August 10th, 2019
I woke up at 6:50 am, tired and needing more coffee than usual from not sleeping well throughout the night. We had our morning devotion, a cup of coffee, and got ready for the day of evangelism. It seemed like it was going to be another ordinary day but as I’m writing this, I realize nothing about my life is ordinary this year.
The 10 of us got in the van, ready for our 1 1/2 hour drive to the village of Lubimbi. Aside from being tired, I felt normal and ready for the day…unfortunately that only lasted about 5 minutes.
The first sign of trouble was that my hands started going numb. I was already listening to worship music so I tried to put my focus on that but it seemed the harder I tried to focus on worship, the worse I felt. The numbness traveled up my arms and to my face; I felt like my throat was closing and I couldn’t get a breath. I hadn’t had a panic attack in over 10 years and I couldn’t think of anything that had brought this on; I was in the midst of a full-blown panic attack with no end in sight.
I felt like the Lord was nudging me to ask Lyle to pray for me but in my embarrassment and pride, I resisted. This was before I had the sudden urge to jerk the door open and jump out of a moving van. I knew I was spiraling and I was terrified to give in to my anxiety so I turned to Lyle and said, “I need you to pray for me, I’m having a panic attack”. He immediately put his hand on me and began praying and I continued to worship and pray. Nothing. I was annoyed and asked the Lord why he wanted me to ask Lyle to pray for me if it wasn’t going to do me any good but my anxiety didn’t let me sit on that for very long.
This year, I realized that I’ve been given the gift of discernment and at this point in the car, I knew what I was experiencing was spiritual. My discernment of people is relatively strong but I have been growing in discernment of spirits and I just knew this was somehow related. It was as if my spirit wanted to continue moving toward the village but my flesh wanted to jump out of the van and run in the opposite direction. We were driving into a spiritual warzone and someone needed to fight.
I closed my eyes and started repeating, “Abba, Yeshua HaMashiach, Ruach Ha-Kodesh” over and over again. I could feel a strong presence around me the more I called on them and at one point, I felt like something was inside me that needed to come out. I unknowingly opened my mouth and started speaking in a whisper. Except it wasn’t me and I was speaking a language that I’d never heard before.
I realized that I had just spoken in tongues for the first time and for someone who didn’t grow up around that, it was a bit out of my comfort zone. It was as if someone had taken over my body. As a different language was coming from my lips, in my mind, I was asking myself, “What is happening?!”.
As soon as I finished, my anxiety started to disappear and all that was left was an urgency to worship and pray as a team before we started our day of evangelism. When we got to Lubimbi I shared a bit about my ride over and how I felt we needed to worship and pray as a team and they jumped right on board. We worshiped together and then we prayed as a team and we set off to tell people about Jesus.
Daniella and I teamed up with Pastor David and took off walking, and walking, and walking some more. Finally, we stopped and I just looked up and said, “God, which way do you want us to go?” and I heard Him say “left”. When I told Daniella, she said she also got “left”, so we went left. After 10 minutes of walking, we realized there wasn’t anything on the left so we went back to the main road and right there on the left was a homestead! (A homestead is a small village where an entire family lives together, immediate and extended)
When we walked into the homestead, a man named Maxwell greeted us and welcomed us to sit down. David told him who we were and what we were doing and asked if it would be ok if we talked to him about Jesus. He seemed excited, said yes and asked his family to join him. It didn’t take very long for us to realize that this family already knew Jesus and had a relationship with him. What should have been a 10-minute visit turned into an hour-long Bible discussion! Maxwell had questions about the Bible that he had never been able to ask so we got comfortable and told him to ask whatever he wanted.
This is where the Lord showed up… He had 3 main questions and between the 3 of us, we were able to answer each one in lots of detail with scripture to back us up. The crazy part was that Daniella and I each had bookmarks in our bible’s for scripture to back up our answers and I ended up answering two of his questions and don’t know where I learned the information! The more we talked, the more we could see their excitement grow. After our conversation, Maxwell thanked us and told us he now had a better understanding of the Bible and his relationship with God would benefit because of it!
I had a conversation with Daniella following our visit with Maxwell about my experience in the car. We talked about how the Lord had used that to give me an urgency to pray and worship before going out and we were wondering how our day would have turned out if we hadn’t. We were excited to meet back up with the rest of our team to see what the Lord had done…and He didn’t disappoint!
When the rest of our team returned, I could tell something significant had happened. One of my teammates was standing to the side praying and visibly emotional, another was in the car, sitting quietly with his eyes closed, and the third was standing a ways away looking contemplative. We gave them space and didn’t ask questions right away but I was excited to hear what had happened.
On the drive back, they explained to us that one of them preached to a group of over twenty locals and twenty of them gave their lives to the Lord! Another teammate said she felt the Holy Spirit so tangibly that she was overcome with emotion and had to walk away. When they were getting ready to leave, a man from the crowd walked up to them and told them that he was almost deaf in both ears and that when he accepted the Lord, his hearing was restored! Ya’ll, the Lord is so GOOD!
To us, this was just another day of evangelism that turned out to be extraordinary because we stopped to pray and worship. It really made me think about our everyday lives that can seem ordinary and redundant and how the Lord can transform those days through His glory and for His glory! All we have to do is be willing to stop and worship the One we are working for and pray that He goes before us instead of doing things in our own strength.
-H
