Category Archives: Capturing Courage Abroad

As we travel we write about the experiences, the quirky sides, the profound moments and all manner of thoughts and lessons in between – Enjoy!

Kenya 2024 – Upcoming Ministry

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The Lord has told me to ‘make Kenya happen’. This post is for those that have been inviting Cyndy and Capturing Courage International Ministries to Kenya, to make clear your invitation, to help me choose where to go, be, and minister in the country.

If you are from Kenya and have been wanting me to come and minister with you, then please fill out the form below.

Once you press the ‘submit’ button at the bottom of the form, this will come to my email. I will then take a month or more, to pray and seek the Lord, and will get back to you after that. You may receive a ‘yes’ I can come to you, or you may receive a ‘no’ I cannot come to you.

Please look at our primary website https://capturingcourage.org before submitting your request for me to minister with you. We want to have a good match between what you want and what Capturing Courage offers. Looking at our website is a good way to help with this.

Thank-you for your invitation to Kenya and to your ministry there. Let us hold all things before the Lord and see how Holy Spirit leads.

Tanzania 2023 – Waters of the Lord

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It has come to be that Capturing Courage will be in Tanzania within a month’s time. We have been looking ahead to this for some years time and now glad to be on the cusp of another time in Africa.

“Through the heartfelt mercies of our God, God’s Sunrise will break in upon us, 

Shining on those in the darkness, those sitting in the shadow of death, 

Then showing us the way, one foot at a time, down the path of peace.”

Luke 1:79 The Message

Peace is powerful. Chaos cannot remain where there is peace. We do not know exactly what God wants to do in Tanzania. So, we have been putting down our own thinking, setting aside any agenda we may have, and endeavouring to bring our anticipation and glad-hearted agreement unto the Lord for this time.

Therefore we pray peace. And we come in peace. We allow the Lord to make us people of peace. Peace makes way for refreshment. And specifically, God has been speaking to us about the waters of the Lord upon the hills of Tanzania. Yes Lord, may it be so.

God is Near

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Still, to this day, all over the world there is a thinking that God is distant and cannot be accessed. Even within our churches and faith gatherings we have found that most folks believe God must be coerced or convinced to draw near to us.

Of course, at CCIM we have no such understanding. At Capturing Courage International Ministries we have one foot on earth and one foot in the heavenlies and we are bridging folks to God.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14

Because of thousands of years of religion and idol worship and of witchcraft there remain many fragments of false thinking about God.

The world must know that God is with us!

Capturing Courage International Ministries begins with this.

One of our favourite testimonies comes from one of our teaching days when a young pastor shared, “I have learned to touch the heart of God.” 

Would you partner with us at CCIM to bring “God is with you! God is for you! God has not abandoned you!”, to pastors around the world?

Partner With Us Here

“We Found the True Gospel Restored in the Church through the teaching that you Lovingly Sent to us, that Clings to the Whole Truth Handed Down by the Prophets & Apostles. The Gospel Teaching you sent Touched our Hearts and Encouraged me more to Remain Faithful to GOD and Diligent to works.” Pastor E., Philippines

 

The Gas Light is Orange

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My Daughter Danielle and I in Manitoba – Such a Good Time

Last week I was driving from the mid-west USA back into Canada. I had been with my daughter in Manitoba and then down to visit family in Minnesota and then saw a few sights on my way back westward. It was a good, blessed, restful time. I am so grateful to the Lord for the opportunity to take some weeks for a road trip and time to spend with family in numerous places.

My final day back into Canada was a long days drive. Because I have been recuperating from a deep exhaustion I had been taking my driving days slowly, only clocking four or five hours a day. My last day though was nearly an eight hour day of driving.

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A Beautiful Vista in Wyoming Where I Walked and Camped

Nearing the Canadian border I passed a gas station and wondered if I should top-up my fuel. But I thought, “Nah, I will fill up at the gas station on the other side once I am back into Canada.” I still had a good 1/4 of a tank of gas.

Once through the border and back onto home soil I headed for the campsite where I would spend the night — about 1/2 hour north of the border. I have been enjoying my tent and sleeping bag and cook-stove. I even bought at a garage sale in Minnesota a beautiful luxurious folding chair for $5; oh the sweet bliss of this.

