When we arrived in Uzhgorod a couple of weeks ago, Clinton told us about the woman who lived upstairs from his apartment. Her name is Maria, and she is in the advanced stages of breast cancer. During a worship night at Clinton's house one evening, I felt like God was telling me to go and pray for her. I was just hearing, "She will be healed," over and over again in my head. But I began to worry that she wouldn't want us to come into her house, that she was too sick for visitors, and that we would be an imposition – so I ignored God.
All throughout the following week, I kept feeling the need to go back and pray for her. A couple of my teammates were feeling the same way as well. Thankfully, we got our opportunity when we returned to Clinton's house for taco night the following week. My team leader Megan let me know that Clinton wanted some people to go up and pray for Maria, and she knew I would want to be there. Now I'm not super comfortable praying out loud, especially for healing, but I knew I needed to do it.
I would never have guessed that the bubbly woman who greeted us at the door was so sick. She looked healthy. She acted healthy. She was absolutely overflowing with love and joy. It quickly became obvious that she has a fire in her heart for the Lord, and she lives her life for Him. We learned that her family does not have the $20,000 it would cost for chemotherapy treatment.
We began to pray over her, and a couple of my teammates went first. I typically get increasingly anxious when I know my turn is approaching, but I felt pretty calm about this. I prayed healing over her, proclaiming that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever – as soon as I said that, she caught a case of what was apparently holy laughter. To be honest, the idea of holy laughter is something that I always thought was odd. I never believed it was real. But Maria absolutely collapsed in the floor laughing hysterically at that moment. I'm so glad that she could just have a moment of freedom and happiness in the midst of her pain.
More World Racers came upstairs a bit later, and we all continued to pray. Maria laid down in the floor crying at one point, and Lo took the opportunity to wash her feet. It was a really emotional moment, and I couldn't stop my own tears. Maria was so moved by the washing of her feet – saying that no one had ever done that for her before, and she felt like Jesus Himself was the one who did it.
It's interesting because earlier that day, we had gone to a church camp for the gypsy kids in town, and we met an amazing gypsy woman there named Alona. She began to tell us her testimony and stories of all kinds of healing God had worked through her. At one point, she was diagnosed with leukemia and had 6 months to live, but God miraculously healed her. She prayed for the throat cancer of her hospital roommate, and when the doctors went to operate on the woman's throat, they found no cancer at all.
I believe God was bringing those stories to us earlier that day to prepare us and increase our faith for the prayers He knew we would be praying for Maria later on that evening. We are believing God for Maria's healing. Please pray for the same – she will be having another scan a day or so after we leave Ukraine, I believe.
“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." -Mark 11:22-24
