One thing I really expected to see on the World Race was God moving; and let me tell you, I have seen it, and He is definitely moving. I have seen it in the lung expanding man named Jonathan, I have seen it in Oma, I have seen it in thousands of my peers in open-air stadiums and I have seen it at home base with my team and squad. God is alive and he is working in this world, BIG time.
Jonathan is a man who lives literally right across the street from Ma and Pa’s house where we are all staying, and he had asked Ma and Pa for prayer from us, so we went over to visit him and he is fifty nine years old, but he seriously looks like he is in his early to mid eighties. He has smoked since who knows when and you can see the toll it has taken on his body. He is small, frail and fights for each shallow breath. But despite all of that, he has faith. He believes God can heal him of his breathing issues and arthritis; when we went to pray for him, he was praying along with us and made sure we understood that his faith was very important to him.
Oma is Afrikaans (the language most people in South Africa speak) for “grandmother.” Oma’s house is just a few houses down from Ma and Pa, and let me tell you, she is one of the most welcoming and giving people! She is a foster mom, and she has raised 35 children through her care, not just like housed 35 kids, I’m talking raised people. To fathom the impact she had on this community, province and country is kind of dumbfounding. Think if each one of those kids marries a fellow Christian and they have 3 kids (just for calculating purposes) that is 105 people that know now the Gospel of Christ in their lives, and if each of those couples has three kids, that means its 315 people that have now come to Christ because of one Oma. How cool is that?! And she was just all about telling us story after story about her kids and about how good God is and how he has provided for her always, just story after story, and then in between her stories, she would tell us “Ok, now, someone bring me the Word” (because some of us had brought our Bibles with us). So we would take turns speaking life over her and encouraging her.
I’ve already written about the awesome-ness of praising the living God with thousands of my peers at my Passion experiences, so I won’t go into that here again (read my other blogs if you are still unsure what I’m talking about). But let me just tell you that I know for a fact God is moving here in South Africa, just from the passion and love of Christ that I saw in the people I saw around me at Passion.
My squad has already been healed of several things! When we were in Johannesburg the first month, my squadmate Anna had been suffering from sciatic nerve pain for a long time, and she was healed during a praise and worship sesh one of the last nights we were there. Also, a bit closer to home, my teammate (and twin) Ryan had a medical issue that had bothered him in the past come up when we were in Pretoria and so (as has become our custom) we huddled and prayed over him, laying hands on him, and a few days later, his issue was gone!! Hallelujah God is GOOD!! This is one of the things I was really looking forward to, is to really see God move in tangible ways, so I am very thankful that He has been showing himself to our squad and myself in particular. Praise the LORD for He alone is GOOD!