Morning came and I began heading north into the city of Regina. I got about fifteen minutes down the highway and my gas light came on.

Now, I do not know how long I can drive with that gas light glaring at me before I run out of gas. Every turn in the road, every hillock with even a few trees or buildings I hoped and wished and prayed and begged that there would be a gas station. There was not.

For 40 minutes I careened down the highway at 120 Km/hr expecting to run out of gas at any moment. I paid close attention to the sides of the road, continuously calculating if the road edge was safe to pull off and onto if need be. I remained vigilant to the fact that should my car completely run out of gas that my power steering would not be available to me and that I would need some good effort to steer my car where it would need to be in order to be off of the highway and safe.

It is an interesting thing to know one is nearly empty and to carry on at high speed toward what might be imminent upset and inconvenience and trouble, really. 

But carry on I did. All the while talking myself out of any need for panic or dismay or worry. After all, None of these responses would change what was going to happen. I could in a panic run out of gas on the highway in the middle of the prairies or I could serenely run out of gas on the highway in the middle of the prairies.

I drove, like this, for 40 minutes, at 120 Km/hr knowing I could stall at any moment.

Long story short and with great relief, Regina appeared all of a sudden out of the distance and within moments I drove into the first gas station with much gratitude and praise to the Lord that I arrived well and fine and could fill up my car, none the worse for wear. But what an experience.

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Indian Princess on the banks of the Missouri River – So Stunning

At Capturing Courage Int’l Ministries, this is exactly how it feels at this moment. We are standing in the tension of establishing, faithfully attending to what we believe God is leading us to do without seeing very far in advance at all.

It feels that we are heading down the highway at top speed with a gas light flashing orange, not knowing if we are going to stall or find our way Okay.  

So, today, I am asking you, if you have been encouraged or inspired or helped in any way from the work of Capturing Courage, would you further participate with a financial gift to us.

Translation work of our CCIM Course is now happening in three countries with a possible fourth in the next months. And of course, we pay for translation work. The multiplied impact of our materials into other languages is incalculable actually. See already all that God is doing. And we are so excited to be part of this thing of the Lord.

So, today, I am asking if you would give a generous one-time gift or become a monthly partner with us here at Capturing Courage International Ministries. 

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Partnering Together

If you simply cannot contribute financially, please, please, please, keep us in your prayers that all monies designated for CCIM, that we then allocate out, would be fully present to us.

Thank you for your hearts and prayers and great presence with us at Capturing Courage. We give the Lord all the glory for the great and amazing things of him through us. Bless you mightily today.

Cyndy Lavoie,

Executive Director at Capturing Courage International Ministries

 

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CCIM Core Learning Outcomes

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College of Capturing Courage International Ministries teaches 15 Core Learning Outcomes. It was a few years back during a long ministry time in one of the countries we’ve been to, that we realized CCIM is bringing a few handfuls of key principles, and that if folks ‘got’ these key principles their lives would be changed.

I went on to identify these core teaching of CCIM College. There are 5 key Inner Healing & Deliverance principles, 5 key Spiritual Authority principles, and 5 key Leadership principles.

Inner Healing & Deliverance 

1.  Whole Hearts     (courageous transparency, open lives; roots and fruits)

2.  Inner Healing Model     (generational strongholds, bitter-root judgments, unholy soul ties)

3.  The Power of Agreements     (the kingdom of God vs. the dominion of Satan)

4.  Healing Model for Justice     (true worship, full integrity, right with God and man)

5.  Poverty Strongholds     (refusing violence, pain upon pain healed in Jesus,  addressing the stories we tell)

Leadership 

6.  Taking 100% Responsibility    (no blaming, no excuses, no ‘reasons’)

7.  The Covering of Jesus    (keeping turned to Jesus, identifying subtleties of motives)

8.  Relationships    (mutual submission, maintain trust  and safety, keeping short accounts, quick to make right)

9.  Coming on the Inside    (as lambs and not wolves – in peace, vulnerable, the way of Christ, mutual receiving)

10. We live Micah 6:8 – justice, mercy, humility   (we take action, we advocate, we enter into the mess, Isaiah 1:18)

Spiritual Authority 

11.  Rejecting paganism    (bring light in and darkness flees, simple prayers, rejecting religious strongholds, leaving law behind)

