Throughout my time on the mission field I have seen God come through and answer small prayers in mighty ways. God knows our every need before we speak a word. Sometimes we wonder why God doesn’t shout in times that He chooses to whisper. The reason He whispers is because He loves the intimacy of us having to draw near to hear His voice. So when we are tired and worn out and all we can do is lift up a whisper God still rejoices in us crying out to Him and will meet us where we are at.
I have seen Him even answer my whispers to the wind so I wanted to share with you some of the work has been doing in my life.
1.) A friend of mine is a strong advocate for praying specifically. He said by praying specific prayers it forces us to be honest with God with the desires of our heart rather than beating around the bush because God already knows our hearts. He also is a strong advocate for praying specifically because it allows Christ truly meet you in your needs and display his power. Before leaving for my mission trip we prayed together. The one thing I prayed for specifically was to be given discernment over my future. For a while, I have been considering going into ministry or global mission work but I wanted confirmation from the Lord. I have always leaned towards global mission work but I did not know if that would be possible because I knew I would want a family. I would love them to be on the mission field and get to experience serving the Lord above comforts of home but I also hoped to have them raised in the states to be able to be surrounded by my family. So I prayed and prayed that the Lord would reveal to me that if this was the lifestyle he had planned out for me then it was possible to be apart of an organization overseas and truly be intentional as well as have a life in the states. The Lord answered these prayers and gave more than I even asked for. The ministry we partnered with was founded by a married couple, Pastor Chris and Miss Christina, who get this lives in Michigan. Not only are they such great example of a man and woman of God but they also have a beautiful family who take part in their mission. Their family has a life back home in the states only living nine minutes away from me but they also have such strong relationships in Haiti. I did not pray over this but I recently have been struggling between churches. I was raised Catholic but found my faith in the nondenominational church. I will say more of my views align with the nondenominational church but I still do not forget my roots and background in the Catholic church and believe that being raised there is apart of my testimony for a reason. After taking to some of pastor Chris and Miss Christina’s children I learned they head up a congregational church in the states. I never heard of a congregational church before so I asked them to explain it and they described it as church with traditions similar to the Catholic Church but beliefs of a nondenominational church. Pastor Chris and Miss Christina are truly such great mentors who model their life after Christ fully surrendering themselves to Him and I have been so blessed to have met them and their children. God has shown me that He can answer our prayers in big ways and exceed any expectations for He already knows what we need and goes before us.
2.) When first arriving in Haiti I struggled a lot with the language barrier because I am the type of person who loves forming relationships and not being able to speak creole took a toll on me. I began to study creole with my wonderful teammate, Evens, who is from Haiti. But for a while I was not confident in attempting to speak to Haitians in their native language. Our team was very fortunate in having translators and some of the older Haitians with an education were able to speak english but I still wished I was able to communicate directly and with more of the kids. During our first week of ministry I prayed specifically for the Lord to provide me some kid who was able to speak English. That same day a girl on my team and I ended up walking some kids to the beach. We walked a group of four kids, who were siblings to go swimming. All of a sudden a little boy appeared out of nowhere yelling at us in perfect English that we needed to help the family of kids we were walking. We asked him what was wrong and he informed us that the kids had recently lost their mother. We told the boy that we had nothing we were able to give them but we could pray over their family. He said yes please do that and he even ended up translating our prayer for us. After we were finished praying he looked at me and my teammate and asked “can Jesus really do all that?” We began to explain the gospel to him and he ended up giving his life to Christ. We were able to give him a bible in creole and told him to read the Bible and come to our gate if he has any questions. He came back the next day with questions on the chapters we had given him. It quickly became a daily thing that I saw our friend at 3:00 for a bible study. One time my team went to the beach and I did not realize we would still be there during the Bible study time. But this boy had such a desire to learn more about God that he sought us out at the beach. The second I saw him I got out of the water to see if he wanted to continue our study but he said to finish swimming and he would sit outside our house and wait. Eventually out of nowhere he stopped coming by our house and since we did not know where he lived we had no way of reaching out to him. This weighed really heavily on me because I felt like the Lord was placed him on my heart but I had no access to him. Later on, when my team went out to evangelize a group ran into the boy. After talking to him and praying over his family we learned that his father recently left him, his mother and his five siblings and the reason he no longer came by as much was because he had to help provide for his family. When asking for what he needed prayers for he could have asked for money or food but instead he asked for prayers that he could have a father. Everyday after running into him he began to return everyday. He was a troublemaker for sure but he also had the sweetest of hearts. Whenever his family was struggling he asked us to go out and pray over him and his family and he would even bring them over to visit as well. The Lord truly humbled my heart with this little boy. Being able to witness his heart be transformed to not knowing Christ to being solely dependent on the Lord had depended my faith and I’m so blessed to have been able to walk along side him.
3.) As I mentioned before I always struggled with the language barrier but God met me in this as well. In high school I took french and it was probably my most dreaded class. I could learn the language quickly in terms of speaking but I was unable to write or spell. I believe this is because I was diagnosed with dyslexia and in order to adapt I because a more audio and hands on learner versus a visual written learner. Coming to Haiti, they are very heavily influenced by the French and Haitian creole is similar to french in someways. Typically in their schools they are also not able speak creole in order to learn other languages. Because of this most of the kids we encountered were verbal learners so it was easier to connect to. I wouldn’t say I could speak a lot of creole but I could generally get the point across. Evens, the person who taught me primarily taught me faith related phrases so it was really cool to be limited only to talking about Christ to some people.
4.) Our ministry hosts in the Dominican Republic planned on hosting an event for married couples. The reason they wanted to host an event like this is because broken marriages is a common issue happening on the island and God has laid it on their hearts do do something about it. They bought enough food for forty people but we found out couples were coming and everyone was worried that we would not have enough food, but by the time we figured everything out it was too late to get more. So we prayed over the food and began to serve. The Lord truly must have multiplied the food because by the end of the night not only did we have enough food but we had an abundance of food. I am so grateful we did so it did not take away for the couples experience. At that event God really spoke to some of the couples and they came to know Christ.
5.) the hospital is already an adventure in the states so going to the hospital in another country was quite the experience. My squad member Dani and team leader Kirsten came with me to the hospital but as soon as we arrived, the security quickly separated us. Being unable to speak Spanish quickly became overwhelming. The next thing I knew I was placed with a line of people who had IV bags. I was really confused since I had a sprained ankle why I was placed in this line but I thought they must just want me to be able to have a place to sit. I watched as the man sitting next to me got his IV and I winced in pain because of his reaction. He looked at me sympathetically and said “you’re next.” I looked at him confused but it was clear he did not speak a lot of english but he just repeated “you’re next.” The next thing I knew a nurse came around the corner with my IV. Then I was taken to get an x-ray in which Kirsten and Dani were supposed to be allowed to come with me but they couldn’t. Throughout my x-ray, my technician and I had no way of communicating that we ended up resulting in sound effects to communicate. After my x-ray Kirsten and Dani were allowed back with me. The doctor came to explain what needed to happen in order for me to recover properly but he did not speak English. We all were really confused and stressed out and out of nowhere a man appeared. We found out his name was Steve and he was fluent in English and Spanish and was able to translate for us. Afterwards I was able to talk to him and he was a strong Christian. He was there for his mother but said that the reason she was there was a common issue and was nothing urgent but he was planning on going back to the states but felt lead to stay to take his mother to the hospital. He thought he ended up in the hospital in order to help me. I truly believe he was a blue mohawk haired angel sent to us. We sat there and talked some more and he just had such a calming presence and gave a lot of advice on my relationship with the Lord.
