Treasure Hunting…

This past week was full of various shenanigans. One such shenanigan happened last Tuesday. After prayer and worship at the soon-to-be “Ace of Cups” (Cairo’s own fine coffee shop), five of us ladies headed off on a Treasure Hunt.

Treasure hunting is a unique, and fun, outreach strategy, and I’m pretty sure God dreamed it up.

So the gist of treasure hunting it this… Find a group of Jesus lovers. Sit and listen to the Lord and ask Him for clues to find a treasure and begin to write down any words, pictures, thoughts that come to mind. Compile your list and begin to look over it together. This list, is your treasure map. Looking at your “clues”, you pray about where to go to find God’s treasure – a person in need of the love of God that day.

So, Tuesday morning we had our treasure map. It included various colors, some random names, a couple of ailments, a place, and several other random objects or descriptions. One item our our list was the “Fill-Up Mart” a closed down gas station down the block from our house. So we started there. Within about 10 mins. the Lord had put us in the path of a man who was hanging out behind the gas station. We told him we were on a Treasure Hunt, looking for who God wanted to love on in a special way today, and handed him our treasure map and asked him to look over it and see if any of those words made since to him. A few of them did, and we asked him if he thought he might be our treasure. With an aire of encouragement, he said, “I think so.” We talked to him a bit asking him what he wanted for God to do for him today. He was very discouraged, had great pain in his back, and honestly just wanted to get out of Cairo. He hadn’t been able to work because of his injury to his back. We asked him if we could pray for him, and he welcomed it. We prayed for his back, spoke blessing over him, spoke destiny over his life, and the love of Jesus. After we had finished praying, the pain in his back was completely gone…even he was shocked! Praise God. He looked full of hope and just kept saying, “I really needed this today!” We gave him a hug and just felt the Father’s love all over him. We asked him if he knew Jesus and he said yes. We keep him in our prayers, this little treasure! How fun it was to find him that day!

I have since seen him around town, and he always has a big smile on his face. Thank you, Father.

Treasure Hunting is pretty fabulous if you’re willing to trust the Holy Spirit to lead and guide you, even if you don’t understand a thing. I guess, for me, I loved how it took something I desire to do (evangelism), combined it with the playful heart of God and made it all about His LOVE and HIS abilities. I’m looking forward to finding more treasures in the days ahead!

Uprising

Uprising is our weekly prayer and worship time on Friday nights. We generally have dinner and then a time of prayer and worship. It looks different every week, depending on how God leads. We’re not a church, so it’s not a “service” per se, but more of a time for the community to come together and worship and pray. Once a month we take this shin-dig over to one of the local projects. Our crowd when we head to the projects is generally of the younger age bracket – mostly just kids. So this week when the tides where turned and mostly adults showed up, it caught us all a little off guard. Guess you never know what God is going to do. But it was such a blessing to see adults come out and praise the Lord together! I was particularly touched to see our friend “V” (see earlier post) come and give testimony about what God was doing in his life. It was a sweet gathering and a wonderful time with the Lord. Thank you, Jesus for how you are reconciling people to one another – bringing families together and showing me more an more a picture of the beautifully diverse Bride you died for!!

God is moving.

I have not been too good at writing down stories from the past couple of weeks. God has been loving on people left and right and allowing us to see His goodness around us. I’m going to put a link to some of my teammates stories as she has been very faithful to keep track of these testimonies. I pray they will encourage you as much as they have me!

Prayers for “V”
Men’s Bible study welcomes newest member, grandma!
Our alcoholic friend returns to our worship time, sober, and with many family members…his life is transforming in front of our eyes!

I have been meditating on the power of God’s love lately. I think, my biggest desire for my life is that I would love God more and more as the days go on and learn to love others more and more like Him as the days go on. Seems like simple plan, you know? But I’ve found it to be not really the easiest task for me. As I began this past week I had time in the prayer room with Heather C. and my one real prayer request was “I want to love God more.” I didn’t even really know what that meant or how exactly I could practically go about doing that. But the remarkable thing was, after we prayed I had this increase in love for those around me, almost immediately. I began to identify so many things in my teammates that I was thankful for – reasons they were so precious to our team and so purposeful to my life and this ministry for this season. Not one was called her unintentionally. All great gifts.

