So much has been happening lately that we haven’t been recording each of the stories in detail. For now, we’ll summarize them briefly below, but if you’d like to know more about how the Lord blessed a particular situation, feel free to reach out to us and we can share more. As always, each and every circumstance has been the miraculous hand of God, orchestrating things perfectly for His work’s sake!
1) Lady from South America: Don noticed her struggling with trying to park the little cargo trailer she was pulling with her vehicle. He approached her and her brother to offer assistance. The next night, he saw her again - only because I left something in the car and Don kindly offered to go down to get it for me. On his way out of the room, I said “Maybe there’s a reason…!” which is one of our common declarations when something ususual or unexpected happens.
While chatting with the lady, Don found out that she’d literally just escaped her abusive husband and had driven all the way here from up north with her three children. She loved God dearly but knew she needed more of Him and His power in her life — now more than ever! She accepted Don’s invitation to pray over her and came up to our room to meet the rest of the family.
As we prayed, she received the infilling of the Holy Spirit almost immediately, praying in tongues, and she was nearly jumping out of her skin with thankfulness and excitement. We don’t want to post her video just yet given her delicate situation, but I can tell you that it was soooo beautiful. I don’t think I’ve seen someone smile as wide and rejoice so much. She gave us all the biggest bear hugs we’ve ever experienced!
2) One evening I went for my daily walk quite late at night given that we’d been too busy earlier in the day. As I looped the lake, I heard a lady praying loudly and passionately over what seemed to be something like Facetime or Zoom. She was on her netted porch, outside her hotel room on the first floor.
I waited quietly until she was done and then approached the back of the patio to chat with her through the netting. I quickly discovered that she’s filled with the Holy Spirit and regularly prays in tongues (I was not surprised from the way I heard her praying). We had a beautiful conversation and ended up praying some very powerful words over one another. It was a very unexpected and blessed end to the day!
3) While driving around on some errands, we spontaneously decided to go to Trader Joe’s for a snack and eat it by the nearby lake. While there, both Don and I noticed a gal sitting by herself in the distance. No-one else was around - just our family and this gal. Don obeyed the leading of the Holy Spirit first to go and chat with her, and I joined them after a few minutes.
When Don asked her if she was okay, she began to cry and shared that she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer and was due to have a mastectomy the very next morning. Wow, God’s timing is simply awe-inspiring! We prayed over her and tried to help her pray for the Holy Spirit anointing, but she was too distracted with all of her thoughts and emotions. We encouraged her to pray on her own and to not give up. Her name is Maraysha (I’m not sure of the spelling) if anyone feels moved to also pray for her.
4) Another day when we were at the same Trader Joe’s, Don saw a man out front wearing a t-shirt that said something about God on it (I can’t remember exactly what the message was). We try to always keep “in tune” with things that God sets up for us to do, and t-shirts that people choose to wear for the day seem to be a reccurring theme for our family. Anyway, we all ended up praying over him, to get him praying in tongues again, fluently and confidently. He was already born again of water and the Holy Spirit, but he had recently come back to God after straying for a while. Needless to say that he definitely recognized God’s hand upon the situation!
5) As I was waiting outside a music store for the rest of the family, I prayed for a friend of ours. I’d just found out that he was experiencing some health issues, so I sat on the curb with my head down, focusing on him as I prayed in the Holy Spirit. After a while, a caring guy approached me with some parcels of food to hand out, thinking I was in need. After I thanked him kindly and explained what I was doing, he sat down next me to hear what I had to say about being born of water and of the Holy Spirit, and the power of praying in tongues.
He looked semi-homeless himself and suddenly he felt changed, touched by what I had to say. I discovered that although he had experienced some serious negativities within church life (“Churchianity”) as a child, he had at one stage received the infilling of the Holy Spirit. I knew because as I described speaking in tongues, he said “Oh, you mean like…..,” and he proceeded to speak clearly in tongues in demonstration, to check if that’s what I was referring to.
He had a friend with him that was kind of badgering him to leave, so I only had a brief amount time to encourage him from the Word and pray over him at the end. Even he himself stated the obvious - that he had come to minister to me in kind servitude, and he got ministered to instead! He definitely felt the love of God, praise the Lord. We have learned to expect the unexpected!
