2001 Overview

Posted: May 05, 2017

Earthquake Relief in El Salvador

Highway in El Salvador closed from earthquakes and landslides

After returning to the U.S. on December 12th, 2000, the Lord gave Greig direction for their next trip to El Salvador.

The day Greig was attending his sister Diane’s wedding in Dallas, Texas, a devastating earthquake struck El Salvador, hitting many areas he had visited. A short time later, on February 13th, another major earthquake struck the other side of El Salvador. With these disastrous events, it was even more evident why God had led them to El Salvador when He had. Soon after the earthquakes, they headed back to El Salvador. Greig and Ed returned to devastated, yet fertile, hearts where God’s message would grow. The people were already in poverty and the quakes had set them back even further economically. Despite all this, Grieg knew that God would turn the curse into blessing!

Greig and Ed drove from Phoenix with a van full of Bibles, school supplies and other necessities on March 3rd, 2001. They also brought financial contributions for rebuilding schools, human needs, and ministry tools according to the provisions the Lord gave them through partner donations.

Greig told the congregations how God had led them to the area, followed by the message God wanted them to deliver: Unity. (Unity among Christ’s followers is the only prayer in the Gospels that Jesus prayed for that has not been fully answered. As unity occurs, the Church walks in power and, as a result, many others will be brought into the Kingdom of God.) Greig and Ed were confident that the Lord was going to confirm to the people that He indeed sent this ministry to them.

It was this trip that the Lord led Greig to Stan and Cherryl Runnels, a couple who were a great help to Greig in guiding him in his new direction in life. Stan is the president of New Life League International (NLLI), a non-denominational Christian missions organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. (NLLI has done everything from planting churches to operating orphanages around the world. They have also put the printed Word of God into the hands of millions of people in many languages since 1954.)

Greig spent most of 2001 unaccompanied by Ed in El Salvador working with pastors and other members of the congregations and encouraging church unity. Greig saw the Lord change the hearts of many in San Juan Opico.

UNEO Begins in El Salvador

In 2001, the Spirit of God began to unify His people in El Salvador in an incredible way. The local pastors began meeting and praying with each other and deciding how they would share various things to increase their evangelistic power in San Juan Opico. The pastors created an organization called Union Evangelica de Opico, (UNEO). Their sole objective would be to encourage the working together of the whole body of Christ in their area. Each leading officer of UNEO would be a pastor from a different church and each church would have a spiritual or material gift that the other churches did not have. The Lord made sure that anything this ministry helped with financially would only increase their need for one other.

(To help put into perspective of how miraculous this really is, Tacualhuya is a town about 10 kilometers from San Juan Opico. It is smaller than San Juan Opico and has 3 Assembly of God fellowships that do not even work together!)

Greig felt like it was all a dream as he was seeing things happen that he never thought would take place. Greig has a sincere belief that the Lord is causing things to occur very quickly as His reappearing nears. This coming together of churches was one more lesson in doing what we as believers are supposed to do and the God of the impossible doing the rest.

The Spirit gave Greig instructions to leave El Salvador long before the end of his second trip and, little did Greig know, God had been setting things up for the progress to continue without him. Greig met two people from that area during the last few months of his second trip that were going to be taking over after he left. In fact, Greig had no idea that the Lord was preparing them for the task until his last week there. Their names were Elida Quijano and Carlos Maravilla and they would be able to accomplish many things that Greig could not have accomplished.

Elida, president of the San Juan Opico chamber of commerce and a leader in the multi-denominational Christian women’s group, AGLOW, has strong ties to the Catholic community in San Juan Opico. Carlos is more technically gifted than anyone else Greig met in San Juan Opico, having worked in television productions for many years. Neither one has strong ties with a particular denomination but is dedicated towards building the whole church.