In Vilankulos, Mozambique, we started every day with worship
and a devotional. Thanksgiving
morning Hannah led the devotional.
She started by having us go around and tell something that we were
thankful for. It reminded me of
sitting around the table at Thanksgiving with the family. I loved it that she did that. Her topic was prayer. She has been learning a lot about
prayer and she was sharing what God had been teaching her. I remember learning a lot about
different ways to pray from listening to her. I love it when we get to teach each other things.
Our contact, Jaco, didn’t know that it was Thanksgiving for
us that day. Once he found out, he
decided to give us the day off and the cook team for the day prepared an
AMAZING Thanksgiving dinner for us.
They made two different kinds of meat. I think one of them was turkey. We had sweet potatoes, stuffing, cranberries, and pretty
much whatever we could eat. We
even had apple crumble for desert.
It was a meal to remember! We spent the day relaxing. I didn’t even realize how much I needed
to relax. We spent the day
swimming in the lake and just hanging out with each other.
At the end of our devotional that morning, Jaco issued a
challenge for us. He challenged us
to only pray prayers of THANKSGIVING for the next week. We have so much to be thankful
for. So often when we pray, we end
up just asking God to help us with our problems or to do something for us. We forgot all about what he has done
for us. So we were challenged to not
ask God for anything, but to thank him for all things for the next week. I had no idea how challenging that
would be.
Shortly after Jaco issued his challenge, God started moving
within our group. We decided that
we were going to pray all night long.
The purpose was to prepare for ministry that month. After dinner we divided up the whole
night and people took an hour at a time to sit in the church to pray. (The church was a hut near the top of
the property). As soon as I walked
into the room, I could just FEEL the presence of God in that room. AJ was playing the guitar and a couple
people were sitting around praying.
I didn’t want to leave. I
stayed in that room for hours. I
have never prayed for such an extended period of time in my life. I didn’t realize how challenging it was
going to be to ONLY pray prayers of thanksgiving. I kept trying to ask God for something. It was an incredible night and I believe
that by praying all night long, we really opened doors for God to move in
incredible ways.
God really wanted us to learn how to praise him through
every circumstance because a LOT happened the week we committed to pray only
prayers of thanksgiving. First
Maria, Jaco’s wife, got malaria.
Then Jaco got malaria. The
first thing I wanted to do was ask God to heal them, but instead we praised
him. We thanked Him for healing
them. We thanked Him for teaching
us more about praising Him in every circumstance. A couple days later we found out that one of our squadmates
was going home. God REALLY wanted
us to learn how to thank him and praise him!
God taught me a lot in Mozambique about prayer. Thanksgiving was just the
beginning. If you want to
challenge yourself, try praying ONLY prayers of thanksgiving. There is MUCH more that we can praise
God for than what we do. My prayer
life has been changed drastically since that week. It was challenging, but the results were amazing.
