History of Life Saving Stations

Norman and Gloria Higgins are veteran missionaries to Mexico and Baja California, sent from Blanding Boulevard Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida. During 36 years of ministry in different parts of Mexico, they have seen many people come to know Christ, discipled many others, and trained nationalist men to pastor their own people. Over the years as they established new churches, they saw the need, along with other missionaries, to start a four-year Bible institute to train nationalists to reach the people of Mexico for Christ. In 1997 on the outskirts of Tijuana, Mexico, God opened the door to El Camino Bible Institute. In the early beginnings of the institute, they lived even without the comforts of electricity and running water.

Today, eleven years later, students are being trained by the missionaries. They are taught to evangelize as the early church did. They go regularly door to door, sharing the Gospel, and people are added to the church every week! Now, El Camino sees 350 to 400 people attending church services every Lord ’s Day. 

In addition to the Bible institute and the church, El Camino now provides an orphanage that houses over 30 children. At El Camino, these children who had been abused, abandoned, and forgotten, now receive love and caring personal attention, as well as food, clothing, housing, education, and spiritual nourishment, as well. The hand of the Lord was clearly evident in the work that was being done at El Camino.

While flying home from a missions trip in August of 2007, a young Christian named Thomas Crook was sharing with Joe Rayl and Phil Minnick that a friend of his who is a doctor would like to go on a missions trip with the team sometime. Phil said, "A still, small voice hit me like a bolt of lightning thirty thousand feet in the air. These precious people could use a medical station. We envisioned multiplied seed for the kingdom of God. Thank you, Jesus."

From there, the men began to pray and Life Saving Stations was born. Since then, a medical station has been built, thanks to the prayers and financial support of Christians who have caught the vision. The team's first medical mission will take place in August 2009. To God be the glory! It is awesome to live out dreams and visions for the kingdom of God.

Daniel 12:3: And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.

It was during a missions trip to El Camino a few years later that the theme, "Seeing the World through the Cross," was coined. At the top of a low mountain at the edge of the El Camino campus is a spot marked by a wooden cross and stones for an altar that has become a place of prayer. It was during one such prayer session with a few of the men on that missions trip that Bruce Collett asked God to let them "see the world through the cross." The phrase stuck and has become a byline of Life Saving Stations.