It is a beautiful thing to walk down a
foreign street hand in hand with a woman old enough to be my mother, praying
each in our own language for revival to touch the city. We couldn’t understand one another, but the
Holy Spirit understands us both, and the Spirit within us was united.
We have been prayer walking the streets in
a couple different towns here in Ometepe, first San Jose, where we not only
prayer walked, but also talked to people and invited them to the outreach we
held last week. The afore mentioned walk
was in Moyogalpa, the port city, and we were paired off to walk the streets and
pray. I can’t express the joy that
filled my heart to walk next to Yaleida (not sure about that spelling…) and
pray with her. We also had more conversation afterward than I have been able to
have with anyone yet, because she was patient with me and I was no longer
intimidated to try and speak. It was
really so much fun.
We prayer walked the town of Esquipula last
night, and 75 people from church showed up to pray – kids, teenagers, parents,
young adults. We all split into groups
and covered nearly all the ground of Esquipula in prayer. Amazing.
That is one of the things I love about this church so much. Everyone is involved. They are all involved in at least one small
cell group throughout the week, and so far, for all our prayer events, a good
portion of the 175 member church (including all children) has shown up! I love it!!
Pastors Miguelangel and Ruth are interactive in their messages on
Sundays and I have thoroughly enjoyed sitting through them, despite the fact
that I couldn’t understand very much.
I have attended two women’s cell groups
over the last couple days, once without any translator and once with Helen, the
director here at CICRIN, who speaks English.
The groups last about an hour long, and they play a short game, usually
a game I would think would be too young for adults, but they know how to laugh
and really have a good time, so silly games are great. I don’t know if I have ever seen a group of
women laugh so much. Not only for the
games, but in general. They laugh and
are filled with obvious joy every time I see them. After the game, someone leads a discussion on
the previous Sunday’s message, and again, people are very interactive, so it’s
fun! Afterward we share a small snack/meal
together. The first one was a very
interesting drink thing. It is made with
a small fruit, (cayjote or something like that) that is boiled with coconut
milk and cinnamon. It was interesting,
not my favorite thing ever though. 🙂
The next one we had ham and cheese sandwiches and Coca-Cola. I wish I had more time to attend more
groups. (And I wish I had pictures of
these wonderful laughing women!)
I prayer walked alongside the pastors’
youngest daughter, Katherine, who had some fun with my camera.
They have 7 children ranging from 25 to 9
years old – I haven’t yet met them all!
Latest news here –
I am preaching the
message at the outreach on Saturday night in Moyogalpa. I’m still not sure how that came about except
that I feel like God has told me to do it, so I am! Please pray for me, as I have never preached
a message before, and don’t know exactly what I’m going to do or say. We have hired a translator, but I don’t
believe he is a Christian, and we haven’t yet run into that situation. I don’t imagine it will be a problem at all,
but please keep our translator in prayer too.
His name is Will. I am wavering
between really excited and really scared, and am trusting that God will give me
the words to speak when the time comes.
But in the meantime, I need to prepare and seek Him about what He wants
to speak to the people.
