A Challenge to Live

By Carl Luepnitz

Riveting experiences from both the US Army and as a missionary all play out upon an international stage in the thirty countries where Carl has lived or visited.

Carl‘s life is an open book about big decisions. Decisions that led to blessing and disaster. Yet whether he was in Iran or along the communist border of East Germany, one thing never failed: the merciful, loving, kind, and all-powerful presence of God was always there for Carl.

Carl will convince you that even though life is a challenge to live, God is way bigger and you can do all things he calls you to do through Christ who strengthens you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Sep 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781489719188

Carl Luepnitz

Carl’s experiences in twenty six years as an Army Officer followed by forty years on the mission field have given him a unique perspective to share the Lessons Learned on the Mission Field. His military service in both command and staff positions at many levels of authority included working with civilian and military in the United States and many foreign countries. His time in the Pentagon, as a Battalion commander at Fort Hood and assignments in France, Germany, Taiwan, Vietnam and Iran are all noteworthy in the plan God developed in his life. As a missionary, Carl continued to interface with thousands of people from all walks of life in Mexico, Peru, Hong Kong, Singapore, China and other points along the way. His life time of endeavors with their near death experiences and miraculous conclusions will have you laughing, sitting on the edge of your seat and on your knees.

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Copyright © 2018 Carl Luepnitz.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

LifeRich Publishing is a registered trademark of The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-1917-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-1918-8 (e)

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 09/10/2018

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked (AMP) are taken from the Amplified Bible, Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Dedication

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I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE NO LONGER WALKING IN THEIR FIRST LOVE OF THE LORD JESUS AND LONG FOR A RETURN OF HIS INTIMACY IN THEIR LIFE. I PRAY THESE PAGES WILL STIMULATE YOU TO AGAIN ABIDE IN HIS LOVING PRESENCE AND THAT THE LORD’S DESTINY FOR YOU WILL BE FULFILLED.

CONTENTS

Dedication

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1     Getting My Attention

Chapter 2     A Conflicting Foundation

Chapter 3     Changes and Challenges

Chapter 4     The Favor of the Lord

Chapter 5     Guadalajara: The Lady on the Bus

Chapter 6     Prophetic Leading and Mission

Chapter 7     Puerto Escondido: A Hidden Port and Land of

Dreams

Chapter 8     Chosen in Peru, Hong Kong, and China

Chapter 9     A Glorious Finish

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Appendix D

About The Author

Contact The Author

FOREWORD

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I was introduced to Carl and Helen more than three decades ago. It was my privilege to have gone in and out of Mexico for many years and ministered with Carl. I saw firsthand a New Testament believer living in the book of Acts. I watched his ministry grow and affect the nation of Mexico. Even in the latter years of his ministry when some would consider retiring, he and Helen traveled to China to minister to those in need.

When I met Carl he had something of the Holy Spirit I wanted. You, too, will meet this man as you read this book. A Challenge to Live is an adventure of a man who walked in the supernatural. He is truly a man living in the natural with a supernatural anointing. From the very beginning, Carl was committed to the will of God, whether in the military or on the mission field. When he received the baptism of the Holy Spirit it launched him into a new life of miracles. He has seen thousands healed, filled with the Spirit and supernaturally delivered of demonic powers.

As you walk through these pages of A Challenge to Live you will see modeled how a New Testament believer can live! If you have never known the Lord you will find a hunger rising within to know this real Jesus. Perhaps your faith and passion for Jesus has cooled down. Then you will read and rise to a new love and passion for the Lord. You cannot read this book with an open heart without being challenged to take a higher step toward the person of Christ. The life journey of Carl and Helen Luepnitz will move your heart to a greater glory in Him.

As I took this journey through these pages of A Challenge to Live I was stirred to see a man of God who walked in Godly love and was continually given God’s favor. He like Paul, has spoken to my heart these words: imitate our example. 2 Thessalonians 3:7.

As you read these stirring words, I hope you hear the heart of this Godly man. Feel his pain; see his passion for the Spirit and the Word. Hear the stories of a God that did it through him and will do the same through you. My prayer is that you will never be the same when you turn the last page of this great book. Thank you Carl and Helen for sharing your life with us.

