The food we handed out was just the beginning. The first day of the Crusade, we ventured out into a nearby village to handout food, cut hair [a great ministry when you have a hair stylist in your group!], and offer a free health clinic [a great ministry when you have a nurse in the group!]. The free health clinic is a miracle in itself!
You see, the team from Canada had received a donation from a doctor in Canada of $5,000 worth of medication. Jaime had been working with the contact to get all of the paperwork and jump though all the hoops the government wanted him to jump through to get the medication into the country. Days before they were supposed to arrive, it looked helpless. Jaime had given up and told them it was impossible to get them in time.
When the team arrived, we found out that they had decided to trust God with it and bring the medication any way. And glory to God! They made it through customs, no questions asked with ALL of the medications!
Food was handed out during the day and the Crusade took place for three hours every night: 6-9pm.
We also had 8 brand new bicycles to give out at the Crusade, a few for each night. The nights consisted of worship, testimonies, preaching, and of course, the bike giveaway. Each night there was a different worship team and different speakers. One night, Jaime asked us to sing a song for the Crusade. Despite only being able to sing in English, we obliged and sang "Our God" by Chris Tomlin. They couldn't understand it, but the preacher that night said that he had no question that we worshiping to God and only God.
My mind was blown every night at the Crusade! The first night, there was about 800 people in attendance, some sitting, some standing on the perimeter leaning against their bikes, others lurking in the shadows nearby. The next night, attendance almost doubled! By the third night, there were nearly 2,000 people in attendance! Every night ended with an alter call, and every night people came forward! The last night of the Crusade we also prayed over the pastors in attendance and for their church.
A friend of mine had given me a stack of Spanish tracts before I left and until the Crusade, I had not used any. At the end of every night, a few of my teammates and I handed out tracts to anyone who would receive them. They last night, I had a few small booklets left and handed one to a child sitting next to me. Next thing I knew, children were running up to me in the middle of the Crusade asking for one. And it was so encouraging to see them all read them so intently, really taking in the truth contained in those tiny pages. I ran out of tracts before the preacher had even left the pulpit. But I was perfectly ok with that. There's a generation rising up to take their place. Jesus said, 'let the children come' and so I did.
God is doing great things in the small town of Palacaguina. So many miracles were shared at the Crusade: blind eyes could see, lost sheep were found… Jaime has only been in this town for 3 months, but God has big things planned for this town. God is using Jaime in mighty ways to unite His church and love on His people. As we said our goodbyes, we felt that we had received much more than we had given, but after we exchanged farewells, I could tell Jaime felt differently. God had used us to make a difference in this man, in this town.
