Saturday, August 21

Saturday, August 21, 2010

All is well as we arrived with no travel issues. The first day and night are spent on the boat traveling down the river to Parintins. Many of us believe that this a day to rest and relax. It's much more than that. We laugh that it is a day filled with breakfast, nap, lunch, nap, dinner. It is the first day we spend together as a team. Most of us met each other at organization meetings, packing parties, and prayer times, but we know little of each other's heart for ministry and missions. Some of have been on mission trips together before and share a bond that cannot be explained.

This is the day that we hear each other's stories of salvation and the grace we've all received. It's the day we learn why each of us have been appointed to this place, at this time, for a special purpose. It's a day when we reveal our hearts. We talk and laugh about a variety of things, and somewhere along the way we leave the stress of daily life and, at long last, allow our Lord and Savior to cleanse us and prepare our hearts for the services we will perform to His glory in the coming week.

I'm amazed that the Lord chooses us as His children when our hearts are impure and our actions sinful. I'm amazed at how He again chooses each of us according to our gifts for His purpose and forms a perfect team from people with imperfect hearts. He brings each of us through varied trials to strengthen us and prepare us for His work. Some of us He has ordained at an early age; some of us He breaks so that He can heal us and mold us. He takes us in our new lives in Him and uses us to help others who are now where we once were.

Many of us spent today reminsciencing about the Impact crusade in 2006. Telling stories of families who touched are hearts then and still do today. We shared with some of the newcomers the story from August 2005 when the members of a youth rally trip went into a pagan stadium and prayed for the people who attended the pagan festival put on there every year. We shared how Hemily Rego and Mical Martins sang a beautiful song in Portuguese while the rest of us were praying. We told them how the winds picked up, the trash in the stadium starting blowing, and dark clouds lowered over the stadium while they sang. We shared with them that the song was completed the wind stilled, the clouds left, and everyone was silent because we know something special had just occured. We only later discovered that the song was a prayer to God to send the Seraphim and Cherubim into this place! It was also later that we learned one of our trip participants had seen an angel over the stadium that day. All of these stories help prepare those who come with us now for the work that lays ahead.

This evening we shared the Lord's Supper. The Word tell us that we need to cleanse ourselves of anything that separates us from Him before we partake of the Lord's Supper. To that end, we each spent some time writing down the things that are separating us from Him and asked Him to remove them. We also wrote down the names of people for whom we have a burning passion to see come to Christ. Some of us wrote down names of people for whom we have been praying for 15 and 20 years. After the Lord's Supper, we spent time in personal prayer and each of us took that paper with our burdens and released it into the river. Gone are our burdens and disappointments. Gone are our anger and hard hearts. It wasn't the paper that took the burdens away. It wasn't writing them down or throwing them in the river. Our Lord once again cleansed us when we asked it of Him. It was symbolic of how completely our Lord showers His grace and love upon us. It was a beautiful example of our privilege to pray to Him at all times. As I stood in the dark of night and watched my own burdens fall into the river and disappear, I was reminded that in I Thessalonians Paul teaches us that we are not of the night; we are of the day. We are Sons of Light! As Sons of Lights, we are to prayerfully and deliberately and specifically seek the lost and share the gospel with Him. But, that is only part of our purpose for the coming week.

First and foremost, we are to glorfy Him by our faith. We are to worship Him and Him only. We are to allow Him to work through us, His Sons of light, to bring the lost to Him. He gives the certain hope of eternal life to those that follow Him. For many if not most of the people we minister to this week, the hope of eternal life in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, is the only hope they have.

We reach Parintins on Sunday morning and hope to get to the pagan stadium early in the day to pray once again for the Lord to banish Satan from this place forever. Will you please pray with us tomorrow? At some point during the day, get down on our knees and ask the Lord to use each of us this week according to His perfect plan. Ask Him to send his lost sheep to us and to make us His shepherds. Ask Him to send the Seraphim and Cherubim into this place!