COSTA RICA—On July 27th, 2010 I embarked on a “police training agreement journey” with a group of 36 Costa Rican officers from five different police bases (Guadalupe, Moravia, Coronado, San Pedro and Curridabat). Every Tuesday we would meet for one hour to study The Story of Hope (TSOH), followed by three hours of tactical training. The first week, I presented every officer with their own copy of TSOH and their own Bible, based on the agreement that they would study it, do the homework and APPLY what they learned. Also note worthy was the fact that if they didn’t bring their copies of TSOH and their Bibles to every session, we would do an absurd amount of push-ups in order to assist them in the remembering process and in the importance of always having their “spiritual weapons & armor” with them.

Week after week and story after story I witnessed the Holy Spirit convicting the hearts of these men and women. God’s Word is powerful and I witnessed this each week as we would use God’s Word to tackle and wrestle through a host of doctrinal lies they had believed their entire life.

The culmination of our course was a three day intense training program, finishing each day with two TSOH stories. When the time came on Friday September 17th, 2010, I challenged each one to make a decision--repent, surrender and follow the King of kings or reject His message and gift of eternal life. Only two options! I told them that waiting any longer to respond was simply a refusal and that each one was without excuse. Not only does creation call out His glory, but each one had studied and completely understood the full Gospel message for ten weeks.

Decision time

One by one officers came forward (in uniform and in front of their peers) to make their stand for Christ! Nine officers out of 36 passed from death to life that afternoon, followed by another commander Saturday morning (9-18-20) and an officer’s wife on Sunday evening (9-19-10).