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Tuesday, January 30th…Day 3

Before we even began the women’s ministry, we got to meet Max.  He invited us to come up to see their new media center in the upstairs church.  Max shared that he heard Scott’s message Sunday night along with his testimony of his miraculous healing of cancer (I will do an entire blog post on this later). He shared that he was having trouble and had been told something was wrong with his prostate. He asked for prayer….so we prayed, and we called down heaven. Then, the woman helping him to paint also asked us to pray for her. Again, we did. Even when we do not know the depth of a request, God Almighty does. In our obedience, He is he One to minister to people’s hearts and souls.

Each night, back at the villas our team plus the Pikes would share a God moment from the day. I wish I could recall each and every one of them specifically. However, I think they will be covered in my day to day synopsis. The blessings went from us to the Pikes, from the Pikes to us, from us to the people and from the people to us. It was just such a powerful week. This began our first day of early rising to get to church (Vida Nueva) no later than 9:30.  Not so early, right? Well, we were about half an hour from the church. picking people up on the way. Plus, getting 8 people ready and fed to leave all prior to that happening. It wasn’t one of those super duper rise and shine before the sun type of trips though. The plan was three mornings of women’s ministry. Scott would spend that time with Tim doing whatever came up. Their goal was to gain some ground on getting a shipping container that was stuck in customs from Convoy of Hope, which had supplies for the hurricane refugees.

That morning , we had 3 women join us. Yep, only three, but God had that covered too. They were the 3 that were supposed to be there…and the only 3. God’s orchestration. Several others were at the home preparing us a Dominican lunch. Beth introduced each of them to us and shared a little bit of their stories. Javier, the worship leader for Vida Nueva (New Life Assembly) was there too….hanging out in the background. with his beautiful and precious baby girl, Bethany. The three women in attendance were Paola (Javier’s wife), Johanna (who was at absolutely everything), and Bimpy. Bimpy is Gino’s wife. Gino had been trying to get Living Free off the ground before he relapsed and is now in Jamaica going through Teen Challenge there. This left her in Antigua as a single mom of three children. Beth felt with such a small group of ladies that the biggest need was prayer. We had been sitting in chairs that formed a circle. So we did what we always do. We put two chairs in the center of the circle and asked them to sit there so we could pray over them. First, Johanna and Bimpy. Then, Paola and Javier. As we corporately prayed over Johanna and Bimpy, I felt the prompting of the Lord to leave the circle and get my Bible. As I did, The Lord lead me to Isaiah 58:12, which reads, “And your ancient ruins shall be REBUILT, you shall raise up the foundations of many generations, you shall be called the REPAIRER of the breach, and the RESTORER of the streets to dwell in.” God told me this was His Word for Bimpy! I am believing that the Lord will rebuild, repair and restore Bimpy and Gino’s marriage and ministry. There was a word for Johanna too…the Lord our God sees her servant heart. And a servant she is! We learned this as the week went on.

Then, we prayed over Javier and Paola….as we were praying Ana was a given a vision of Javier penning new songs, hymns and that they would become leaders/pastors over the youth. Everyone then joined us for lunch at Chichita’s house (photo on the right), where we were served a delicious Dominican meal of rice, beans, spaghetti and chicken (wings) with lettuce and tomatoes. Jerry’s restaurant is attached to it. Then Javier took us on a prayer walk around the neighborhood….just a block around. Across the street from Chichita’s house is a brothel (photo on the left) and on every corner there is a bar, even some in between. Addiction to drugs and alcohol are rampant. As we were making our way back to the house, we met Mariella. Beatris reached out and invited her to our women’s ministry on Wednesday morning. God’s divine appointment. This was huge and I will share more later. When we returned to Chichita’s home, I asked Ana if we could go back in so she could translate for me. God had given me an impression that I felt the Lord wanted me to share with Chichita. We entered her home and I shared with her that the Lord had said there is an open heaven over her home, that He hears her prayers and the angels are ascending and descending over her home delivering her prayers, and that she was a beacon of His Light to the community. Then she shared that her family hardly sleeps because of the noise from the bars all night long. She has had the women of the night come to her for prayer. She broke down and told us that she thought the Lord had forgotten her and was not hearing her prayers; so this came as a tremendous blessing to her. Mind you, it is only lunch time on Tuesday! Glory to God in the highest!! This quickly became a connection between Chichita and I.

While we were at women’s ministry, Scott went with Tim to see if they what they could find out about the container from Convoy of Hope for the Barbudans. With a recent newspaper articles of supplies ending up in homes of Antiguans, there was concern that the container had been compromised (this was not the case, however). They went to the Community Center where Bible School meets on Monday nights, in hopes to find Ms. Abbott. Upon their arrival, there she stood, right in the doorway. Tim was blown away. He has searched high and low and been given the run around for so long, he could not believe she was standing right there. God’s favor. They got to chat with her a little and she even told them 2 locations of where the Barbudans were still being housed. Tim knew of one, but not the other. So, they went to the one is hopes of finding out what type of supplies they were in need of because someone had given to the Pikes a large sum for this specific need. They did discover there were 86 people with one washing machine. A washing machine costs the exact amount that was given to the Pikes.

At lunch on Tuesday, Scott and Tim met us at Chichita’s for lunch and to walk with us around the neighborhood. Jerry was there, too. Remember Jerry? He was at Vida Nueva Sunday night when the entire church prayed over him. His bandage on his leg didn’t look so good. Therefore, Cheryl (RN) and Deb (OR tech) took a look and cleaned his wound, as well as they were able to they re-dressed it. Cheryl showed concern that Jerry might also be diabetic. This became an open door for our team to help him later in the week. We then returned to the villa to rest, regroup and prep dinner for that evening. Pastor Carlos, along with his wife, Belkis, their 3 children and his mom, Chichita all came…we made them cheeseburgers and homemade steak fries. We chatted and got to know one another much better. We also got to pray over the family, since Pastor Carlos is the acting pastor at Vida Nueva. It was a great night of fellowship. And he shared what he saw in some of our team….callings that were starting to show up. As you can see, it was a wonderful day blessed by the Presence of God Himself. So, it was difficult to pick out one God moment.