By John Rice
The Associated Press

CAMP CANAAN, Cuba · Paul Northrup raised his hands and shouted Alelujah! A congregation of more than 1,000 Cubans echoed back.

The small church that Northrup planted in central Cuba 50 years ago has grown and thrived since he left in 1959, becoming a small part of a broad movement that Cuban evangelicals have built across their socialist nation.

"They told us when we left, the work would fail," Northrup said. "There were seven churches then. Now there are 53."

Northrup, now 71, and his family traveled from Southern California to join with Cuban church members for a 50th anniversary celebration this month at a borrowed Methodist center called Camp Canaan, about 170 miles east of Havana.

For hour upon hour, they sang, clapped, prayed and preached in a big brick church whose wide-open sides let breezes cut the tropical heat.

"It makes me happy. It's kind of like our kids and grandkids," Northrup said.

Northrup came to Cuba with his wife, Vera, in 1953 as an independent preacher, carrying only "our clothes and an accordion." In Sancti Spiritus, he found a radio
station that sold him time for $6 a minute and he began to preach.

Soon he managed to establish a small church called Buenas Nuevas -- Good News.

A milkman who regularly passed by grew curious and decided to enter one day. "I idn't know that by entering, my life was going to change," said Eliseo Leon, who
is now president of Buenas Nuevas.

As Northrup built the church, Fidel Castro was building a revolution against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

Northrup recalled seeing rebels that Batista's men had hanged from streetlights. Another day, "Batista sent his planes in at night. One had a searchlight and the other
planes would strafe where they thought the rebels were.

"Not that it would have done any good against a .50-caliber [gun], but we took all the mattresses we had, piled them on a bed" and hid underneath, he said.

After toppling Batista, Castro's revolution veered toward socialism. Relations with the United States soured and the atmosphere grew uncomfortable for many
Americans.

Northrup said he left because his presence could make some think of Buenas Nuevas as a U.S. church: "We felt we'd hurt them more by staying." He later went on
to found Gospel Relief Missions, based in Mission Viejo, Calif.

Hundreds of other pastors, both foreign and Cuban, also left the country.

For the next 25 years, all religions struggled under an explicitly atheist government. Believers were barred from important jobs and were viewed with hostility by
officials.

"They were trying to make ends meet. There were some places they lost membership," said Marcos Antonio Ramos, a Miami-based preacher and historian of
Cuban Protestantism.

But the wall was starting to crack by 1984, when Castro attended a Protestant service with Jesse Jackson. The collapse of the Soviet bloc later led the government
to abandon official atheism and to openly, if warily, accept religious faith.

The arrival of Pope John Paul II in Cuba in 1997 drew attention to the island's Catholics.

The 1990s brought what Northrup called "a great awakening." Ramos estimated that weekly Protestant church attendance has roughly tripled since 1989 to 300,000
people, with an additional 100,000 Jehovah's Witnesses. He estimated Catholic attendance at about 150,000.

For Northrup, perhaps the best thing about the 50th anniversary ceremony was realizing he was not really needed for the church to develop.

"The work for a missionary," Northrup said, "is to plant a seed, get it growing and then move on."

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