Wild & Wonderful...

This Sunday in the village was both wild and wonderful! During our church service we always have a time of praise and prayer requests.  Things were moving along normally when this prayer request was put forward: "Please pray for my husband, someone threatened to kill him!" 

Now where we live that's not a threat you can take lightly. The Holy Spirit prompted me to respond in a strong manner. I told them I took that threat personally; that I felt a sense of responsibility toward this community and if someone threatened one of them it was as if they threatened me also. I also told them they should feel exactly the same way...we are one family and we need to look out for each other, even in this violent country! I told them after the service I would get involved in the situation and that's what I did. After finding out who the person was that was doing the threatening I went to his house and called him out to speak with him. Gently, slowly I began to remind him what the Bible tells us in Matt. & Luke about forgiving each other regardless of who is correct or incorrect. As you might expect he didn't want to hear this and said he absolutely wasn't going with me to apologize and shake the other person's hand. However, as we continued to talk it wasn't long before the Holy Spirit began to soften him and the eventual outcome was that we were able to get the two men together to say they were sorry and then to shake hands. Again, as you might expect at first they wanted to say, "sorry" and then make their accusations against one another. But we stopped them and explained forgiveness was just saying I'm sorry and nothing more. In the end they were able to bite their tongues and pull it off! This may seem trivial, but in Honduras this is a big, big threat averted. Thank you, Jesus.

Now the wonderful part...As we were leaving the village I noticed one of our congregants walking across the football field with a young man hanging onto her shoulders and both appeared to be crying. I asked one of the kids to yell out the window and see what was wrong. It turns out the young man's wife had just left him for another man and he was devastated. The woman asked if we could pray for him. We got out of the van and gathered round them and began to simply talk about how life throws us curves sometimes and how difficult it would be to try to handle that on your own. Eventually we asked if he knew who Jesus was and he responded, "Not really". Well, now you can guess the rest of the story...we told him the good news of the gospel and before long he was praying to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. We gave him a Bible and prayed with him and although he was still in deep pain and was very disconsolate you could see a difference in his face. There appeared to be some hope, some strength where just moments before there was utter despair.

God will bring opportunities across our paths and if we are looking for them, He will use us! Today ask God to give you the opportunity share the gospel with someone who needs to hear the good news!