Wow. The grace, love, and patience of God constantly amazes me. He is so good, and I am so.. not. Yet, He uses me. He calls me closer to Him and reveals His power to me. That word, power is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of God (probably because I am constantly in need of grace and patience so I am shown that the most) Yesterday, (February 10th) I got to meet five other people going on the same route for the world race as I am! We all drove to Charlotte and met with a guy named Ben who just got home from the race a couple of weeks ago. The stories he had to tell either gave me goose bumps or tugged at my heart. There was one story in particular that really got me fired up and it was about a church in Africa. Ben was saying that often times, the population within churches in Africa is measured by the number of white people in that church. The larger amount of white people there were, the better the service must be. There was one particular group of racers that went to a church in Malawi and they were sitting behind the pastor while he was preaching to the church. In the middle of the sermon, a man bursted through the door and ran straight for the racers. The pastor stops the sermon (how could you not?) and eight racers brought the man into a hut(the women racers were in a hut beside them for their own protection but they were close so that they could pray over the man and the other male racers). As everyone began praying, demons were cast out of this man and every time a demon went out, the pastor would walk from his hut to the women’s hut and say that another one was gone. After multiple demons were cast out, the pastor told the women that this man had more demons than legion. I am not sure how much time had passed by this point, but the man was finally freed from those spirits and began to question where he was and how he had gotten there. The men asked his name and he gave it but he still had a confused look on his face and what he said next was so crazy to me. After saying his name, he said that he had died in 1996 in a car accident. Before anyone got another word in, he began listing the names of multiple crashes that had happened since 1996 all the way until 2016. He listed the name of the people and what happened and said that he was the one who caused them all. He was the one driving the car or putting something in the road. He said he caused the crashes. He went on to say that the Devil had sent him to kill every white person in that church, he didn’t know why but that’s what he was told to do. The team later contacted his parents saying that they had found their son. Expecting that the parents would be thrilled to hear this, they were shocked because according to them, their son had died in a car accident in 1996 and they hadn’t seen him since. They were pastors at a church not too far from them and so the man went to serve with his parents in ministry. What a beautiful story of healing and power. The same power that rose Jesus from the dead dwells within us. That is something that I hear all of the time but never really practice it until I leave the country to do missions. After this story, we walked around a cute little district in Charlotte called NoDa and passed so many cool art places and coffee shops. As we walked the street, Ben was in the back and dropped off to talk to a homeless man named Paul. Paul had some severe knee problems and had a hard time walking. We asked him if we could pray for him and he said yes so we laid hands on his knee and began to pray. After a few moments of prayer, we said amen and Paul said that he had felt a relief in his knee when our hands were lifted. There is power and it’s not in some other country, it’s through Jesus. That is so encouraging to me. I don’t know what God has for me while I am on the race, but I am believing that there are going to be hearts changed, eyes opened, and people freed through the power of Jesus Christ.
Just so you know, I am selling T-shirts for $20 to fundraise so if you want one, please message me! I am placing an order on February 15th, thanks for reading the blog! If you can, please join me in prayer over this trip and over the hearts of the people we meet!