6) Don got talking with a guy that was down in the foyer of our building after the guy mentioned something about the weather. They ended up having a great conversation about the Lord (apparently, he’s a minister in his church fellowship back in his home state), and the guy said he was going to call Don to have prayer (it had been a long while since the guy had prayed in tongues, and he “happened'“ - God’s doing! - to be on a spontaneous vacation here at the invite of a friend).
He never did phone, so God caused Don to run into him again very late the next evening - about midnight! This time, they had a really fruitful, deeper conversation, and Don got to pray over him, to help him pray in tongues fervently and confidently.
The Lord never ceases to amaze us how He orchestrates our lives together with the lives of others, so that His message(s) can be uttered forth and bear fruit.
7) On the way out of a convention we attended, Don yet again spied someone wearing a “God-related” t-shirt. After sharing our experiences with him, he was very inspired, and his wife got to hear a lot of the conversation, too. The husband wanted to pray for the Holy Spirit anointing, and we did so for a short while, but his exposure over the years to confusing religious ideas got in the way.
Nevertheless, he and his wife said they were keen to be open minded and make an effort to study the Word of God in terms of all that we had shared with them, which is great! Sometimes, people need to carefully read it for themselves before they can open themselves up to praying in complete humility, desire, and need for the Holy Spirit anointing. God promises that His Word will always accomplish that which He purposes it to do (Isaiah 55:11).
8) Quite a while back, Don got chatting with a small table of young-ish people who were here on vacation. He discovered that one of the gals is Spiritfilled but has wandered away from the faith and been led astray in a number of ways. As Don spoke lovingly yet firmly from the Word, she was convicted and, although she felt uncomfortable, she was thankful that God had set up the conversation.
Don never heard from any of them again and so wondered what, if anything, had come from the short time he had spent with the three of them. Then, a few days ago, he received a call from an older lady. She left a voicemail which Don returned and, to his pleasant surprise, it was the aunt of the Spiritfilled gal. It was her son that had been one of the others at the table, and when he returned home he encouraged his mother to contact Don for prayer.
Don had such a great conversation with the mother. She is Spiritfilled as are some others in her family together with the minister at the church they attend. Don was able to fill in some gaps in her understanding, encourage her regarding her daughter and her niece (the one Don had met and spent time chatting to), and offer some wisdom regarding how to be a positive light in her husband’s life. It was such a joy for Don to discover that the Lord blessed his efforts here in Florida to spread further and touch the lives of even more people throughout the country.
9) Yesterday, we were at a music store and while Elisabeth was offering a young boy some encouragement regarding piano playing and the best apps to use for instruction, Don and I got chatting with the boy’s parents. We chatted about travel and general life and somehow found an opportunity to “throw into the conversation” relying on God as a Christian family. When they nodded their heads in response, we realized that perhaps God had set up yet another situation.
After sharing examples from our lives and various scriptures regarding salvation and how the one true church (the Body of Christ) began, I asked the couple if they’d had any particularly ususual prayers to God lately. I shared how that we often discover “after the fact” that the people God connected us with on a particular day had just been praying about a specific situation that we had answers to, or that they had recently been drawing closer to God more than ever.
They seemed both taken aback for a moment and then the Lord revealed exactly why He had connected us all together. We ached for the wife in particular who had experienced some “Churchianity” related challenges, but more than anything she was experiencing very heavy burdens relating to family and health, amongst other things.
We ended up praying over her in the back room where it was quiet and she did receive the Holy Spirit. She most definitely felt the power and peace of the Holy Spirit as He filled her and she prayed a little bit, on and off, in tongues. However, she knew she needed to get away on her own one-on-one before the Lord, to let the fullness of her healing and strengthening take shape. She had to go seeing that her family was waiting for her, but we encouraged her to purpose to have more prayer on her own before the end of the day.
Also, she could most definitely see how God had moved upon their day (and our day) in order for our two families to come together. She shared that they were meant to go out for a bite to eat, yet they had suddenly decided to first come to the music store. Plus, seeing that they’d already been to the same store at another location, they hadn’t expected that they would ever visit this one. Likewise, when we had started out on our afternoon drive, we were actually quite closer to a different store, but I suggested that we drive to this one instead because I assumed it might be nicer. Little did I realize at the time that that was the directing of the Holy Spirit. I love how God guides us through our days for His work’s sake!
