Ministry Update: Spring-Summer 2024

We have been blessed to experience the Holy Spirit moving amongst us as we have been ministering. Here are a few highlights from what the Lord has been doing: 

 

Salinas

 

We ministered recently up near the Bay Area in the city of Salinas at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship. Salinas is a very historic town with deep roots in California’s development and is the home of writer John Steinbeck as well as one of the main centers of farming and agriculture for the state.

 

We had a blessed time ministering together at the Vineyard Church with our friend Dave who was baptized in the Holy Spirit some years ago through our ministry when we were ministering in Hawaii. Dave had a dream later on, about us coming up to minister in Salinas afterwards. We have been going there off and on since then and have been blessed to see many get filled, set free and healed over the years through the power of God. 

 

In this recent meeting at the Vineyard, we were already experiencing the Lord’s presence moving amongst us after preaching and sharing but then it turned into a more radical ministry time when a prophecy came forth about the Lord bringing a fresh outpouring… I called everyone forward and pressed into the word and the fire of God just poured out with a fresh empowering with many ending up on the floor receiving for some time, praise the Lord! 

 

We also had a divine appointment later on where we ended up ministering to a friend of Dave’s whom the Lord touched powerfully as we prayed for him, he had recently yielded to Christ after experiencing some trials. The Lord ministered to him as we prayed for him and was renewed and encouraged. 

 

We have had some ups and downs over the years with some leaders in that area who were less than excited about the work of the Holy Spirit happening through us. Nevertheless, on this trip Dave took us to visit a pastor with whom we had preached at his church long ago, which back at that time was not so open to the work of the Holy Spirit... However, the pastor has come around all these years later and is preaching the same message at his church now that we preached back then … sometimes you plant a seed thinking nothing came of it… yet it sprouts and grows all these years later, thank you Jesus!

 

It was also a blessing while in the area to get out to take in some of the awesome views out on the nearby Monterey Peninsula.

 

Orange County

 

We were blessed to join the newlyweds Patrick and Emily at a small fellowship where they lead worship in Orange County doing the worship with them as well praying for some people at the meeting when they were sharing the message together that evening. We prayed and ministered to some different people who got ministered to by the Lord’s power and it turned out that one of the people we ended up praying for was an old friend from the Anaheim Vineyard from years back. Was an awesome time praying for her as well as catching up after all these years. She wrote us later to tell us about how powerfully and personally she was deeply ministered to when we prayed for her, thank you Lord!

 

Patrick and Emily also joined us as we ministered in Orange County at a Hispanic service. We had a powerful move of the Holy Spirit at Centro Cristiano Esperanza after preaching on the righteousness that God credits to us by faith in Christ and how He gives us the Holy Spirit freely through faith by grace as well! We were glad to have Patrick and Emily there helping us pray for people! We had an awesome outpouring of the Holy Spirit that touched many who were there, including a couple of young girls who were about 10 to 11 years old that were filled very powerfully with the Holy Spirit with many manifestations of God’s power while tears streamed down their little faces! Many others who were there were also filled, empowered, and refreshed by the Lord’s presence, as well as a couple of people who also surrendered their hearts to Christ! Hallelujah!

 

Online: Meri’s Meeting on St Patrick & Lonnie Frisbee 

 

We ministered at an online meeting with our friend Meri whose Zoom meetings have grown to be quite sizable with many people online from different parts of the country. 

 

We shared about St Patrick and his evangelistic ministry in Ireland where he preached the Gospel as a missionary, having returned to Ireland due to a vision from the Lord, after being held captive there previously as a slave after he was taken by force from Roman Britain as a teenager. The Lord worked through his situation and led him to come back to Ireland bringing the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit. 

 

You can check out our video that has more of the story of the Real St Patrick at the Grace World Mission page on YouTube. We also shared about Lonnie Frisbee and what is called “incarnational missionary outreach” which is a missiology term to describe how, by having the same culture, clothing, style, etc., Lonnie Frisbee was able to relate and reach out to the hippies effectively during the Jesus People Revival, which was recently portrayed in the Jesus Revolution film. 

You can check out some of our videos that have more of that story on our channel: www.youtube.com/graceworldmission as well as all of the other videos we mention in this update.

 

Speaking of Lonnie Frisbee, we’ve been involved in some different Home Meetings in different areas over the years, sometimes called Prayer Fests, sometimes not official Prayer Fests but doing the same thing—which is gathering some people together to pray for the fullness of the Holy Spirit—amongst other things. We had an especially blessed home meeting in Carlsbad recently hosted by our friend Lauren, the Holy Spirit unexpectedly showed up in the early part of the meeting! We were just beginning…just talking with some of the people there about Lonnie Frisbee and the Mother’s Day Outpouring when the Holy Spirit took over and began moving way before we expected and we spent the rest of the night praying for each other as the Lord moved by the power of His Spirit! It was a powerfully renewing time! We have a piece we did on Lonnie Frisbee and the Mother’s Day Outpouring that you can check out on our Grace Notes blog.

