

Our logistical plan was also significantly impacted by the Coronavirus as we could not fly members of our operational team in or out of Cuba. This is crucial in order to ensure our shipment gets to the intended recipients. With all these challenges behind us and travel restrictions recently lifted, we are confident that our container will reach Cuba shortly. Stay tuned and keep us in your prayers!

Also, please pray specifically for the food crisis in Cuba and for normalization of political relations between the U.S. and Cuba. The crisis is rapidly deteriorating with no hope in sight. If the political situation continues to deteriorate, this will significantly increase the difficulty in sending desperately needed church supplies and equipment to Cuba.

It has been a long time coming, but our prayers and hard work are finally paying off! We have all the approvals we need to send our first container!! Our approvals were delayed due to the increase in tensions between the US and Cuba, but all that is behind us now and we are moving forward.

Now that we have all approvals on hand, we are busy acquiring last minute equipment that we held off investing in until all approvals were received. Due to the delay in the approval process, the high amount of donated items we received, and the possibility of further political degradation, we decided to increase the size of our first container from 20′ to 40′!

Because of this, we have used the extra space to send additional items we have stockpiled, and desire to use the space left in our extended container to send 24x sets of desperately needed sound equipment. The total cost of this investment is $7,974.75 and includes:

24x Harbinger M200-BT Sound Systems (pictured)
48x Shure PGA48 microphones
48x 25ft mic cables
6x 10-packs of Guitar Strings

A BIG thank you to Gospel Baptist Church for their special offering towards this purchase that totaled roughly $1,500! We would also like to thank Walter Caston from Guitar Center for offering us a substantial discount on this high-quality equipment.

We still need about $6,500 to make this final inclusion a reality. Would you help the people of Cuba by either praying specifically for this need, or making a financial contribution?

Typical Sound System in Rural Cuba

DFC Provided System

In other news, we also got word that the Coronavirus Pandemic coupled with recent political tensions between the US and Cuba has triggered a country-wide revival! Churches in Cuba are fuller than ever! One side effect of this is Cuba now has an even greater shortage of bibles. The Cuban government has granted a rare approval to the Baptist Convention of Western Cuba to import as many bibles as needed to fill this great need! With this permission in hand, we are now able to import bibles, but we need to find a ministry that will be willing to donate them (Reina-Valera 1960). Would you join us in prayer for this specific need?

We have been working hard to fill our next container! The tangible supply container is about 35% filled with donations that were largely supplied by members of Gospel Baptist Church in Bonita Springs FL during a Donation Drive we are currently hosting there. A big thank you to everyone who has contributed so far!

We also recently had a rare opportunity to host a visit from Dariel Llanes Quintana, the current President of the Baptist Convention of Western Cuba! He was invited to the U.S. to attend a church convention in Orlando, FL and preach in a few churches in Miami. We took the opportunity to pick Dariel and his wife up and drive them to Bonita Springs so we can show them our ministry first hand and spend some quality time getting to know each other more. He was emotionally taken back by all the hard work that was going into our ministry and said: “now I know how to pray for this ministry, and will pray more fervently than ever”.

Our capacity to receive donations has just expanded!

Today we took delivery of a 20′ shipping container that will be used as a dedicated storage unit for all type 2 (tangible goods) donations we receive for this ministry. Its permanent home on the church property will make it convenient for our volunteers to fill it with donations as they are dropped off or delivered.

Thank you Tropic Trailer for the price reduction, and a bigger thank you to the leadership of Gospel Baptist Church for allowing us to install it on the church property.

We are currently in the process of acquiring tangible goods for our next shipment to Cuba this year. We hope to ship before the end of the year. If you would like to contribute any of the following items or make a financial contribution to help us acquire goods and pay for direct shipping costs, please contact us ASAP!

Our next shipment will be delivered in 2 x 20ft shipping containers. Religious materials cannot be combined with other goods per Cuban law and must be shipped in a separate container. As a result, we fill 2 types of containers and will ship them once they are filled. The cost of acquiring, storing, and shipping 20ft containers is roughly $4,500 US per container shipment.

We need:

Container Type 1: Religious Materials
Bibles (Reina-Valera 1960)
Sunday School curriculums & teaching aids (Spanish Only)
Children’s Bibles/Books (Spanish Only)
Tracts (Spanish Only)

Container Type 2: Other Tangible Goods:
Sunday School materials (crayons, coloring sheets, etc) & games.
Nursery Toys & Furniture
Church Pews
Audio/Visual Equipment (sound amplifiers, speakers, microphones, cables, and projectors)
Laptop Computers
Folding Chairs/Tables
Office Supplies
Mountain Bicycles (to facilitate the transportation of missionaries to remote areas in Cuba that are not accessible by vehicles)
Nursing Home Beds/Furniture
Clean/Lightly Used/New Clothing & Shoes
Baseball Gloves/Bats/Balls
Hand/Power Tools

Although the Cuban people will be grateful for items in any condition, we ask that all donated items be in good working condition as there is no availability of spare parts for any type of repair. All items will be donated at no cost to the Cuban people.