Some awesome things happened while we were in LA. First, we met a guy inside a department store. Our six-year-old daughter smiled at him in the line up and said “Hi” to him. This started the ball rolling. While chatting in the line up (there was a long line!), Steven mentioned his son who is studying to be a pastor. We mentioned our traveling ministry and immediately he was intrigued by our stories of praying with people who are familiar with Jesus and the Bible but have not yet received the Holy Spirit. Our standard question is often, “Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed?”

Steven was excited to meet us out front to talk some more once we had both purchased our items. We chatted outside for a while and then went to our car to pray for him (it was night time and quite cold outside). Steven received the Holy Spirit after a few tries. He was overjoyed as it was something he was never before familiar with. He had never before heard about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues as proof of this anointing. We emphasized to Steven the need to also be baptized by full immersion in water as Jesus highlighted in John 3:5.

After that, we started to chat to one of the breakfast servers at our hotel. Each day, we talked more and more about the Lord to the point where she came to our hotel room one morning for us to lay hands on her and pray for her. She was going through some very rough times with one of her children. We soon discovered that her co-worker is already filled with the Holy Spirit. The co-worker overheard us talking to one of the breakfast diners, and she was amazed to witness our boldness and the authority with which we spoke. We were able to encourage her that all that and more can be hers by using the fullness of the Holy Spirit that God has given her which includes praying in tongues every day – exercising the Spirit. Although she only had a brief amount of time to talk with us, we were able to share our website with her. We thank God continually for our ChristiansRULE website and the benefits it provides others i.e. being able to direct people (non-believers, believers but not yet born again of water and the Spirit, or those Spirit-filled but needing encouragement) to information that will help them with their relationship with the Living God.

The breakfast diner this lady overheard us talking to is the other amazing story. We had been continually running into her and her children (from Finland) day after day, and then one day we happened to be getting into our car at a parking lot in the middle of huge, busy Los Angeles and who should be waiting to take our parking spot? The same Finnish gal with her children! Even her girls commented on how amazing it was and, of course, we recognized the Lord’s hand upon it straight away. We were all surmising what the odds would be for something like that to occur, knowing full well that with God in charge, statistics are completely irrelevant.

We purposed to share the Word with the mom the next time we saw her. We didn’t know when that would be, but it was the very next morning. One of us “happened” to bump into her while making a quick stop at the breakfast room for a piece of fruit. We asked her some questions and soon found out she had been suffering with a chronic back problem for many years. We talked about our personal miraculous healings and she was happily intrigued. She ended up agreeing to come back to our hotel room for some prayer, and there we explained more about Jesus and the necessity of being born again. She was keen to pray and she received the Holy Spirit very soon. It was interesting hearing her speak in tongues because she already spoke about five or six languages!

We talked some more and then went down to the hotel hot tub to baptize her. It was great that her girls were there to share in the experience even though they couldn’t understand much English. We’re catching up with her again tomorrow while we’re here in the Coachella Valley for a while. We invited her to come visit with us, so it will be lovely showing her and her girls some sights and talking more about the Lord together. They’re from Finland and we’re from North America, yet the Lord connected us – from two completely different parts of the world, yet now united by the Holy Spirit within, thanks to Jesus and His sacrifice upon the cross.