Cuba Mission Trip 2025

This past February, I had the privilege of traveling to Santiago de Cuba with a small team, with the purpose of bringing both physical and spiritual support to the community and equipping pastors to training believers in evangelism, discipleship, and church planting.

In Cuba, the people are hungry for the Gospel. Every church service I attended was packed shoulder to shoulder, with no empty seats available and people standing outside windows or doorways, eager to hear the Word. These churches have no air conditioning - only house fans mounted to the walls, circulating warm air. They also experience unpredictable rolling power outages that can last anywhere from a few minutes to an entire day. Yet, despite these challenges, the Cuban people remain resilient in their faith, never allowing a lack of amenities to stop them from seeking the Lord.

When speaking with local pastors about the challenges they face, a common struggle emerged: restrictions. Church expansion requests are routinely denied or it is difficult to obtain the necessary resources. Every pastor I spoke with expressed a desperate need for a larger space – because they already have people ready to fill it.

Another major challenge is the opposition toward Christianity. Many pastors face persecution, including imprisonment, discrimination, and threats to their family’s safety. As a result, some are forced to make heartbreaking decisions of whether to remain in country or seek asylum elsewhere. This leaves churches in a vulnerable position, lacking the leadership found in a senior pastor. Our teaching focused on equipping these pastors to share the load and raise up others to plant churches, ensuring the Gospel continues to spread despite the obstacles.

Our target audience for this trip was pastors in the mountains, where resources and support are even more scarce than in the cities. Each day, we woke up around 5am, boarded on old school bus that took us several hours into the mountains. Each conference hosted around 80-100 pastors, many accompanied by their wives, who plays a critical role in their husband’s ministries.

Our team divided the teaching material, with each of us presented a different portion. This approach allowed both us and our translators to have breaks between sessions. After each section, we held Q&A sessions and gathered feedback to ensure the pastors fully understood the material. It was incredible to see their hunger for the Word and how intently they absorbed and applied what they learned.

Beyond the training, we made time to connect personally with the attendees. We asked about their needs, greatest concerns, and personal and spiritual struggles. When multiple people shared similar burdens, such as where their next meal would come from or safety for their family, we prayed over them individually or as a group, lifting their needs before the Lord.

After a long bus ride back into the city, we gathered for dinner as a team before being separated and sent to local house churches to preach to eager congregations hungry for the Word. By the time we returned to our rooms around 11pm, it didn’t take long for exhaustion to lead us into a deep sleep – only to wake up and do it all over again the next morning.

Over the course of six days, we witnessed 18 people that accepted salvation, performed 28 baptisms, and left knowing another 10 baptisms were scheduled for the following week. We trained over 300 pastors in discipleship and church-planting strategies and distributed hundreds of bags of much-needed supplies to the people. By the numbers, this trip was undoubtedly a success. But what those numbers fail to capture is the profound impact the Cuban people had on me.

These are people who face real struggles, yet their faith remains unwavering, driving them to seek and cry out to God even more. I will forever treasure the privilege of hearing and witnessing their worship. When I read in the book of Revelation about God’s people gathering together, worshipping and praising and crying out , Holy Holy Holy….I can hardly imagine it looking much different from what I experienced in Cuba.

I pray that every American will have the opportunity to witness true worship – worship that is not concerned with who is watching, the temperature of the room, the song selection, or whether the lights are the right color. Worship is unapologetic, unashamed and unhindered by fear, arms raised in a posture of surrender, voices crying out as if God were standing right in front of them, and all earthly distractions fading away in the presence of the Father.

I have a recording of the Cuban believers singing “Goodness of God”, and every time I hear it, I am moved to tears. These are a people who may go weeks without seeing meat on their plate. These are a people who risk imprisonment for simply possessing too much powdered milk. And yet, their voices rise in worship, proclaiming God’s goodness with every fiber of their being and thanking Him for what little they are blessed with.

As I bring this to a close, I want to encourage you to remember our brothers and sisters in Cuba. The Cuban church is thriving despite immense hardships, and we have an opportunity to stand with them. Pray for these pastors and congregations, that they may continue to persevere and spread the Gospel. Pray about coming along side and supporting future mission efforts, whether through giving, going, or praying. And lastly, let’s examine our own hearts – may we earnestly seek the face of God with the same reverence as the Cubans even through our abundance, and may we seek to worship with the same passion and surrender that I witnessed there.

Aaron Stonebrook
Cuba Mission Team Member