Well I am officially half way through month 2 of this crazy journey that God has me on. Part of it seems like I have been doing this for forever and another part feels like just yesterday that we left. My team and I along with the rest of my squad are currently in Chinandega, Nicaragua working with an amazing organization called Vision Nicaragua doing a lot of door to door evangelism street ministry. It has been amazing so far. I’ll tell you more about that in a later blog. This blog is about a man I met at debrief in Granada, Nicaragua.
Now 4 or 5 times this year, as a squad, we will have what we call debrief. It happens after our first month and our last month and a couple times in the middle. Debrief is basically where we all come together as a squad for a few days with the leadership team and process things together and for rest and refuel ourselves. In a sense we have no scheduled ministry for a few days. The funny thing is, we don’t have to have “scheduled” ministry time for God to show up.
Now it was our first day a debrief and Granada and some of my team and I decided to go and explore what the market had to offer in the town square. We spent a couple hours just shopping around at the different stands and tables. The girls I was with stopped at a table for a while and I continued to look around. Now at this time I was wearing my Detroit Tigers Baseball hat, and if you don’t already know, Baseball is actually the national sport of Nicaragua, which is pretty dang cool. And at the table next to where the girls were, one of the locals who I quickly realized was mute, (Referred to as Nicas) motioned me over and pointed to my hat and started motioning that he played baseball. And so in what I would call very broken sign language, we had a conversation for 10 minutes about baseball. We then left and did some more looking around, and in my mind, I figured I would never see the man again.
Well I was wrong and have never been more joyful in being wrong. Later on as we were walking back to our hostel, he recognized me and came up and gave me a hug. I was honestly surprised, but so ecstatic that he felt we made a good enough connection to call me out and give me a hug. He then started to explain that he not only was mute, but also deaf and the pointed to heaven and then to his heart and then praying hands and wanted us to pray over him right there. And so we prayed for healing for restoration of his hearing and speech. He somehow knew we were Christians and would pray for him, and there is so much joy in that.
Over the next couple days of our time in Granada we got to know our new friend who is named Juan and got to know his story and about how when he was little and living on the streets, an American missionary took him in and taught him American Sign Language and poured into him and his faith journey. He then began to take us around town and tell us stories about each of the homeless people lying on the side of the streets and asking us to go and pray for them right then and there.
I was absolutely blown away by this man. He is a deaf and mute guy who is filled with so much joy, taking us, a group of missionaries around his community telling us the stories of his people and taking us to pray over them. That’s not normal, but so amazing! We also then asked him to join us for all squad worship one evening. I wasn’t sure what that experience would be like for him being that he could not here. But as we were all singing praises to the most high God, I look over at Juan and he just has his hands raised and crying. I then had tears in my eyes as I was overcome by the joy and the presence of the Holy Spirit in that place and in Juan’s life.
Now while we prayed multiple times over Juan that God would restore his hearing and voice, we never saw that actually happen. But I do believe that God has given Juan a much larger voice than any one of us could have. God gave him a voice in the midst of his silence through the amount of love and care he has for the disabled in his city. God gave him a voice for the people that can’t speak up for themselves. God has given him a heart to tell their stories to us and take us to pray for them. It is in that, that he indeed has a voice and a beautiful voice at that.
Prayer Requests:
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This month is all squad month which means all 40 plus people all living together and in that, sickness has been going around a lot. So please pray for health amongst us all.
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Please also pray for my squadmates who have yet to meet their next financial deadline that is coming up in like a day or two. Please pray that the Lord provides for them so that they are able to continue to stay on the mission field.
Thanks and Blessings to you all!
Andrew
