Day 6: July 17, 2012
The started off with me helping with breakfast. We
had pancakes this morning and they were very good. Right after breakfast I went
with the team on a “Spiritual Scavenger Hunt.” We broke up into groups of five
or six and took translators with us. We had a list of things to accomplish like
take a picture with six kids, find ten pieces of chewed gum, trade something
fairly useless for something of value, find a clump of pigeon poop, or get a
copy of yesterday’s newspaper. But it also had some serious things like pray
with someone for healing or go and talk to someone you feel God is leading you
to.
We found an older lady with a cane and asked her
if we could pray for her. She said she had a lot of pain in her right leg and
that there had been a time where she couldn’t walk at all. So we prayed for
continued healing. I smiled during the prayer when I looked down and saw that
her husband that was with her was missing part of his pointer finger. It
reminded me of my own grandpa all the way back in Nebraska. Once again I was
reminded that we aren’t so different after all. When we were finished praying
the lady smiled and said that her heart was happy now. As we turned to leave I
noticed a lady in a blue shirt and blue ball cap uniform watching us. She was
handing out flyers in the park. We looked around to see how we might complete
the next task and another girl in my group was saying she felt like we needed
to pray with someone in the area we were in. I looked over at the lady who had
gone back to handing out flyers and really felt like we should talk to her but
the group had started talking to a guy with a bicycle. But he said he already
had Jesus in his heart and he didn’t have anything in particular we could pray
for him about. “Well I guess he wasn’t the one,” one of the girls said as we
walked away from him. “Let’s go talk to that lady over there,” I said, “She was
watching us really intently when we were praying for healing.” So we approached
her and started talking with her.
While translation was a little rough at first, she
was basically asking for prayer for her son who is prison in Nicaragua because
someone had framed him. We asked her about her relationship with God and she
said she had been in the church but had walked away from it because she had
strayed from God. The other girl in our group shared parts of her testimony
with her and encouraged her that God loved her no matter what. “Have you been
hurt by the church?” I asked her. “Yes, very much,” she responded. We continued
to encourage her that just because people in the church judged her doesn’t mean
God is judging her in the same way. We asked her if she wanted to recommit her
life to Christ and she was hesitant at first because she thought she had to go
to church to do it. But we told her she could do it right there. We prayed for
her as she recommitted her life to Christ. When we were done she reminded her
about praying for her son, but that time she led us in the prayer! Afterwards
she asked for information about our church and we gave her directions and she
gave us a phone number. This woman, Jasmina, broke my heart. But I was so glad
we were able to go and talk to her. I hope to see her in church on Sunday.
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