“Girl, what did you eat when I wasn’t watching you?” Andrea asks me as I enter her doctor’s office. “You have a bacterial infection that would not go away without some strong anti-biotics,” she tells me.
“The Lord woke me up at 3:00am last night to talk to me about you,” Andrea shares with me as I lay on the patient table. Andrea and Fabian are our ministry hosts for Ecuador. They love completely in every way they can. They both also happen to be doctors. Fabian picks us up for ministry and takes us home each and every day. They provide lunch for us every day as well. One day Andrea read one of our blogs about being homesick and Andrea picked up pizza for lunch that day in an effort to make us feel like we were closer to home.
“Oh really? What did He say?” I ask Andrea as she uses the stethoscope to check my lungs. Breathe in. Breathe out.
“He talked to me about a few of your spiritual gifts that are underused,” she replied. “You are a prayer warrior and you also have the gift of discernment. It’s not just your imagination.” Wow. There is something special and supernatural the Lord is doing right now. The Lord is using Andrea to physically heal me and spiritually heal me at the same time. I’ve been in a lot of doctor’s offices before, but I have never had a doctor tell me that the Lord woke them up at 3am the night before to talk to them about me!
I am cared for in Ecuador. Jesus sees me here. There is nowhere I can go that the Lord does not see me. I am sitting in the center of his palm as he takes care of my every need.
The next day, I am pondering over these things and praying about what the Lord is trying to tell me as I swing during a break from painting on the church playground. Since this is our all squad month, our squad decided to put envelopes up for each and every person on our squad including our ministry hosts, squad leaders and squad mentor. We have been writing encouraging messages for each other and placing them in the envelopes each day. I just wrote all of mine yesterday and put them in the envelopes. I wrote encouraging messages and thanked them for the things they have done that meant something to me. Some messages I had received had prophetic words in them that the Lord told them to tell me.
“You can do this too,” the Lord tells me. “It’s not just your imagination. You hear me.” Then He says, “Pray for them and tell them what I say.”
The next day, I am spending time with the Lord as I listen to my worship music. I am in the river again (apparently this is a common theme that will probably go throughout the whole race). As I am there with Jesus, I look over and see one of my friends on the squad. She is bending down in some rocks. Jesus is waiting for her on the side of a hill in the grass. She looks over at Him, but doesn’t go to Him. “I’m waiting for her. Tell her what you have seen and tell her I am waiting to hold her and wrap my arms around her.” He brought to my mind Matthew 11:29-30. “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” So, I told her. So, it began.
