Strachan launched the Evangelism-In-Depth initiative and established an unprecedented network of mission churches in Central and South America, specifically in Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
Meanwhile, Susan played her own independent role in the campaign by initiating the founding of a girls’ school in Costa Rica and sustaining a small farm to contribute to the mission through food provisions.
[2] At age fifteen, Strachan was sent to the United States and was immediately enrolled into the Wheaton Academy in Illinois to complete his secondary education.
During his undergraduate years, Strachan took a break to go back to Costa Rica, where he experienced tension and crisis while trying to live a life in complete surrender to God and contemplating continuing his parents’ work.
Strachan obtained a Master of Theology degree from Princeton Seminary in 1943, and immediately returned to LAM in Costa Rica without his family in 1944.
[3] Throughout the course of his mission work around 1948, Strachan traveled to Colombia, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Panama, Florida, Illinois, California, and New Jersey.
Strachan began to gain more clarity in the direction that he wanted LAM to go, and traveled around for recruits, visited seminary graduates, and continued to write love letters to Elizabeth back at home.
Moreover, the mission work of EID reflected what was called the “Strachan theorem”, which stated that “the expansion of any movement is in direct proportion to its success in mobilizing its total membership in continuous propagation of its beliefs.”[7] To practice this, Strachan went door-to-door sharing the gospel, mailed invitations to EID meetings, painted banners around town, and dropped handbills from airplanes.
EID pioneered a new strategy and program for missionaries; the movement underscored the role of the church and drew public attention to Christianity.
To the current day, EID serves as a catalyst for other missionary groups in countries like India, Japan, the Philippines, and Africa.
It has expanded its role and now partakes in mobile medical missions, construction projects, offers child care, and food shelter amongst other services.