My Experience with Thin Blue Line Ministries

By Dale Kersting

My first trip to Central America was the result of sickness. My good friend (Ned) was the original choice to go, but just before the trip he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. (Not to worry – after being told he had six months to live, he has since recovered completely and is as healthy as a young mountain goat.) Being similarly trained, I was the next in line for this opportunity. I had spent the first 14 years of my adult life as a military policeman; I had been through the state reserve police academy and had a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. I knew that my part on the trip would be to train the local police in self-defense techniques. Unfortunately, the self-defense training they receive in most Central American police academies is often inadequate or antiquated.

I also knew the training they would receive would help open the door of trust. We didn't just train them, we loved them. They knew that we had invested a lot of time, money & effort just to be with them. For the most part, they appreciated the tactics we showed them and wanted more. The classes would always seem to start slow as the officers got a "feel" for us and tried to figure out what we are bringing to them. Then the mood would slowly transform to excitement and anticipation as they would learn new techniques and start asking questions. I really enjoyed watching the people who were the most reserved and standoffish get excited about learning how to disarm a gunman or throw someone over their shoulder. I would know they were "into it" when one of them would insist on using the technique you just taught them on one of the trainers. Eventually the gauntlet would be thrown down and they would expect you to prove to them that the technique worked in real life situations. That was always fun too. It's all about trust.

As I said before, the training was a way to love them so they would trust us enough to open their hearts and minds a bit so we could talk to them about God. After each training session Pastor Ken would speak to the group about God in a way that brought it home to each officer. Stress is a natural and ubiquitous part of police work – especially when you are undertrained, underequipped and working in an openly hostile environment. Officers live with the stress and find ways to distract themselves from it or medicate the pain it produces in ways that produce more emotional, spiritual and (eventually) physical pain. The problem is that these "solutions" are really just desperately poor substitutes for God. The answer they are so hungry for is a relationship with Jesus Christ.

When Pastor Ken speaks to the officers, he walks through the door of their every-day pain and offers them the truth of Christ. After my part of the training I would sit at the back of the group that Pastor Ken was speaking to. The same process would inevitably occur. At first they would appear passive if not disinterested as they listened and evaluated what he was bringing to them. Then they would begin asking questions and eventually become full participants in the conversation. The more time they had with him, the more questions they would ask. Finally, here was someone who understood the stress of police work who wasn't judging them and who had an answer.

I was always amazed at how quickly they accepted and understood the spiritual aspect of their world as compared to here in the United States. The danger and immediacy of life in much of Central America provides much less opportunity for the jaded type of continuous distraction we seem to live in here. As the teaching progressed, a sense of urgency would infuse the group. They recognized that what they were learning could change their lives and that they had a very limited amount of time to receive and understand it. Many would accept Christ as their savior that day. Afterward, a spokesman for the group would always thank the trainers for the self-defense portion of the class before they would turn to Pastor Ken and recognize that his teaching was the one they really needed – and the real reason we were there. There is no substitute for Jesus Christ.

Of course, each mission became a personal time to experience God in new and deeper ways. I've been on seven trips so far and on each trip God would bring that certain person into my world that He would speak to me through. When I began going on these missions I was deeply insecure and bitter. In response, God introduced me to a waiter who worked three jobs and saw his family for a few hours each Sunday – and who was grateful to God for it. He was in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to provide me with an excellent example of having: a.) An eternal perspective, b.) A good attitude, and c.) Deep gratefulness to God. Many people, myself included, would be miserable in his position. However, this man literally beamed with contentment and, yes, gratitude. He knew that God had given him everything he had and they weren't burdens as much as opportunities.

On each trip, God would give me insight into why I was trapped in a certain belief (lie) about myself and show me the way to being healed and whole in that area. It has been a process and God is most certainly not done with me. I've learned to experience His love and to appreciate what I have more than I thought possible. I am a different person than the anxious, conflicted man that first stepped off the plane in El Salvador. I thought I was working for God, but the reality is that He has been working in me.

As we start, it might be good for the reader to know that probably every story I will tell you of salvation has been under the radar except for God Himself. No one really hears about it or knows about it. So here we go..

