Today began with everyone waking up at 8:00 for breakfast as usual and without much planning aside from visiting several tourist sites. We were able to visit the oldest church, the oldest fort, and the oldest street in all of Americas as well as tour Christopher Columbus' son's house. Afterwards, we spent about an hour shopping for personal things to take back home at a market place where haggling was such a norm which could save you a great amount of money if carried out correctly without acting like a tourist. These were all great experiences but I would like to take this time to focus more on what God had planned for us today instead of what we planned as a group.
I say with great confidence that tonight was the reason that all 13 of us were called on this mission trip. What started out as a normal bible study with Jim and Teresa's bible study group ended up becoming something more than anyone could have imagined. Our very own Ben Oheim led the worship with 6 songs that he had planned on but the bible study ended up lasting for about two hours of just worshiping the Lord and glorifying Him. During this time, The Holy Spirit broke the hearts of many and this became the most pure and natural worshiping experience for myself and many others. Words can't explain how perfect this worship was and how naturally we created our own songs of worship that conveyed the emotions we were feeling at that very moment which The Holy Spirit was putting upon our hearts.
After this worship that both drained and fully restored our spirits, we had a double devo by myself, David Lee, and Jenny Dietz. My devo was about Thankfulness; I wanted to emphasize the importance of not letting our thanks to the Lord during our prayers become a mundane thing such as, "Thank you for this day, thank you for this food..." and that we should quit treating God as if He owes us something but rather realize how much we are blessed. Jenny's Devo was about how we should identify the lies in our lives that the world blinds us with through media and peers and find the truth that disproves and overcomes the lie in The Word of God. After the devos, several of us felt this great anxiety in our hearts. We didn't know what but we knew that The Holy Spirit had something else in store for us even though we were physically exhausted. Ben proposed we simply sit in silence for a while and listen to The Holy Spirit. We decided to move upstairs on the patio and say one thing we are genuinely thankful for and one thing that we are willing to give up for a month. We prayed for a couple in our group, and several really experienced freedom!
We thought this would be the end of our emotional roller coaster for the night but The Lord still had other things in store for us. One of our group accepted Christ as Savior! We all prayed then for guidance, strength, bravery, and persistence to keep the fire inside going even after we go back home and for continuing to seek out The Truth daily from this day forward.
Even after this confession, we felt that someone else had something else to say. At that moment, another confessed sin and asked for our prayers that night. Once again, we laid our hands on a Child of God asking for strength, self-control, and victory.
Tonight was a night miracles where The Holy Spirit worked in the lives of every single one of us in a way that was so flawless and beyond compare. Small groups confessed sins to one another and asked one another to be their accountability partners so that victory can take place over our sins. James 5:16 says this, "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." This is exactly what The Holy Spirit compelled each and every one of us to do tonight and it was so encouraging to see The Lord work is such mysterious ways that is simply perfect. I just pray that all 13 of us will be able to take this high we feel for God here in this country back home with us and keep our flames active.
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