So about seven months ago, almost to the day, I wrote a because I said I would card and placed it in my wallet as a reminded to myself—it said, “Pray for the lost and hurting.” God has given me a beautiful story to show His glory and might through the midst of all of the struggles of daily life; as well as a strong sense of discernment and empathy for people who are struggling.
I would love to be able to tell you that after that day I prayed every day and was able to witness to countless people because I said I would; however, if I said that I would be lying to you. Instead, I would see it on occasion in my wallet and think to myself, “oh yeah, I said I would do that, but there is no one around me right now to pray for… so I’ll just do it later when I find someone.” Over these last couple of months I have had quite a couple of chances to pray for people, but I have almost always let my fears stop me.
However, day one of all squad ministry was one of the first times I did not let my fear stop me—let me tell you about Marc, aka “Secret Dracula.” You see, for our first couple of days of ministry during all squad month each team was challenged by our host to go out into the city, with an interpreter, and evangelize to everyone we find that did not look like they were in a hurry somewhere. For those of you who know me, you know that this idea terrified me—going up and leading/starting conversation with people I know is not easy for me, let alone going up to strangers.
We were asked to do this for five hours, so at the beginning of the allotted time, my team did a listening prayer and they only word I heard from God was “follow” and to be very honest with you, I was happy about that; like I just said, leading conversations is not a very easy thing for me to do. So, leading into the fourth hour on ministry for the day we headed to the park, which was at the end of the route that my team was directed down, for during listening prayer Melissa had a vision of us sitting down talking to some women at a park. And lo and behold, she found her women. So Melissa, Brittany, and Emma, our translator, went over to talk to those women. At the same time Savannah, Lynna, Marissa, and I went to sit on a park bench close by next to a man. Right off of the bat, Savannah asked this man if he spoke English, to which he responded, “no.” However, she pressed into the conversation more and it turned out that he spoke better English than any other person we had come into contact with that day.
Initially, we could tell he did not want to talk to us, but Savannah being her spunky self, kept pressing into a conversation and asked him what his name was, to which he responded, “my name is secret.” So we went with it and disregarded the fact and continued the conversation by telling him our names—at this point he nicknamed Savannah “Transylvania,” since apparently they sounded similar; and we all laughed. After that she asked him if he was a Christian and if he knew about God’s love—this was the first confirmation that something was troubling his heart when he responded to the question with the answer; “I do not believe in love” and proceeded to tell us that love isn’t real and that we should not love our friends (our team, Abiding Azar) because eventually we will go our separate ways and forget about each other and therefore the love is not genuine. Beautifully, without missing a beat, Savannah told him that through God’s love we are able to love each other and that God loves him too, no matter what.
After that a little more small talk about love and its ability to last over time was made and then a silence ensued. At that time I chimed in and asked him if he played any sports, to which he told me that he played handball and I told him that I play soccer. And then he laughed at me and told me that girls do not play soccer, and I told him that not only do I play soccer but back home, in the States, I am certified to coach soccer—for which he then stopped saying girls can’t play and decided to nickname me “Coach” and only called me that for the rest of the time we spent with him.
It was around this time that Melissa, Brittany, and Emma, came over and sat down with us to talk to him. One of them then proceeded to ask him what his name was and he said “Dracula.” I then called him out on the fact that he told us his name was “Secret,” and he said that “Secret” was his first name and “Dracula” was his last name. It was right around this time that we decided to get up and keep moving, so I asked him if we could pray with him. At first he said “no,” so I quickly challenged him and asked “why not?” To which he responded, “I don’t know Coach,” so I then prodded again, and he said we could pray.
At that time, we still did not know his name, so during my prayer I prayed that God would bless “Secret Dracula,” which made all of us laugh and enjoy the moment that much more. After the prayer he finally told us his name—Marc—and we got his contact information for the church that we are working with, Hope Romania. We then invited him to walk with us, and surprisingly enough, he wanted to!
So we went into the fortress that the park surrounded and just walked some and continued to chat with him and got to know him as a person more. After about a half hour of walking we had to head back because ministry was coming to an end of the allotted time. We told him we had to leave and his smile and laughter went away almost instantly and he virtually begged us not to leave him—it broke my heart. After reassuring him that we would be back Saturday and confirming that the contact phone number that he gave us in the beginning was correct, we told him we would call him on Saturday to see if he wanted to walk around the park with us some more. Additionally, right before we left, I asked him if we could pray for him again and he agreed, so this time was beautiful because I was able to use his actual name, Marc, during the prayer.
As we were leaving I was talking to Brittany and I told her that it had broken my heart because I had felt strong oppressive spirits of depression and sadness, and very likely suicidal thoughts and that I wanted to pray specifically against those for him. So we did that—Brittany spoke a prayer over his life as we were walking away rebuking those spirits and it was absolutely beautiful.
That conversation with Brittany then sparked my memory of the because I said I would card that I have been carrying around in my wallet. I pulled out the card and showed it to her because I was excited that finally, without even realizing it, placing aside my fears and placing my faith in God that He would facilitate the right moment to pray actually happened, and I was not even scared.
I am going to ask you to partner with me in prayer for Marc—for any and all oppressive spirits surrounding him to be gone and for God’s love to pierce through his tough exterior and show him that love is not something to be feared, but rather something to rejoice about because the love of God will never be scared away and that there is nothing that a person can do to push God to a point where He will stop loving them. Additionally, I pray that we will be able to see Marc again at the park during this month and be able to dive into some more tough questions to try to come to a little better of an understanding of his story and how he has gotten to the place that he is today. It most certainly was not a coincidence that we met him at the park that day, nor that we were able to relate to him through sarcastic humor and nicknames. And I thank God fully for that, and for the courage that my teammates and I did not let our fears stop us from building the foundations of what can be a beautiful friendship this month.