 

Colorado and More Encounters Via St Patrick’s Day

 

Speaking of St Patrick, we had a wild divine appointment and encounter as we stepped out in faith recently. I was discerning that the Lord was leading us to head out to Colorado. However, we had nothing planned nor set up ministry-wise, but we felt the Holy Spirit leading us out that way for something of that nature…so we loaded up our vehicle and started driving out in that direction, making some stops on the way. 

 

One of the places we felt led to stop through on the way was Death Valley. There, we encountered an unusual prophetic sign at Badwater Basin, which is the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level. Badwater is an ancient dried-up lakebed. However, it was filled with water at that time when we stopped there! Hurricane Hilary (a Cat. 4 hurricane) came ashore last year in Southern California as a Tropical Storm and then stalled over Death Valley filling up the Badwater Basin with water while wreaking havoc on the national park which had to close for 3 months afterwards. While we were there and taking in the unusual phenomenon of this ancient dried-up lakebed filled with water at that time, the Lord gave me this Scripture:  Behold, I am doing a new thing, now it springs up, Do you not know it? Indeed, I put a way in the wilderness, In a desolate place—floods. Isaiah 43:19 (Literal Translation) You can check out a video about this visit  on our YouTube page.

 

So, we ventured on after that, buoyed by that sign from the Lord—it's not always easy stepping out on faith when you don’t know what the plan is. We continued on towards Colorado, which is quite a long drive, and as we crossed the border into Colorado, we got a phone call from a friend we have ministered with over the years, inviting us to come to his church shortly after that and minister. We let him know, Hey, we're already on our way.

 

We ended up ministering on their special “Mission Sunday Service” which also happened to be on Saint Patrick's Day! The Lord had a plan…we just had to be obedient to the leading of the Holy Spirit and follow! We shared about the missionary work of the real St. Patrick and also about how the Holy Spirit works in empowering us as believers to make us witnesses for Christ. There was a group of young men who were there who were baptized in the power of the Holy Spirit with some very powerful manifestations and gifts of the Holy Spirit flowing forth. We also ministered while we were in Colorado at the YWAM base in Denver with our friend Rosko. We shared about some of our own missionary adventures and then moved into equipping young people for an upcoming missionary trip praying over them for the empowering of the Holy Spirit as well.

 

We had some divine appointments in the mountains while we were skiing afterwards where we ended up using the story of the real St Patrick as a bridge to share the Gospel with some different people. One of those situations was quite remarkable: After a long day in the mountains where we both skied and rode bikes afterwards, we were quite hungry…to put it mildly…but places to eat were already closed when we got back, so we were praying what to do. We stopped at a bench to take a breather in this little mountain village and we found a boxed-up package of food from an Irish restaurant nearby. This food had been obviously forgotten. We waited quite a while and no one was around… the village had become quite a ghost town at this hour. We prayed and waited and got the confirmation that “the Lord had provided.” The order had not been touched nor had been opened up. After waiting for some time and realizing no one was ever coming back for it, we finally had ourselves a nice Irish dinner …divinely provided.

 

Then the next day we had some leftover Irish Stew from that food and we were beginning to eat some in a little hotel we we're staying in. A service worker there was quite helpful in assisting us with getting it heated up and even giving us some bread to go with it. We ended up witnessing to her and once again using Saint Patrick as a bridge to share the Gospel and it turned out—that of all the wild things happening with all this already—that her name was Patricia! Wow! So, we were witnessing to her using St Patrick as a bridge for sharing the Gospel while eating supernaturally provided Irish Stew while witnessing to a person with that same namesake! Wow again! We prayed for her and the Lord touched her heart! Along with experiencing a unique divine appointment and a unique form of provision, amongst other things, the Lord was really putting an exclamation point on the way the story of the real Saint Patrick can be used as a bridge in sharing the Gospel!

 

Holy Ghost Ski Stories 

 

We have recently completed some new videos. One in particular shares some more wild “Holy Ghost Ski Stories” that we’ve experienced in the mountains where we have had divine appointments and encounters, including leading people to the Lord, and praying for others who were radically touched by the Lord! 

 

Check out this video as well as other new videos like “The Holy Spirit’s leading towards ministry in Canada” on our YouTube page.