I was asked to speak to officers which is more difficult than to recruits because they are older, more experienced, and they are definitely hardened officers. Many of them have turned to addictive things to help them deal with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Most of them don't even know they have PTSD. I was standing with the commander of a base, somewhere in Central America (it is a base that at some point in America's history our marines attacked and overtook. Now we are allies). It was about 9:00 am and from the tarmac I can see acres of openness surrounded by a jungle wall so thick that it's just not worth the money to build a road through it.

At this point I had no idea how many officers I was going to talk to (I was thinking about 10 to 20 officers). As I looked across the openness, I saw row after row after row of marching officers coming our way, more than 1500! At first it didn't register that these were the people I'd be addressing. Actually I was busy taking pictures of them because it was majestic and beautiful to see that many people walking in complete unity. As they got near, I put my camera up and stood by the Colonel. He said, "These are the men that you are going to be talking to".

There were between 1,500 and 2,000 officers! It took me one full week speaking five times a day to get through all the officers. We were in a subtropical area and everything was done outside in the subtropical sun. Man! That can really wore me out! Walking around in the mud and water, mosquitoes etc. it just wasn't the best conditions for speaking.

The first group that I spoke to was just like I described earlier; hardened and didn't want to be there. They were there because they were ordered to be there. As time drew near, I became more anxious and started wondering "what in the world I was going to talk to them about?" I know they had heard evangelists before and knew about Jesus. They knew I was a pastor-so what's going to be different? (By the way, I was asked to be there because of the lack of success of the people who preceded me.) The Colonel who is second highest in command is a Christian and was actually shot during the invasion of the U.S. and he knew these men needed help.

At this time, I began to ask questions that have become the familiar questions I ask all around Central America. One of them is "how many people in here have killed someone?" It was a hard question to ask and I don't know why I asked. I think, at first that it jolted everybody, but slowly one by one hands began to come up, to the point where I was getting overwhelmed, and so were the police officers who were with me from the US. They were beginning to be physically moved by how many officers raised their hands. So I asked another question "how many of you know someone that has been shot or killed?" Everyone raised their hand. I realized right then I walked into an arena that only God could get me through. He was the only hope for those men as they began their journey of healing; dealing with the things that have gone on in their lives. They were coming to the realization that they could be saved and the realization that salvation is free. I started to ask more questions because I knew with the questions I had just asked there had to be a lot of darkness in their lives. As I began to talk to them about where they lived, there came a point where I shared that I'd just come from another country next to theirs, and the day I left seven officers had committed suicide. That statement was a turning point where they could no longer restrain their emotions (which is good but it creates a whole different mess). What do you do with 400 officers that are beginning to feel and allow things to come out? That's when I let them know that they could be saved and that Jesus could live inside them and that all they had to do was believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He's the Savior of the world. He became the Savior of the world through the finished work of the cross. Most of these men have been told they can't be saved because they have killed someone. Most Honduran churches teach that if you carry a gun you cannot be saved.

They are familiar with the story of Christ but no one has ever told them they can be saved and they don't have to put down their guns or change careers to have the security of going to heaven. The bible teaches there is nothing we can do in ourselves that would make us righteous enough to get into heaven. It teaches that we are all sinners and are in need of a Savior to redeem us from the punishment of our sin. The Bible puts us all in the same boat. The grace of God is so powerful that these men began to cry and weep; there were only ten men in the first session that did not acknowledge that they received the free gift through Jesus Christ by faith.

These ten or so men, made it very clear that they weren't going to. One of the strange things in my line of work is that all people I reach out to all carry guns. There are times they have a look in their eyes that says just the thought of a God loving them enough to save them is so inviting to the deepest part of their souls, that to take that risk to believe it and it not to be true, would kill them. There are moments while I am talking that some would like to kill me because I am telling them something they want so bad it's indescribable. They have a belief system that tells them they can't have it. That's a living hell! In their unbelief they start to hate the messenger but love the message. Now multiply that by ten thousand! That's just one angle the evil one uses to trap them in so they don't ever believe. The reason I say this is when I am in a third world country where the country itself has no hope, and the people that are leading have no hope, and you bring in the Hope of all hopes – the message is either going to pierce their heart or it's going to pierce the pain they already have within them. They see me as the one causing this extreme pain. In other stories I will expose more of this and other tactics that the evil one uses to keep people enslaved.

At the end of the week 95% of those officers received Christ. For most, it was the first time they were able to receive love and to feel it through Jesus Christ. It changed their whole demeanor without changing their circumstances. Their salvation was "under the radar".