-Doc Shell

Founding Pastor, Christ Chapel

Florence, Alabama

PREFACE

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BEFORE I STARTED A book I had contact with people who asked me if I was writing a book. Most of these people had participated with me in ministry activities some time over the years and were thirsting to know more about the God they saw manifested. Even people who hardly knew me would say, I want to see what you are writing. I believe God was using them to stimulate me to write a book, so I started to write a biography. During the time I was writing the biography a lady gave me a word from the Lord. She stated, The book is to bring people back to the Lord who have fallen by the wayside.

In prayer the Lord gave me the title for the book: A Challenge to Live. One of my great- granddaughters received a vision of the book cover. The bottom half was a path through green grass to a cross in the middle of the page. The top half, above the cross, was black, rolling, menacing storm clouds. I believe the lower half of the book cover represents years I spent walking in the grace of God with great success, health, blessings, good children, and a loving, supportive wife. I believe the black, menacing clouds of the upper half of the book cover indicates the time in my life when I was fighting against near-death infirmities, including two infections that left my mind almost blank. It was also a time when Helen, my wife, was coping with demonically inspired rebellion. I thank the Lord that the darkness is past history.

While I was writing this book the Lord brought to my mind several people who needed help. He said, Your book will help them. It is my earnest desire to help set millions of people free all over the globe. That is why I wrote this book.

A Challenge to Live centers around the first eighty-five years of my life. It presents a multitude of interesting experiences in every stage of my life that were challenges; some of which were to my very existence.

These challenges reflect the presence of an active, deceitful enemy who is out to kill, steal, and destroy. However, they mainly present a merciful, loving, kind, caring, and all- powerful God who was always there to take me through every experience, each with an ending that left me smelling like a beautiful rose even when surrounded by thorns of the enemy. The demands as a missionary call for absolute obedience to the Lord, and the many challenges every day require God-inspired decisions. Some of the decisions I made as the Lord was training me were not of Him and had disastrous results; however, God did not give up on me, and He will not give up on you either.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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MY HEARTFELT THANKS GO to the people who contributed in a significant way to this book’s existence.

To Darren Hibbs, who has been a trusted counselor regarding the entire book development and its printing.

To Robin Sewell, who contributed her very valuable time to typing from longhand papers. I greatly appreciate her contribution to the development of this book.

To Pastor Bernadette Smith for letting the Lord speak through her to tell me, The book is intended to bring people to the Lord who have fallen by the wayside.

To David De La Riva for letting the Lord speak through him to tell me, This book will make people jealous of Carl, and they will say, ‘If Carl can do it, so can I.’

To Lola Joyce for her English edit of this book.

To my dear wife, Helen Luepnitz, for her contribution to the text and her assistance in typing and editing.

CHAPTER

1

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GETTING MY ATTENTION

YOU ARE HEALED.

Those words pierced through me like a knife, but not like the one that had been in my back for decades. Forty-five years of varying degrees of pain ended with those three words.

I wasn’t supposed to be in Dallas that evening. I should have been in Copperas Cove, Texas, going about my normal routine. But this wasn’t normal. Nothing about this was normal. I wasn’t in pain anymore. I was healed!

Those words had far deeper meaning than just my physical healing. For the first time in my life I understood the considerable depth of God’s love for me and how He cared for me. Those three words were the beginning of a transition in my life that would cause me to live differently. Those three words would come out of my mouth hundreds of times in the years to follow when I, myself, would proclaim them over others. I believe those three simple words weren’t just a transition for me. They were a challenge, and I believe they are a challenge for you too. A challenge to live.

Genesis

Growing up on a farm in Northern Michigan, I would often bend over to pick potato bugs off the plants. This bending over caused me misery. If I stood for a long time or stooped, I would have a wrenching lower back ache. When I turned my head quickly, I would get a shooting pain in my neck.

I don’t remember my brothers or sisters complaining of pain like me. I just considered it part of my life, and I never knew any different. To a degree, the lower back pain and the neck pain, along with a sunken sternum, were there from birth. I was my mother’s eighth child, born when she was thirty-eight years old, in the midst of the Great Depression.

