Number 7 Widow's Mite: They prayed and God showed up!!!

Today we all went out to El Doradito for our weekly leadership training class. This is a one hour class I've been holding with 7 individuals from the village who've been selected as core leaders. As we headed out for the village it began to rain and upon reaching the dirt road we could see they had much more rain than we since the road was very slick. When we arrived at the village it was still raining so the leaders began to gather chairs to meet inside one of the nearly finished new homes. While they were doing that I noticed one of our leaders was emotional over something. When I inquired I found out her roof leaked (on her shack) and all the kids clothes were soaked and it was still raining and still coming in.

We began the meeting talking again about what it meant to pray to God; telling them it was just conversation as if they were speaking to their spouse or their friends. After one of them opened in prayer we said we had observed a problem in the village and we wanted to address it. We talked about Jesus telling the Pharisees that loving your neighbor was as important as the "first commandment" and how we needed to help if someone in the village was in trouble.

The normal mindset is to feel badly for the person in need, but to go about your own business because you have your own set of problems. But today we talked about coming together, about caring for one another, and about how that would please God. First we asked Soila to tell us what happened. After that I suggested they each pray for her, aloud, in just two or three sentences asking God to help, to stop the rain, and show them what to do. What happened next was truly straight from God.

As each one prayed you could see Soila becoming more and more emotional, and finally tears of gratitude were washing down her face. She had never before experienced her peers praying publicly for her. As the last man finished praying he looked at me and pointed to the open doorway...there was brilliant sunshine streaming into the house. It had been raining when the prayers began and already God had chased the rain away brought the sunshine we asked for. They were astonished, as was Mauricio who was translating for me! You could see that for the first time they understood God would actually listen to them...and respond to their requests!

Next I ask them what we needed to do to help Soila and they told me we needed to dry the clothes and put a new roof on the shack. I asked if they could do that and they said, "No, we have to finish our houses." But after explaining that we didn't need a complete new roof; we just needed to patch this one they thought it was feasible. I asked what we needed and they told me tin, wood, hammer, and nails. I asked it they had them. Yes! Can we fix her roof? Yes! We immediately left the meeting and began to round up the materials to repair her roof. The women and kids got all the clothes and hung them on the fences, while the men took off the bad tin and replaced it with new. It was spectacular to watch!

I know this is a small, small deal in the states; but here where things like this never, ever occur...it is a very big deal, a very big step! You can bet that everyone in that village saw these leaders leaving their own homes and helping Soila! You can bet they earned a heretofore unheard of respect from the entire community. And maybe most importantly they have a new-found feeling of self worth.

I believe this is what Isaiah was talking about when he said we should set the captives free. He didn't mean we should unlock prison doors, he meant we should unlock minds from the prison of Satan. Today that happened in Buen Esperanza (El Doradito).