About 100 such meetings were affected. Because communist officials have denied churches the freedom to build larger facilities, Cuban pastors typically start new congregations in homes. Meanwhile, pastors who do have their own buildings are forced to schedule multiple services. Overflow crowds are seated outside, near windows. They stand in the aisles.
Children sit in front on the podium.
And you see faces peering into the church from all the windows. Owensbey, a member of New Life Christian Fellowship in Jacksonville, conducts evangelistic meetings in churches throughout Cuba. He says unusual openness to the gospel exists on the island, and churches are in a state of revival. But the government does not allow believers to conduct open-air evangelistic meetings and limits the number of services a church can conduct. In one service Owensbey led last year in a Methodist church in Guantanamo, a man was dramatically delivered from demon possession while a crowd watched.