I wasn’t aware of the causes of the pain until many years later when a chiropractor’s X- rays revealed that two of my vertebrae in my neck had little or no cushion between them. It was bone on bone. Several vertebrae in the lower spine were almost as bad. Stretching my body out on a chiropractor’s table would relieve the pain until I bent over again. I may have been predisposed to back pain, but it wasn’t just my genetics that would crush my body. Many years later, after two years in the army, I decided to become a paratrooper to get the hazard pay increase it offered. It was exciting but dangerous. Army paratroops in those days looked nothing like what you probably imagine when you think of people parachuting for fun. We had little control over our parachutes like people do now, and the landings, especially at night with full combat gear, were very hard.

The Jump

One jump in 1956 ended in a very dangerous landing. My unit was jumping over the Eighty- Second Airborne Division Training Area at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, at 2:00 a.m. I spotted my landing site in the pale moonlight, which I believed to be a clearing in between some trees. A second later I came crashing down, not into a clearing but onto the edge of a large artillery shell crater. In the air I had prepared to do my standard landing fall with full combat gear by impacting in sequence: feet first and rolling backward to my shoulders, then back to my feet so I could catch and deflate my parachute. It didn’t happen quite like that. The instant my feet touched the edge of the crater I couldn’t see in the moonlight. My heels collapsed down and flung the rest of my body backward into the crater. My body spanned it like a bridge as my head hit the other edge and knocked me unconscious. When I came to, I couldn’t move. I lay there for a while and was finally able to get my feet and arms to move again. I got up and made my way to the unit assembly area.

I was fortunate to have been in top physical condition with solid, lean muscle after many months in preparation for paratrooping school. I was able to maintain my physique even after the fall that night, albeit with a lot more pain.

Time Bombs

In the army, advancement is often withheld from people with injuries. That may seem harsh, but there is little room for weakness in the midst of combat. Encountering someone stronger on the field of battle can mean certain death. What might seem like discrimination to someone in an office job is safety for those in combat. I knew that if someone found me at the bottom of that crater, my military career was over. I was up for a promotion soon, so I picked myself up and hurried back, all the while in horrible pain. In the military you learn to hide the pain whenever you can. A few weeks later I went to the doctor, and he diagnosed me with a sprain. It was much worse than that; however, it would be several years before doctors noted and documented that from birth I was missing a cushion between two vertebrae and that several other cushions lacked substance. I was thankful that I didn’t have anything worse in my military record. My application for regular army officer was a consideration I took seriously, having received the highest score of any applicant at Fort Bragg up to that time. I still have the letter to the adjutant general indicating I had a perfect physical status score and was qualified for regular army promotion.

I never completely recovered from the 1956 back injury, and on occasion I suffered badly; but, it did not noticeably interfere with the quality or quantity of my work. Still, my back was like a ticking time bomb—you can either wait for it to explode or diffuse it. I chose to wait.

Traction

I was stationed in Taiwan in 1963 as a munitions advisor. One afternoon I was riding in the middle bench seat of a military van. We came to a stop for a left turn, and I twisted around to speak to someone on the row behind me. I saw it as soon as I had turned around, right at the moment of impact.

The bus never stopped. It hit us at full speed. The van I was in was no match for it, and we shot right off the road. It could have been much worse, but because I was twisted around, the accident left my back in horrible pain. Just like the last injury, I waited a few weeks before I went to the doctor, and again, I was diagnosed with a sprain. I was happy my back wouldn’t keep me from any career advancement. From that time on I had hip and sciatic nerve pain in addition to my normal back pain.

I lived with it for a while until I was reassigned to the Pentagon. If you are familiar with the Pentagon, you know how big a building it is and what goes on inside. The stress of the job, both mentally and physically, left me doubled over. I began using pain pills and muscle relaxers to manage the stress and pain, and with their help I survived my stint in Washington, DC, with honors.

My next assignment was at Fort Hood as the Commander of the One Hundred and Sixty- Ninth Maintenance Battalion, the largest battalion in the corps. As time went on, the pain got worse, and toward the end of my assignment I lost all feeling and use of my left leg. Because of my paralysis, the doctors at Fort Hood had me admitted to Darnall Army Hospital on base and placed me