It rains here everyday. I mean litterally every single day. Every morning we see blue skies, and by 4 pm it is a downpour. Its like clockwork. Which must be why everything is so green and beautiful. But we prayed that it would not rain on saturday night. We prayed all friday and all saturday that the rain would hold off for us saturday night. We had been telling people all week about an event we were going to have in the plaza on Saturday at 7pm. People were talking about it, there was a buzz in the air about with the gringos were going to do. Saturday rolled around with beautiful skies in the morning. Clouds even rolled in in the afternoon, but we made it past the 4pm mark without any rain. YES! I was confident that God was going to hold back the rain for us, people would come, I would preach, they would listen, oh happy day everything would be perfect. But was we began to walk over to the village at about 6 pm, a lite sprinkle began. As we walked it got heavier. ¨No God, hold back the rain!¨ The rain got heavier. Soon many people were huddled under a tiny roof waiting to see what we were going to do. I thought for sure we would have to cancel. The plaza lights werent even working! It was dark and raining and cold. How could we do an open air event like that. ¨Why God!? Why cant you hold back the rain? Its so simple for you.¨ But He did not. At 7 pm exactly, a man walks up to me and asks if I want him to open up this side room to the large cathedral in front of the plaza. We were told earlier this room was absolutely off limits. That it just wouldnt work so dont worry about it. But this man scurries off in the rain and disappears. Still wondering what to do or if we should even go on, I stand in the rain waiting and praying. Shortly the man comes back, grabs me, and takes me with his prized key to go open the door. He opens the door with a ¨Welcome!¨ as he flips on the lights. I stand in the doorway amazed, this man just gave us the keys to a huge assembly hall to meet in. Quickly everyone pours in the door to get out of the rain. Soon we have all 27 racers inside with about 60 or so locals jammed in front of me listening to the message. It went fantastic, the message got across very well, the translator did perfect, (hooray for preaching in my native tongue!) And afterwards, there were about 20 very deep conversations going on between locals who had questions and the world racers. About 5 kids ran to the front when I offered for people to come forward to accept Christ! And I witnessed at least 2 more, I believe there were others as well, people accepting Christ during our afterparty. All the kids were corralled in the back afterward to play games. People were smiling and joking with each other, which has been pretty rare actually amongst small town people. It felt like the Body of Christ in beautiful unity. God moved that night.
Afterwards I was thinking about how the night happened. I realized that the whole time I had been praying for God to stop the rain. Then I thought to myself, ¨How many times do I pray for God to stop the rain, when he intends to have something far better for us than just the rain stopping.¨ God opened the door for us to get out of the rain, and into something greater and suited perfectly for us. May I take that to heart.
