Now I don’t mean Hotlanta or the home of the braves….I am talking about Asking The Lord! The July team for the World Race has been spending the past week in Gainesville, Georgia. This is the headquarters for Adventures In Missions. It has been an awesome week that is rocking my world in a spiritual way. We have been hearing great speakers, team building, and most of all pushing ourselves in a spiritual way.
One the very full first day of training camp, we were already placed in a state of stretching our comfort zone. We had to go out into Gainesville with people we just met to seek the Lord and reach out to others. This is where ATL or Asking the Lord comes into play. Asking the Lord is where you pray and most importantly listen to the Lord to show you a sign or a vision of where you can minister and help the needs of others. This was a completely new thing, but it worked beautifully.
So we got in our group of four, this consisted of Marissa Pratt, Zach Parish, Tara S. and myself. We gathered together and prayed before we left that God would show us and lead us to a place where people needed us. Then we hopped in the car and just drove. As we drove, we prayed together and “Asked the Lord’ to give us a thought, vision, or sign of where to go and what to do. After a few minutes nothing came. Suddenly a vision came into my head and I shared it with the others.
It was a very rainy day in Georgia, and I saw this vision of us standing on the street in the rain with signs held up that said, “Jesus will wash you clean!” Not really knowing what that meant or if thats what we should do, we prayed more about it and conversed as a group and decided to get the supplies to make some signs. While we were purchasing the supplies, Marissa wasn’t feeling it too much, and Tara S. had seen a street sign in her mind that spelled “Rutherford.”
With the supplies in hand, we decided to drive looking for rutherford rd. On our journey, we didn’t ever see rutherford but we came past the laundry mat downtown. We passed by once and all decided we should drive back to the laundry mat and let me tell you that it was exactly where we were needed. It was an incredible experience!
So we entered the laundry mat and Zach and I made our signs to stand out on the street with. As we were doing this, every child in the laundry mat came up to us to see what we were doing. We let them all help us make the signs and talked to them about Christo, how they said Christ, and told them how we were sharing the love of the Lord.
In the meantime, Marissa and Tara S. were walking around the laundry mat helping people do there laundry and asking if anyone needed a prayer. The Lord showed his face in the laundry mat. Marissa and Tara S. got to pray with a lady whose son has been in and out of jail and struggling with drugs. After they prayed with her, the girls asked her if she needed anything else and she said, “That was everything I needed, thank you so much!”
In the meantime, Zach and I went outside to hold the signs by the street. Our signs read, “Jesus wants to know you” and “Need Prayer, We’ll Pray for Free.” However, we didn’t even have to hold a sign. All of the kids came out with us and held the signs for us. They did a great job, and every car that passed slowed to read the signs. I doubt we would of had the same effect as the kids. Praise the Lord! We had numerous honks, thumbs ups, waves, smiles, and even a whoop whoop from the police car!
Lastly, we all got to pray with Maria Colstante. This lady needed some prayer. She is a single mom raising two kids here in the U.S.. (her kids helped us with the signs) She is from El Salvador and her family has been broken apart. She speaks broken english and is striving very heard to get buy and raise her kids well. She feels called to missions, but can’t possibly do that with the situation she is in. We all came to tears praying with her and she was so happy afterwards. I have her name and address and we will definitely follow up and continue to pray for her.
It was an amazing day of “Asking the Lord.” In the end we realized the laundry mat was exactly where the Lord wanted us to be. After all, if you look back at the original vision of holding a sign saying, “Jesus will wash you clean”, you will realize the laundry mat is where people are washing things clean. It was great to see the Lord work through us and as time goes on I am sure we will improve upon hearing God’s voice. 
