Mission in Philly 2019

After we left Cuba, we went through Miami to get to Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, it was an incredible mission. As usual, the students really enjoyed our time together, and especially their time with my mission sister. She stayed for a few days, and I was able to stay for a week. Throughout the week, we had gone into people's homes going door to door, providing blood pressure and blood sugar screenings as well as asthma screens, and offering to check for HIV or AIDS. We would in fact care for the ‘whole person’. We would care for the physical person and the spiritual person - you will see what I mean. I will share with you some of the stories. On the first day when we went out with the team going door-to-door in the community offering whole person (physical and spiritual) care, I remember praying with a woman who mentioned that she didn't continuously communicate with the Lord, but she thought about Him sometimes. A member of our team shared with her about how his experience with the Lord has morphed over time and how much closer he is to the Lord now, having a personal relationship with Him that he had not had in prior years. As we talked with the woman, God showed me a drawing of the chasm between God and man, as two mountains with a space between them. Then the cross formed a bridge between the two mountains, resolving the chasm, so that there was now a bridge between God and man. The woman herself said that the cross provides a ‘crossing’. I realized that what she was saying was that the bridge allowed people to walk across the bridge to the Lord, and so I encouraged her to take steps along that path on the bridge as she ‘crossed’ to the Lord. She was moved by her time with us and I prayed for her what God pointed out to me for her, including the following. God pointed out to me that moment when Paul and Silas met the jailer who wanted to kill himself - because he thought that all the prisoners had escaped after Paul and Silas sang and there was an earthquake and all the prison doors had opened up. However, when Paul and Silas showed the jailer that the prisonerswere all still there, the jailer came to the Lord and took them to visit with his family in his home, and the jailer’s whole household became saved in the Lord. So, for that lady, I prayed that her whole household would be saved. At her house that day were her husband and grandchildren - her family in her home. On the very last day of the mission, we were stationed in a church’s parking lot and external recreational area. That day was in the form of a health fair, where we sat in one location. A man came in to see us. After he had completed various health fair activities, I heard him have a spiritual conversation with the students. I heard him answer their question about whether he prays a lot. He mentioned something about how it's hard to pray on the streets. I did not hear, much more. I saw the students pray with him as everyone bowed their heads and closed their eyes. Then he got up to leave. I felt God wanted me to share something with him, but I didn’t want to bother or delay him as he intended to leave. Nevertheless, I chose to be obedient to the Holy Spirit. I am so glad I did. Here's why. I stopped the man and asked if I could tell him a story, and he sat next to me. I told him that from the moment he had said it was hard for him to pray on the streets, God had immediately showed me something for him and I knew that I was supposed to share it with him. The vision that God showed me for the man was of David in the caves when he was running and hiding from Saul. I explained to the guy that there was this person in the Bible named David and he was anointed to be king, and that the current king was jealous and was trying to kill him. The man seemed to be unaware of the story and unaware of any of the following Bible stories that God laid on my heart to share with him. I explained that David was on the run and yet while in the cave, he was praising Jesus. No matter where we was, he was able to pray and serve the Lord. The man pointed out to me that he was also on the run, which I didn't know. And he was so moved that I would explain to him that God had chosen that particular story just for him. He was so moved that God would love him enough to do that just for him, to show him a story from the Bible that related to his situation. He mentioned that he too was on the run. Apparently, the day before he had been stopped by the police and he was somehow able to evade them, and that since then he was thinking of turning himself in. He mentioned that a lady had gotten him into trouble. Now, this next thing that I said to him, I have never really thought of it this way before, but this is what God laid on my heart to relate to him next - this version of a story from the Bible. I told him, "You know, there is a guy in the Bible that could say that too. Do you know the story of Adam and Eve?" To my surprise, he did not. So I told him about Adam and Eve, and how Eve ate the fruit and then Adam ate the fruit. Although they had both gotten instructions not to eat of the tree, Adam followed Eve and ate the tree's fruit as well. And so, Adam could potentially say the same thing, that a woman got him into trouble...Although he had made the poor decision himself. So he's therefore responsible for it. And then God had me point out to him that although Adam did that, God never left him nor forsook him, God never stopped loving him and wanting to be with him. In fact, God went looking for him, even knowing what he had done. “Adam, where are you? Adam, where are you?” God kept looking for Adam to keep loving him and spending time with him. And so God had me explain to the man that no matter what he had done and in what circumstance he found himself, God had never stopped loving him and He never would, and that God was still reaching out to him and wanted to be with him. The man was so moved by all of this that it was incredible for me to experience his joy. Eventually, I wanted to give him a Bible to show him and explain to him some more some of the Bible stories that God was showing me for him, such as Jeremiah 29:11 and Jeremiah 1:4,5 and Psalm 139:1-18, where God knew him before he was formed in his mother's womb and gave him a personality and breathed life into him. And he thought it was so amazing that God would have known him. The other doctor I was with, Dr. John, asked me if maybe I thought the guy would want to give his heart to the Lord, and so God gave me specific words to say to him to help him see and determine whether he wanted to come to know the Lord as his personal Savior, but not in the typical way that one might ask. It was more along the lines of: “Would you want to respond to that God that loves you so much and gave me these things to show you and brought you here today when you were saying that you were planning to be elsewhere and something led you here? I want you to know that that's the Holy Spirit. Would you want to respond and reach out and know that God personally who's doing all of this for you today?” He thought about it for 10 seconds and then he said, emphatically, “Yes!” And so what God had me do with him was something that I've never done before and I wouldn't usually do this way, but was perfect for him based on what God was doing in his heart. God had me pray Psalm 139:1-18 on his behalf. I told him that if he felt that way as in the Scripture, and that if he wanted to say those things to God, that he should repeat them after me. And so as I read each verse and each line, he would repeat each verse and each line, and it seemed to be heartfelt. Afterwards, God had me pray further on his behalf. I forgot to mention that he told me he couldn't read and so we figured out that his sister perhaps could read the Bible with him if we gave him the Bible. So I prayed on his behalf, I prayed to the Lord out loud in first person, “God, please help me to get opportunities to visit with my sister, and have us grow even closer, as she reads Your Word for both of us. May I grow in You and Your wisdom, and may she also grow in You...” I prayed and prayed and prayed and thanked God for everything he had done that day in first person, on behalf of the man. When I was done, I asked him if he wanted to pray some additional things to the Lord. He said no. I asked him if I had already said on his behalf everything he would've wanted to say to the Lord in that moment, and he smiled and said yes. He already was familiar with the community liaison at the church where the health fair was held that day. I'd called over the community liaison and he recognized the man as well. I asked the community liaison to look out for the man and make sure he gets what he needs to grow in the Lord, and the man agreed to come back as well. We told him that if he turned himself in, he should let the police know that he had been with us that day. The other doctor and I wrote and signed our names in the front of his Bible so that he could show it to the police. He allowed us to take a picture with him, and I continued to pray for him the rest of day. May this story bless you too, as you respond to the nudges of the Holy Spirit. Had I not stopped the man and told him the story of David in the caves and how God had showed that to me for him, he may not have had the opportunity to give his heart to the Lord that day.