Last week I was privileged to lead a group of 9 woman here in Guatemala. A few of them have been here with me before and there were a few new faces as well. It was amazing connecting with family and meeting new friends. I have lead many short term trips, I normally plan out every possible detail that I can. It makes me feel better knowing that everything is lined up perfectly. I always want the Lord to move, but I have a plan B incase He does not show up. This trip was different. There were a lot of areas the Lord just said hands off, don’t touch it, it’s mine. It was honestly really easy to let Him have it, I have seen Him move so much recently that I could not help but let Him take it. What He did this week… its things I could have never imagined.
It started out like any other trip, I picked the team up from the airport, we eat lunch, did orientation, and got on a but into Antigua. When we arrived we meet up with my family from the base as well as the gap year team we are hosting. We let the group know we are doing an ATL ( Ask the Lord). The short term group will now be going out one on one with our gap year people or base people to ask the lord what to do… needless to say, some people were a bit freaked out. I know I was the first time I did this. Ellen, one of the girls from my team asked if her and I could partner up, I was so excited to see what the Lord was going to show us. We prayed and I got a word but I wanted to know what the lord was speaking to her. At first she said she did not know. So I asked her to think on it a little more. As she thought about it she said that she thought we needed to talk to the guy playing guitar behind us, thats the same thing the Lord had spoke to me. So we moved over to this man playing guitar, I started to speak to him in my little bit of spanish I have been learning in school. He ended up speaking excellent English which was awesome for us us.
We asked him what his name is, we will call him Joe for right now. Joe was telling us that he had felt like he needed to go to the park that day and spend time with the Lord, reading his bible and worshiping the Lord, now Joe grew up as a Christian but over the last few years he has been into drugs, alcohol, and parting. He wants to be done, but does not know how, he wants to go back to church but fears he wont be accepted in the stage of life he is in right now. The crazy thing about this encounter is that the Lord place Ellen and I together, I recently received my gifting of worship and ellen is a gifted worship leader, the Lord laid it on our hearts to go talk with a musician.
Though out our time with Joe we got to encourage him and speak life into him. At times he would look away as we were speaking truth over him, there were things you could tell that he just did not believe but he wanted to. I asked Joe to sing us a song, he played us this beautiful worship song, a lady and her song stopped to hear Joe worshiping the Lord. I asked Joe if i could play him a song as well. As worship of the Lord happened on the road the Spirit fell. There was something different in Joe… Joy. Sometimes the Lord asks us to do things that seem a little crazy, but its so worth it. As we prayed over Joe before he departed I could see chains braking off of him, Joy and life started to fill his body.
Keep praying for Joe, the Lord is doing some amazing things in His life, He is pulling him into His arms. The Father is breaking chains off of Joe and bringing him into a new life with Him.
Forgive the horrible look on my face, I tend to be the least photogenic person when I am playing. But regardless this photo is very special.