12.  The Chasm    (going deep with God, abiding in Him, allowing him our whole life)

13.  The Wide Road vs. The Narrow Road   (rejecting religion, remaining in Christ, restoration not retribution )

14.  Leading in Revival for the deliverance of our nations      (hunger for God, repentance, religious strongholds broken)

15.  Sulha      (we run toward the world to take on the stones)

We are challenged to let God love us. We are challenged to put down ought and should. We are challenged to come into the light of the Lord with all the good, the bad, and the ugly of our lives. We are challenged to take courage to be authentic and honest before the Lord and before each other.

We are challenged to surrender our plans to the oversight of the Holy Spirit. We are challenged to rest in the work of Jesus. We are challenged to both wait on the Lord and then to move nimbly and quickly per the Lord’s instructions. We are challenged to re-know ourselves as sons and daughters of the most high God.

We are challenged to love our enemies. We are challenged to forgive. We are challenged to ensure that God is Lord of our ministries, and we are challenged to come into the vast and generous understanding and whole-heart of God, for us and then through us to others.

By the grace of God we are coming to see:

AT CCIM we want to see

The Priority of God

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We are finding the work of the Lord powerful and strong in our midst. God seems to have a very big plan. A big dream. That dream is to equip pastors and lay-leaders in practical heart-transformational strengths.

CCIM is currently in Uganda and in the dozen or so churches we have been to in the past three weeks, we are finding a readiness for the pure gospel message.

We have been sharing about Sulha. Taking our cue from Jesus’ telling of the story of the lost son found in Luke 15 beginning with verse 11.

We find in this story secrets of the Kingdom of heaven, made plain to us by Jesus himself. He tells us of a young man who goes to the lowest of the low, unable to stoop or fall any farther, a young man who ultimately turns toward his father and takes himself home.

We are then introduced to the father. A man who longs for his son to come home. That no matter the hurt or betrayal or immense offence and insult of the son, the father’s priority always was and is peace and reconciliation.

The father demonstrates this love by running toward the son the moment he is seen coming down the road. We are told the father saw him from a long way off. And he begins to run.

It is interesting to note that in middle-eastern culture important men do not run. But this father ran, throwing off his importance to head toward his son. It is also interesting to note that in order to run the father would have had to lift his skirts, revealing his ankles, a no-no in the culture. And so we see that the father also threw off his dignity in order to run toward his son.

Thirdly, a study of the culture would suggest that due to the great offence of the son, it would have been considered appropriate and just even, for the villagers to stone the son before he reached home, by way of retributive justice. But we see the father running toward the son to intercept the stones and to take them upon himself.

Of course, we realize that Jesus is painting a picture of Father God. And we know that the living out of this heart of The Father was accomplished by Jesus Christ on the cross where he threw off both his importance and his dignity to take on the stones meant for us.

We see, that God has always been about peace and reconciliation.

“For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. Se we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” 2 Corinthians 5:19-20

Three of Us to Uganda

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We are two and one-half weeks away from journeying to Uganda. Myself, Crystal, and Nelson will be arriving in Uganda on September 18th, and will be in the country until we begin our flights home on December 16th. 

When I go to a country and to those I will be with, I am hosted, fed and given a place to sleep, by those I’m ministering alongside, while the money that I bring into a country is for the internal travel of our on-the-ground-team (which includes the pastor/s we are travelling with once there).  

Now, with three of us going, Nelson having just decided 9 days ago, I’ve been communicating that we are now three coming and asking if this is okay on their end in terms of the hosting of us. 

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The Real Work Belongs to the Lord

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The international launch of CCIM was in the fall of 2011. It was at that time that I took my first ministry trip to Africa. I had been invited, persistently invited, by a gentleman in Uganda and after prayer and discernment realized that it was time to begin what the Lord had been telling me about for some time.

In the year 2000 the Holy Spirit had begun showing me these rolling hills as far as I could see, covered by trees more than I could count. And with this vision came his words, “Each tree represents a life that your words will touch.” Initially I thought I was imagining all of this. Yet as time went by and as the Lord continued to impress this vision upon my spirit and mind I began to take this as God telling me something.

