We arrived on the island, had a wonderful breakfast, hung out for a bit, lunch, then went to Prison Island (crazy story, look it up), and snorkeling in the Indian Ocean. It was amazing! Absolutely the best $10 I’ve ever spent =) We had grand plans for the night- dinner at the night market, check our some local places, and then going to see a live band play later on.
However, we didn’t make it past the night market. We bought a bunch of different things (ya know: shark, octopus, chocolate banana pizza, etc.) and had our own buffet dinner. While we were eating in the park a local begins talking with us. It’s a good conversation about random things. Then one of my teammates takes some of our leftovers and walked past me, I realize he was going to give them to a man that is eating out of the trash. The man won’t take the food, so we ask the local we’re talking to to translate. His response was along the lines of “No, he is a loser, I can’t speak to him.” I’m sorry….but WHAT?!? We probe a little to learn that the locals think something about a full moon can make people go crazy and that the moon made this man crazy not long ago.
In that instant, our plans for the night changed. My teammates start asking this local what he believes and explain what we believe. As they begin this conversation I just watched the man that everyone thinks is crazy and began praying for him. I left their conversation to get him food, he accepted it with a smile.
I continued to pray, and sing…apparently I do that in situations such as these. Carin and I both felt like we were supposed to be praying over the people at the night market and needed to stay around, so we talked and prayed with a few people. Then I posed the question to Carin of…”How do you feel about everyone thinking we’re crazy?” If you know Carin, well then you know she’s usually up for anything!
Let’s just say we may or may not have started singing/yelling as we ran/ skipped/ danced around a big fountain in the night market =) Sometimes, you just need to be crazy for God. Once we settled down with that we just sat at different parts of the fountain singing. Shortly after we had different people approach us and were able to share with them. It was an amazing night, and nothing like we had expected. Here I thought I was getting away from “ministry” but somewhere along the way ministry has become my life…
Apparently, we’re not normal…we can’t just go out for fun when God is prompting us to do more. And sometimes, God wants us to look crazy and be uncomfortable…
