If you remember, while I was in Ecuador I had a pretty nasty sinus infection that ended finally with a visit to the hospital. I wrote a blog about the normalcy of life on the Race and how life here is not that much different from life at home.
This week again I’ve been home sick. I’ve been sick for a while (which is why I’ve mentioned it twice in my other blogs) and I’m starting to tire of doctor’s visits and days spent in bed. And while I stick to pretty much everything I said in the last “Sick and Homesick” blog, there is one sentence that I would change.
I said, “Miracles don’t happen on an hourly basis here.”
And I would like to revise that sentence.
Miracles happen here. Healings happen here.
Sometimes on an hourly basis.
These past 3 months have been spent at the Adventures in Missions Guatemala Base. Every Thursday the Base Staff come and teach and train for about 3 hours in the morning. Then we eat lunch and head to each of our towns. My team goes to San Lorenzo, a small town about 30 minutes outside of Antigua.
We pray for direction- who needs encouragement, who needs prayer, who needs healing, who needs Jesus.
And he answers.
Sometimes he reminds us of someone we’ve already met, sometimes he gives us visions of front doors and colored walls.
Sometimes he speaks words like “high places” and “crowned” over our time.
Then we walk.
As Jesus went from town to town, full of direction and power of the Spirit, we also walk door to door, full of direction and power of the Spirit.
As Jesus was interruptible, so we are also interruptible.
We go to the house that we saw in our vision and we hike up to high places.
In Mark 5 there is a story of Jesus doing just this. Jesus has mission to heal one girl who is dying, but he also heals the sick woman who stops him in the street.
Last Thursday looked similar. Erin was reminded of the house down the street. As we arrived at a house another woman named Maria struck up a conversation with us. Half of our group went to her house and by the grace of God her whole family knows the Father, Son and Holy Spirit now, and we’ve returned to their house many times bringing bibles and good news. At the house Erin originally saw, lives were transformed and eyes were open.
In the 3 months that we’ve been here, we’ve seen pain leave arthritic hands, we’ve seen the crippled walk, we’ve seen knees restored and hernias healed. Sickness, headaches, and sore throats are nothing compared to the power of the Spirit inside of each of us.
Sometimes we pray multiple times and full restoration is brought. But sometimes we pray and the Lord does not take away hard things because he knows that they will produce endurance and trust.
On Monday night I had a really bad headache. Along with my amoeba, bacterial infection, and ear infections, I had a headache. Light sensitivity, noise sensitivity, the whole shebang. But my team had been praying for healing, and by the grace of God I had no pain for our entire worship session. As soon as we started I had to play the cajon, a box drum that is not easy to play when every small sound feels like a kick to the head. But as I played I felt no pain. This was a miracle, no doubt, and the pain went away for the rest of the night.
About an hour later, my closest friend on the Race came up to me. Kori asked me to pray for her head, she had just begun to feel pain and knew that the Lord could heal her. She knew that where 2 or more are gathered in his name the Spirit of God is also there and has the capability to do the miracles that Jesus did. Within seconds of my prayer Kori said she felt the pain leave her, she said it felt like it floated out of her ears. Kori danced more to loud music that night than I knew she was capable of. Definitely more than if she had still had a headache.
The next morning I woke up and I was still sick. My ears were still throbbing, my throat was still sore, and my nose continued to run.
Does this neglect the miracle that occurred the night before? No way. Yeah I wore sunglasses and pillows over my ears to breakfast because my head hurt again, but how can you watch me play the drums and not believe that a miracle occurred?
“This week I was sick. On the Race you get sinus infections and weird stomach bugs just like at home. You stay in bed and go to the doctor and take medicine. Just like at home.
I miss my friends and I miss my family. I seriously am craving a Heath Blizzard from Dairy Queen and I miss my home church and I wish that my mom could make me some chicken noodle soup.
But doing life with Jesus CAN always look like an adventure, and requires sacrifice to gain so much more than we could imagine. Sometimes we sacrifice the comforts of The Flower Mound and sometimes we sacrifice traveling around the world. But it’s obedience that results in the real adventure, in the real richness of living life. Through obedience, we can see healings in a grocery store or raise money to send refugees to their families or build a house for a family in need. None of that is dependent on our physical location or our desire to be somewhere we’re not.
Our hope, our joy, our thrill, our adventure, our peace, our miracles- it all happens where our feet are planted.”