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Coming Out of Agreement

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It is a very easy, natural even, to agree with the compromises of health and of strength within our bodies and lives. Years back I heard it said this say, “When you agree to your limitations they are surely yours.”

I recently heard the testimony of someone who had at one time realized her agreement with the chronic ill-health she was experiencing. This began of course in the mind, “Gosh, I am so physically unwell” would replay in her mind and spirit until one day she realized that she was in agreement with ill-health.

Once she realized this she made a decision to come out of agreement with ill-health, and as she began to disagree with her chronic ill-health she became healthy. To this day she does not have the compromised health she was once experiencing.

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Pastor Irene

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As I’m thinking ahead to another ministry trip to Uganda I am remembering Pastor Irene in Iganga. She is a beautiful and powerful woman of God. Her heart and ministry have been forged through the toughest of circumstances and testings (as do most great things).

In the early days of her ministry, after the Lord had clearly directed her to Iganga, she tells of inquiring of God what was to be her influence and gifting. And the Lord gave her Jordan.

Jordan as we know it from the scriptures is the river that Nahum washed himself in seven times to be healed of his leprosy (2 Kings 5:1-14). Jordan as Pastor Irene knows it is a small pond of water about five minutes walk from her home and the church that she pastors.

I was told story after story from others that had gathered the same time I was there about how they themselves had come and dipped themselves seven times in this Jordan and had found healing. One woman had breast cancer and came and dipped and the cancer disappeared.

I’ve been to Pastor Irene’s place twice now. The first time was just for a Sunday service and lunch afterwards (along with this visit to Jordan as you see here). The second time I stayed a couple of nights and days.

While Pastor Irene moves powerfully in the Spirit the area in which she lives is darkened by oppressive spirits. It is hard to be there, and yet she by her faith and obedience in the Lord knows it is her work to declare his presence in that place.

The last afternoon of my ministry time alongside her there had been much worship and celebration and prayers in the Lord. Pastor Irene herself was spent as God poured through her and onto others. She then got down on her knees and with arms raised cried out, “If only someone would come and pray over me.”

I know how she felt. I’ve been there. Pouring out to others, giving and giving some more and then wondering how might I be encouraged as a leader.

Within a seconds time I realized that I was the one to pray over her. So I went and put some olive oil on my hands, the same they had been using for everyone else, and I went to her and touched my hands to hers.

There was all sorts of rolicking in the spirit then. I cannot describe the incredible privilege of anointing and praying over this amazing woman of God.

(did I mention that every time I am there she washes my feet and blesses on me too – this receiving from each other is called mutual submission and is the hallmark by which unity in the body happens)

Now, when I pray over someone the Lord gives me the words to say and an image in my mind’s eye of what to declare for him or her. Here on this warm afternoon in Iganga it was the same. There had been something over her since childhood, darts of some kind in the spirit realm, and so in the name of my Lord Jesus Christ is simply spoke these away and soothed her wounds with the oil of the lamb.

In clear terms, I spoke against the bad stuff against her, and I spoke God’s peace and healing and refreshment for her (Matthew 18:19). It was a lovely time. We ended up on our knees together on the dirt floor and simply fellowshipped in the Spirit together and as a witness to all those in attendance.

When I think of returning once more to Uganda, this time to many more places than I’ve yet been, alongside many other leaders, I recall this simple ministry to Pastor Irene. In many ways this sums up the work that I do. Leaders, no matter what country, are giving out in enourmous measures.

They are the communities healers, wisdoms, teachers, preachers, prayer warriors, and encouragers, and who is to encourage them? Who is to lift them up and refresh them in the Spirit of our Lord?

At CCI we are bringing spiritual refreshment first to leaders and then to their congregations. It is a work that touches beyond our minds and into the depths of our hearts. God, in his mercy, delights to refresh us and I am simply honored to stand alongside agreeing in the Lord to this work over his many servants.

In this same vein, many blessings to each of you today. May the power of our Lord, His peace and grace and touch of life and wisdom break in upon your days in increasing measure. We simply agree together saying yes and amen to the touch of God in all of our lives.

Come Lord Jesus Come.