This week has been very exciting for the Lord’s work! Two families have been touched mightily:
1) Ethan headed down to the poolside to do some work on his computer and although it was super busy and crowded, the one table we normally like to sit at in the corner was, amazingly, available (the Lord’s doing!). There was a family of five (American with Haitian decent) hanging out very close to the table, and Ethan overheard the dad talking about his dissolutionment with his church. Ethan sensed that the situation was set up by God, so he got chatting with the man about our experiences. The man was very touched by what Ethan shared and purposed to catch up with all of us before they were due to check out.
The next morning he texted, so we all gathered in the hotel boardroom to chat some more and to pray. The parents’ 14-year-old cousin (whom they are caring for) actually received the Holy Spirit anointing first! She was very moved by the whole experience with many joyful tears as she continued to pray in tongues.
Next was the wife. Her experience was very interesting. She was struggling to be filled with the Holy Spirit - groanings, but no clear language. So, I was moved to ask her if she sang. She nodded, so I encouraged her to simply open her mouth and sing whatever words came to her from the Holy Spirit as He filled her. So, she started to sing a familiar tune, but the words were in tongues! Then she went back and forth - singing in tongues and then speaking in tongues, then singing again, then more praying in the Holy Spirit.
Last to receive was her husband. He was struggling a lot and we sensed a major blockage. So, we asked him if there was any sin in his life that he felt he needed to confess and purpose to forsake in order to come to God in complete repentance. He hesitated, so we knew there was something going on, so Don encouraged him to come to another room (just the two of them) to talk man-to-man. That was the breakthrough because when they came out and we all prayed again as a group, he received very quickly and so powerfully.
Also, he had been told that tongues was something that needed to be kind of learned and worked toward, whereas what he experienced with us was that, no, it’s the anointing of the Holy Spirit that people need to seek for in true repentance and humility - and that speaking in tongues is a miracle that happens when someone is filled and the Holy Spirit starts praising and praying in His spiritual language (through us).
It was a very wonderful morning! Don even water baptized the cousin in the hotel pool before they departed as it was something she wanted to do in obedience to Jesus’ command in John 3:5. Praise God!
2) Yesterday, on my loops around the lake, I kept passing a lovely older man who beamed a huge smile at me each time I went by. I did the same. By the next time I saw him, he was recording a vlog on his phone and I heard him say the words “God” and “Holy Spirit” and “ministry.” I didn’t want to interrupt his video, so I sat at a bbq area not far away and waited. (Later, he said he felt moved to talk to me, too!)
After he was done, I wandered up and told him that I was excited to overhear him mention the Lord and that I would love to know about his ministry. He was excited, too, so we exchanged numbers and purposed to catch up for coffee with our families later that day. We ended up inviting them to our hotel room to try our new cappuccino machine and we all thoroughly enjoyed chatting for a long time, sharing stories and discussing the Word.
He was already born of water and of the Holy Spirit and loved to pray in tongues, but his wife and daugter and grandson had not yet received the Holy Spirit anointing and had not been water baptized (except the daughter - she had asked to be baptized when she was a teenager after returning from a mission trip). So, we prayed with the daughter first and she received, speaking in tongues. She shared that she thought she already had the Holy Spirit but now she realized she wasn’t filled until now. She definitely knew and felt the difference, praise God!
Next, we encouraged her mom to get water baptized first before praying for the Holy Spirit anointing given that she had been quite heavily (and falsely) indoctrinated that water baptism was unnecessary for salvation and was only an act of joining oneself to a particular group. After sharing some relevant scriptures with her, and after some beautiful heartfelt and Holy Spirit-inspired confession and encouragement from her husband, she was ready. Before we headed down to the pool, though, young Andrew (13 years old) had a chance to share his thoughts, and soon he was wanting to get water baptized, too!
So, we all went down to the hotel pool where Don encouraged the husband to baptize his own wife and grandson, which he did so beautifully. Not only that, both the wife and grandson also received the infilling of the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues virtually straight away after coming up out of the water. It was such a joyful and miraculously special evening to witness their entire family come to be spiritually united and passionately inspired to go forth and live the Book of Acts life like we do as a family team - our reasonable service, but a wonderfully blessed calling!