 

Anniversary and Beyond 

 

We are also thankful to be celebrating 32 years of marriage, having just had our anniversary. It was also just a year ago that our son Patrick got married, so we have a lot to be thankful for!

 

The Lord has continued to do a profound and deep work of healing and restoration in our lives—passing milestones often brings up things from the past—not always easy to confront things you grew up with that caused pain but praise God, the Lord has the healing balm in His merciful hands that He pours out through the Holy Spirit, hallelujah!

 

Historical Perspective 

 

There has been a systematic indoctrination going on in many of our nation’s campuses for a long time… Decades ago I experienced the extreme bias in secular universities of leftist professors who don’t teach but rather try and indoctrinate, and things have only become worse with this these days.

 

What a difference when I went to Fuller Theological Seminary, where actual learning was encouraged along with dialogue. I didn’t have to agree with every last thing or else have the professors attempt a public humiliation…There was allowance for freedom in thought and actual learning. While there, I found that there was also access to a wide range of resources they had to offer in their huge library, especially on historical topics.

 

We have been working to put those insights into action and inform and teach on the rich Christian History that led up to and involved so much of Western history, as well as America’s founding, which we have garnered through our own studies as well as during our Christian educational backgrounds.

 

This is something that has by and large been omitted from a lot of the teaching going on in many public schools these days. Moreover, we have also brought a unique “Spirit-filled” perspective to the topics, which is not normally found when these topics are taught or shared.

 

We have a wide variety of subjects ranging from the Reformation to revivals, to historical ministers and missionaries, and more. Videos and audio programs can be accessed on: YouTube, SoundCloud, iTunes, and other services, as well as music we’ve produced on: Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, and YouTube, as well as books that have had stories from our ministry published in them listed on our web page at www.graceworldmission.org

 

We greatly appreciate your prayers and support as we work to do our part to share the blessings we’ve experienced through our rich Christian heritage, as well as minister the fullness of the Kingdom of God to others.

 

Many blessings to you and may the Lord pour back to you pressed down, shaken together, and running over!

 

Bryan and Mercedes Marleaux

 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/graceworldmission

New Website Launched

Our website has a whole new look!

Check it out: http://www.graceworldmission.org

Other available resources and useful tools:

· YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/graceworldmission.org

· Grace Alone podcast on iTunes

· Companion Christian History Timeline for Grace Alone Podcast on iTunes

Pretty wild to be putting up a new website, it makes me think about my first introduction to the Internet way back when: I was working at a publisher and a colleague brought in this thing called a modem. “I can communicate with other computers with it.” he said. “What is the point of that?” I said dismissively…

With that great insight into the future we proceeded to find ourselves in the middle of this crazy dot-com boom and then suddenly bust. That was about the time we decided to finally get a clue and get on board and join the Internet party and launched our website—right when nobody cared about the web anymore, yay!!!

But it came right back around and everyone started to figure out well, yes I guess the web does have some actual uses. Yep, you can actually get access to a lot of helpful materials these days that actually don't freeze up every ten seconds.

So times have changed a bit If you’re using a halfway decent computer and not still on Windows 95 or AOL dial-up, guess what? You don’t have to go make yourself a ham sandwich and read the newspaper while you’re waiting for that confounded video to finally download. Yes, the modern age has arrived and you can actually get through a twenty-minute video these days in twenty minutes—what a concept!

We’ve geared up for what the web is best used for and have put together numerous video and audio programs on a plethora of subjects from Biblical Studies, Christian History, Missions, Signs and Wonders, Divine Appointments, and more. We have now actually begun to arrange them into cohesive playlists where you can easily find and watch and listen to audio and video programs from genres that relate to one another, we’re actually getting organized—miracles do happen!

All this hard work nobody paid us to do made us think we’d be real gluttons for punishment and do some more. So we slaved away—chained ourselves to the keyboard—and lo and behold after our skin has turned a few shades whiter locked inside with fluorescent lights, a new web page is born. While we were at it we thought, torture has its redeeming side too so why not rearrange everything.

A little background on our Audio and Video programs:

We’ve had the privilege to minister in numerous countries in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and on our last mission trip to Europe—we’re about to leave on our eleventh—we were in over 17 countries, including: Kosovo, Romania, Switzerland, France, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Italy.

While traveling through many different places I began to notice that many people’s knowledge of Christian history in the Body of Christ was pretty slim to nonexistent.

Some years ago while on a mission trip deep in Southern Baja, Mexico, where people don’t even have running water, I noticed that in spite of lacking some of life’s main essentials, everyone still had a TV with a DVD deck and a radio with a CD player. Even small plywood shacks with dirt floors had them. Yes, TVs, DVD players, radios, and CD players are more accessible than running water.

