The other day we broke up into small groups and went evangelizing in an apartment complex near La Benediction, the church we are currently working with. The community within the complex was mainly Muslim or Catholic. Evangelism in Africa is different from the evangelizing that I am use to. Here, you go door to door and get invited into the owners home, or in this case apartment, and converse with them. We talked to several Catholic families and a couple Muslim women and prayed over them. After going in and out of several apartments, we ran into a man standing out on the walk way in front of his door. We started up a conversation with him and he invited us into his home. Out of all the apartments we went into, this one looked and felt completely different. The main room was filled with modest wood furniture (literally a couple wooden benches) unlike the other apartments who all had couches and big televisions. As soon as I walked into his family’s apartment, I was immediately overcome with the strong emotions filling the space. I felt a mixture of different emotions but the ones that I felt the strongest were hardship, exhaustion, and hopelessness. When the mother walked into the room, I saw the exhaustion in her eyes and realized she was the one I was receiving the overwhelming feeling of weariness from. As we began talking to the couple, a little boy around the age of 5 or 6 ran into the room. We soon found out that he was no longer going to school because he could not talk. As soon as I saw the precious angel, I knew he was autistic. The Lord had placed that in my heart. The parents were both concerned about their nonverbal son because they did not understand what was wrong with him. Altogether, they had four children. We continued talking with the father, he opened up and told us how they may loose their apartment due to some confusion at the bank. As we started praying for the family, the emotions that were overtaking my heart overwhelmed me and I could no longer hold back my own emotions. The tears began flooding from my eyes, running down my cheeks. I had never felt emotions from others this strongly before.
For the past couple of years, God has been opening my eyes to a gift he has blessed me with, the gift of empathy. Technically, my gift could be considered a branch off of the gift of discernment. It is almost as if God gives me an intuition or insight into a specific persons life and I feel what they are going through or what they are feeling at that very moment. Normally this occurs randomly when I am walking down the street. I may see someone, usually I will make eye contact, and my heart will be overcome with strong emotion. In that moment, I know what I need to pray over the individual. Sometimes I will feel so much that tears come into my eyes but never before have I entirely broke down like I did when with this family. God definitely placed me in their home on purpose to empathize with them and feel what they were going through in order to specifically pray over them.The Lord has blessed me with this gift and I intend to return the favor by using it to expand his kingdom.
