There's No Place Like Home
Well, we made it! After three days of being on the road, taking another boat ride, and staying in several hostels, we made it home at last! When we got home there was a merry welcome sign waiting for us and chocolate in the kitchen. So, we were very blessed to be back!
But we didn't even get home before we jumped right back into ministry here! The day we got in, before I even got home, I went to our church for a worship practice for an evangelism that we had on Saturday. The evangelism Saturday was amazing and many people were blessed!
Since we've been home the spiritual warfare has been very evident. Saturday at the evangelism, as we started preparing to begin our program something went wrong...our sound system died! We had three guitars, an electric drum set, a keyboard, and lots of microphones set up and ready to go. We are unsure how permanent the damage is to our sound board, but we are praying that something small malfunctioned and that it will be easy to fix.
But did that stop us? Absolutely not! We got the guitars out, got ready to sing louder, and I even played on a Tupperware box to substitute for a drum. The day was blessed and the Gospel went out! Many children came and heard the good news and we were all very blessed by their presence.
So we packed up, unloaded everything at the church, and that was that. Even though things hadn't gone as planned, everyone felt like the day had been a huge success! We enjoyed some watermelon together and then everyone went home.
But was that the end of the day? Not yet it wasn't! Since none of us had eaten since breakfast we were all very hungry and decided to go to McDonald's for a late dinner. So my dad parked in front of McDonald's and the rest of us went in to grab the food. We came back, got in the car, and started handing out the food.
Then, all of a sudden...BAM! We felt the car jerk a little bit, and looked back to see that someone had backed into us with his car! We got out and looked at the damage; praise the Lord, it was just a scratch. Then the driver of the car that had just hit us got out and started yelling at us.
It was another moment of spiritual warfare when we had to decide, "Are we going to give in to the temptation to respond in the flesh?" So we waited for the police, some friends came out and met us, and then we just started talked and laughing together. We showed them that when they were getting angry with us, even after we were very tired from a long day of serving, that we had something that they didn't have; we showed them Jesus. We stood there for two hours talking with them, until they eventually cooled down a little bit and we even invited them to church.
We are still in the process of figuring out where to go from here, tomorrow we will have another meeting to see what the insurance companies will do. So please, keep these meetings in prayer: pray that they would see Jesus in our lives, that they wouldn't try to trick us in any way, and that there will be a peaceful resolution.
This week we have a Vacation Bible School as well. It is geared towards younger children and it has a "Gold Rush" theme! We will be doing this for two weeks and we would appreciate any prayers for this as well, because today we only had six children and we certainly are hoping for more.
The message of this blog post is this...the Word went out! People saw Jesus! Children heard about their loving savior! Angry men were calmed, just like it says in the Bible, "A gentle answer turns away wrath." There are six more children in this world that have heard about Jesus than there were yesterday! Praise God!
So, sometimes we need to improvise. Sometimes we need to just roll with the punches. But in our everyday we live to show Jesus to the world by how we live our lives! My church in America has a sign right above the exit doors that says, "You are now entering the missions field!" So, as soon as you leave today to go to the store or to work or something, you are showing Jesus. Let's roll with the punches, overcome the spiritual warfare, and share God's love today!
God bless you all,
~Alex R. Pratt
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