I began to have a greater love for this community with sweet moments to pray for people all over town and worship on the streets for my audience of One. Inside me grew such a delight to begin to tell others how they were so loved by God. I had the great privilege of sharing the gospel again to a group of kids at the projects and throughout the week I just found myself so thankful for opportunities to be a mouthpiece of God’s love towards others. As I funneled His love through my little life, it was easy to funnel it back to Him, and I began to see this wonderful mystery of loving my God more, by loving those He loves, more.

I pray that God would continue to give me boldness to step out to speak of His love and to demonstrated it with extravagance to His people.

More than I could hope for or imagine…

This week our staff along with some friends in the region are entering into an intense time of prayer for raising up 24/7 prayer in the region as well as preparation for 50 days of 24 hour prayer here in Cairo this summer! We have seen God’s faithfulness so much in this place of prayer and He continues to lead us into new seasons of obedience in this. Please keep us in your prayers this week especially for wisdom and guidance for the Lord in these new endeavors, for opportunities to love on people in this community in Christ, and to hear from the Lord.

Today was quite a day. My supporter from Colfax was back in Cairo today to deliver us a cow ). See “leap year” entry below. We now have two freezers stuffed with over 650 pounds of beef!! Including steak and prime rib, what?!! Amazing. He even tossed in some pork. What a blessing!! I know we will enjoy feasting on such delicacies, but I’m also so excited to be able to bless others in the community with this precious gift! (Addendum: I think it’s quite funny that in my “vision” from my “leap year” entry when I called the cows, I actually used a pig call, “sou-ee”, and then we ended up getting some pork with our beef ;o) hee hee.)

In addition to bringing us a fresh cow, Harlen also felt led to support me for the entire year!!!! That’s right, folks, I am now FULLY supported for this year of ministry, and on top of that, he gave me a raise ;o), more than I was asking for each month. AND it doesn’t stop there….Harlen also felt led to support some of the other staff here at Two Rivers too. Blessings all around!

Kristy pointed out during our staff meeting today that since the beginning of the year, the Lord has raised over $50,000 for our ministry, if you count support raising and other gifts – all without a grant. This is greatly freeing for any ministry! So, praise the LORD!!!

Thank you all again for your prayers, I can certainly tell that people are praying for me and this ministry. God is faithful to listen to hear our prayers.

The lights went out.

It seemed foolish really, at first. Earlier this year, God laid it on my heart that our team should go to the outskirts of town to a gas station and lay our hands on the big neon sign you can see from highway, and pray that God would use it for His glory.

This sign has, for the last 4 + years, since I moved here, lit up the skies with the word “DIES”. It should read “DIESEL” but the last two letters blew out and so it just sits there, ironically and sadly proclaiming death over this little town. Seems silly, just a burnt out sign, but one that so many have noticed. I just had a thought that maybe like the “high places” of yore that the prophets and kings often took down in the Old Testament, something needed to be done about this sign, that it would no longer proclaim “Death” over Cairo. To many people, I reakon, including myself about 2 years ago, this would seem like an absurdity. Why would God call you to pray over a stupid sign, it doesn’t mean anything. But the Old Testament is full of people doing absurd things at the instruction of the Lord, so why not us? I bit the bullet, and our whole team went and prayed over the sign.

With great faith, i thought the lights would come up all of a sudden, or the sign would grow dim. But nothing happend. For months. Nothing happened. I began to feel a little bit like an idiot. Maybe this was all in my head, just a silly whim, just a fantastical hunch. Maybe God really doesn’t work this way anymore, maybe He’s really not the same as He always was and always will be. Ill just add this to the list of things I made up in my head, that God would actually at the sound of our prayers erase this proclamation of “Death” over Cairo.

So on Wednesday this week, I was heading to the gym, already in a state of spiritual frustration. Running through things in my life I still had to lay down to Him, grieving things He was asking me to give up for this time. Frustrated by how foolish my life looks to man, frustrated that I cared a flip what my life looked like to man. Desperate to see Him move, desperate to see answers to two years of crying out for a community I still don’t know how to love. Desperate and weeping. I drove by the sign, and cried out in my weakness, “And then there’s the sign – would you flipping do something about that sign, Lord?!! I know it’s silly, but I don’t think you want this sign to say “DIES” over Cairo anymore – so do something!!”

I go to the gym and get lost in swimming through my emotions.
I drive back into town in the evening, now dark and look over my shoulder as I exit the highway to see that big familiar sign.

But I don’t see it.

I can’t see it.

Because after 4 + years, the entire sign is now out.

Forgive my unbelief. I welcome the absudities of following You, Lord. It may look foolish to man, but this is life to me. This is reality to me. You are worthy of my foolishness.