With that revelation we began to put together video and audio programs on different biblical and historical figures and topics, while using the same formats even people living in plywood shacks with no running water had access too.

One thing you learn quickly is that it takes a lot of resources and time in the research, recording, filming, and editing to produce even a short video. In spite of that, we have done our best to offer these videos free on the web, even though it isn’t free for us to produce them, while most other ministries charge for their resources. We have a passion to see the Body of Christ get built up and edified. It is essential to know how the truth of God’s Word and power of His Spirit has continued to change lives and shape history through the ages.

Do It Yourself! What?

A lot of this teaching and information is hard work to come by. I spent a small fortune at Seminary and wasn’t learning things about Christian History I thought I should and then heard the professors say: “Well, you gotta go do the hard work yourself and do research on your own,” when I asked some questions. And here I thought I was paying this overpriced institution all this money for that reason! “Why am I paying them all this money then and why do they need a salary, a parking spot, and so much more of my tuition money all the time then, if we gotta do all the work?”

Well, in spite of my complaining I still had to learn the vast majority myself, through God’s help and my own personal studies. Instead of just figuring out what case and declension that Greek word was in, we might have spent more valuable time learning how God’s power filled people like Charles Finney, and why he was used so radically by God. Well, at least I learned some $1000 dollar words, anyone up for a “paradigm shift”?

When I had an American Church History professor who didn’t even mention the “Azusa Street Pentecostal Revival” while covering that period—we’re only talking about one of the most important Christian events in the last century here—because “we have more important things to discuss” I knew then that we needed to produce our own materials.

So we have sought to focus on many important aspects of Christian History while avoiding some of the extraneous details that typically bore everyone to sleep. You know, looking back, I remember that somehow that Church History Professor still managed to bore everybody to tears and then even squeezed in “The Birth of Fuller Seminary” in spite of all their “more important things” to discuss.

So we’ve been hard at work and have sought to produce materials that can inform and inspire while focusing on important acts of the Holy Spirit working throughout the ages. You can watch and hear some important biographical accounts, reflections, and insight as well. It is information you should get (but probably won’t) in a seminary and beyond, as we seek to focus on relevant topics in God’s redemptive acts through the ages: In-depth Bible studies of books like Galatians and Acts, to testimonies of missions, miracles, and divine appointments, as well as important historical events like the the Reformation and how God’s revelation of grace in Martin Luther’s life changed the course of Western History.

A Few Disclaimers

These materials are in both English and Spanish because shooting two videos of the same topic twice is four times the work—or something like that—either way it is way more work and who needs that. Moreover, English and Spanish are the two most spoken languages in the world, so you can actually learn another language while listening.

We are open to suggestions of re-shooting solely in English, or solely in Spanish, only if your suggestion is accompanied by a large suitcase filled with cash (small bills only please). Otherwise, try to practice Ephesians 4:29 “…let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them.”

We do give permission to copy or duplicate our stuff; however, throwing them like frisbee's and beverage coaster use for DVD’s and CD’s (which we actually have seen some crazy kids at churches do) is strictly prohibited.

It may be noticed that we are human in some of our work and didn’t cover every aspect of a topic, or missed a point or two now and then. Working for free has its limitations!

In spite of being a bit direct with my jokes and references of my Alma Mater Fuller Seminary (they were the ones always saying I needed to learn to think critically- why not start with them) miraculously some of our materials are actually now in their David DuPlessis Center for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies as well as in the MacAllister Library. Being direct and having a sense of humor hasn’t barred us from being included in the lineup there—they actually even paid us for some of our materials—so I’ve gotten 1/100,000 of my tuition money back.

Lastly, on a more serious note

We do live in some incredibly changing times. The advent of the computer and computer programs together with the Internet give us the ability to create and edit audio and video content like never before seen. What used to require enormously expensive machines and production equipment that only Hollywood movie studios and music production houses could afford can now be done on a decent computer. There hasn’t been a technology sea change like this since the days of Gutenberg and the invention of the printing press. So, just like those students who took Martin Luther’s writings, reprinted them, and spread them all over the world shaking the nations, we also, like Paul, intend to “use every means available” (1 Cor. 9:22) to further the cause of Christ and build up His Body until the day of His return……

What!? He didn’t come back on May 21st !?! Oh no—stop running up those credit cards, looks like we’re gonna be here a little longer!!!

Hopefully you can take the time to check some of our stuff out!

Blessings to you!

Bryan, Mercedes, and Patrick Marleaux

Available resources and useful tools:

· Updated website: http://www.graceworldmission.org

· YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/graceworldmission.org

· Grace Alone podcast on iTunes

· Companion Christian History Timeline for Grace Alone Podcast on iTunes