Inglesia Santidad Pentecostal - Pastor Josè Marrero
Well I know this is after the fact, our trip is over, and we are starting back to work. But "Preparation" was the key!! All sixteen of our team did an AWESOME job. As I look back and see our team before the trip, and look at them now, I see 16 different people. The team has grown spiritually by leaps and bounds, and like I stated, it was in the preparation.
We started this missions journey with the intention of helping my daughter lead a small missions team to an inner city and do street evangelism. Well, after looking for potential destinations we decided to work with a church in our conference. This is a Hispanic church (as you can tell by the name above) and my daughter is studying education with a spanish minor, and I have been self teaching myself spanish for a few years. So we started making the budget and praying for the Lord to direct us toward who should be apart of the trip. All of us being very Youth Ministry Minded we decided to take a small College age group. Then it turned into some younger high school kids. So we ended with mix of 3 - 40 somethings, 5 - 20 somethings, and 8 - teenagers. We wanted to serve the church and community somehow, and in talking with the Pastor, he requested a Vacation Bible School. So we made the plans and looked at our team......PERFECT!!! Everyone fit a position perfectly. Next!
We always want to go to the streets prepared. So we picked a drama or two and started having practices. Those practices started turning into worship and prayer meetings. This was exactly what the team needed. This was building unity much better than any practice ever could. Hearts were softened, and the Lord was teaching us about Faith, and how real faith works. The Lord gave us Scriptures each practice that challenged our faith, and we had to ask ourselves if we really believed the Bible. All of the Bible!! If God said it, and you believe it then we must act on it. Then the Lord reminded us of this scripture.
John 14: "12Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it."
How is this possible. We had prayer partners that were telling us that Signs and wonders would follow our trip....What???? They knew nothing about our meetings and worship and the Word the Lord was giving us. We would pray for the team members by name and declare the impossible things in their lives healed. We would pray and believe, not because we understand, but because we were testing our faith. We believed the word, but we needed the Holy Spirit to help us with our unbelief.
So as preparation winded down and we started to take action, our faith was building and our hearts were growing more tender toward the Lord. We started to see the hearts of some of the team, some swelling with excitement and others swelling with pain. Pain that their own life and family have brought them. So again and again we put our faith to the test, and reminded the Lord of His word (like he needs reminded) but prayed His own words back to Him. Accepting the healing and believing for restoration.
What happened in the field???? You'll have to wait for the next blog....Maybe next week. Come back and check it out!!
In His Service,
Todd Smith
