Let me tell you a story
Our story starts eight years ago when a small church in San Salvador, set their mind on big things. They prayed a simple prayer asking the Lord to send them a missionary team.
For the past eight years this church has been praying for God to help them accomplish a goal.
Last month when my team was getting ready to leave Asia for the first time in 5 months, my levels of excitement were pretty low. I wasn’t looking forward to month 8. There wasn’t anything about El Salvador that struck me. My teams last three months had been rough and I had hit a personal wall. I needed change, but I also was tired of trying.
As my team sat in our first church service in El Salvador, the church explained that they are a church that never gives up. They talked about how we probably have no idea why we are in this small church outside the city, but that each member of this church knows exactly why we are here.
This church has been waiting in expectancy for the Lord to show up, and eight years later the Lord send them us as a confirmation that he hears their prayers.
Lets stop for a second…the Lord answered a prayer that was prayed eight years ago right in front of our eyes. Do you know how many things that I have prayed one or two times and when I see that a month later and nothing has changed I just give up?
Woof. Where is my patience, where is my trust, where is my faith?
Fast forward to our last church service of the month and man did we have a celebration.
My team was celebrating the gift that the Lord gave us when he sent us here. We found a church family who loved us unconditionally, took us in as their own children, and served their community like we’ve never seen. And then there was the church members, they were celebrating answered prayers and the blessing that we brought to this church.
Let me tell you, they know how to party.
But, what struck me the most was the pastors goodbye sermon. He started with the story of the eight year long prayer and how God graciously answered them and then his sermon took a different route. He talked about the devil and how he likes to attack blessings and people who are running towards kingdom. One of the ways that the devil had attacked them this month is through their car. Their van broke down numerous times on the way to ministry this past month. They could have very easily let the this situation take their peace, but they kept moving forward.
Jesus is a funny guy for having pastor talk about the van of all things that night because 10 minutes later we were able to announce to the church that our team would be giving them with $1,000 to put towards their van as a blessing for blessing us and for being such a light to their community.
Our team spent the month praying big prayers asking our friends and family to supporting us in blessing this amazing family and the Lord provided.
Y’all, don’t stop praying because prayer works and the Lord loves to do really cool things through it.
Let this be an encouragement to you. Keep pressing into prayer and don’t give up when the Lord doesn’t answer you right away. He may just be planning to answer you eight years from now.
Will you wait for him?
