God is amazing. Yet again I am blessed to be a part of an amazing miracle. Saturday, we did a eye clinic at a Baptist Church in Pervomais'k, Ukraine. When we arrived at the clinic we were greeted by the pastor, who was expecting only twenty or thirty people to show up to the church. He informed us that there were fifty people at the church already with forty more people signed up. He was afraid they were going to leave without waiting on their time for the eye exams.
We were taken into the waiting room where the people were staying and Bruce asked Jill and Robin to sing a couple of songs for them. As they started singing he walked over to me and said, "Maybe you can give a short testimony." I thought to myself about what I tweeted just before we left the house.
At 7:16am: "Expecting something big from God today on @theworldrace so you can expect a blog."
After the girls got done singing Bruce asked me up to introduce the team and tell about where we were going and what we were doing. So I began talking about everything and then began sharing my testimony. I shared a condensed version of my testimony and then told stories of healing that we have experienced on this race. After I shared about the healings I invited people to come up if they would like us to pray for any type of healing for them.
Immediately after sharing my testimony I exited the stage and I was approached by this older lady. When I say approached what I really mean that I was tackled. She ran up to me and hugged me, almost knocking me over in her frenzy to ask for prayer. She hugged everyone and was shouting in Russian, she was so excited. Beyond excited, so we signaled for Timothy (Bruce's son) to come over and translate for us. She told me that she had cataracts and had pain in her right eye. She wanted us to pray for her. I asked her for her name which much to my regret, I cannot remember. Russian and Ukrainian names are extremely hard to say, much less remember.
So I prayed for her, I prayed specific prayers for her right eye's cataracts and pain as well as her back. I prayed for her eye to be renewed and for it to be a brand new eye. So that she could begin to see again as she had in her youth. After we said amen, I asked her if it felt better and she said that it did before she slipped away as we were overcome with more women wanting to talk to the Americans.
They were so excited to talk to us and were shouting over each other in Russian, not realizing that we couldn't speak any of the language. They would ask a hundred questions, Timothy would translate one question, then another and then another. We probably answered one or two of the questions they had, they didn't even seem interested in the response as much as they were just excited to be asking us questions.
Then we were taken to meet this husband and wife. The couple on the right are people who have never been in a church before. They had come to get their eyes checked and were invited by the lady's mother. So we started talking to them and they said that they were excited to see us and talk to us as friends. It was just a normal conversation and I guess that was something that they have never experienced before in a church.
After the man got his eyes check he received a Russian Bible, I am not sure if it was his first Bible or not, and he asked me to sign it for him. As I was writing, I noticed the lady who we had prayed for was close by so I got Tim to come translate for me. She had escaped me other times before and I was determined to ask her again if she had actually been healed. So I approached her and asked her how her eye was feeling, was it better? She grabbed me, hugged me, kissed my cheeks and said, "YES! It is better." She was just so excited and happy. She wanted to take pictures with all of us and could not stop hugging all of us. Often times she was hugging us so much that it felt like we were in a wrestling match.
I was convinced that it was actually better, but so often I am doubtful because I cannot see the results. I wanted to see from her point of view that it was healed, instead of trusting in her word.
So we ended the day. We had prayed for a man's heart to be healed, a woman's arm and a woman's eye to be healed. We knew that the woman's eye was healed, but we were unsure about the others. It was a great day on the World Race.
Fast forward to today. I was upset with myself because I had not been able to write this blog yet and I hadn't posted a blog in quite a while. I thought to myself, whenever we get home I am going to write that blog. There have been so many times lately that I haven't been able to speak to someone and God has revealed so much more to me about what I am supposed to say. This was no exception. Soon after I thought that Bruce got a phone call, it was from the pastor of the Baptist church. He said that the lady had come to the church yesterday and shared her testimony. This is what she said…
During the night she felt something happen to her, that she wasn't sure about. She woke up the next morning, she was able to see. Her eye was completely clear and she was able to see again like she had as a young girl.
He said that she was in the church crying and witnessing uncontrollably about what had happened. She got up in front of the church and shared her testimony with them.
This is an exciting testimony and there will be many, many more on this journey of life. We have power in Jesus name, something I am very new to experiencing and something I often wondered about. It still blows me away that God is using me to heal the sick.
