Oh, The Faith

Mrs. Laura Martin is our guest blogger today. Laura is a very gentle, yet passionate Woman of God. I have the privelege of seeing her minister to children every day. Thank you, Laura, for sharing!

Oh, The Faith

Larry Vann, a collegue and good friend, encouraged me to write on this blog. I can only pray what I share will be an encouragement and faith builder to someone in their time of need. We left for India in July of 1998 with our three children ages 7, 4 and 18 months. Our 18 month old son had just been diagnosed with severe asmatha after 3 consecutive bouts with pnemonia. When we arrived in Calcutta, our son just simply could not breath due to the pollution and dust in our city. It was a long six months of regularly walking him through the night just to keep his breathing passages open. We then moved to New Delhi, yet it was listed as the most polluted city in the world in the early months of our arrival. One day the pollution level was so dangerous they deemed the air quality equal to when the Nazi's were bombing London. Needless to say, his situation was no better there. We were at the end of our capacity to stay in India with our son suffering in this manner, yet we felt we were there in obedience to the Master's call. God surely knows what we can handle, so His healing touch solved the looming question of whether we should just pack up and go home. One Sunday night in a church service for minster's in Calcutta, our son was laying on my lap listening to the message with his eyes closed. I thought my little three year old baby had been sleeping, but he was, incredibly, paying attention to what was being said. He opened his eyes and asked me to tell him again what it meant to be saved. I explained a simple Gospel message, and he asked me to pray with him to accept God's love and forgiveness. After that prayer, he told me that he wanted to be healed by God. He wanted to be free from all the medicines and breathing problems. I told Cole that his daddy and I had prayed for years, and maybe it was time that he asked God for himself. He led me into the aisle as others were down at the alter praying. He kneeled down and wept as he ask God with childlike faith to heal him. He then went down to the alter and prayed for many of the pastors present in that service. Many of them thought he just wanted to be held, but they soon realized he was praying for them! Not something we had trained him to do, but it was a move of God in his life. From that day until this, 10 years later, Cole has never taken an inhaler or any other asthma related medicines or had any breathing trouble whatsoever. The Lord Jesus either healed him to relieve him of the "thorn in his flesh", healed him so his parents wouldn't give up on their call or a myriad of other reasons. It doesn't matter why, but we will never cease to praise Him for His intervention which brings Him glory alone!!!

No word today...

No official word today - which means everything is going well! It is difficult for us to have patience or understand why we cannot get word from our team - things are different in Swaziland - especially from a technological perspective. Internet is an absolute luxury. So here we are. Waiting to hear and to share in the daily victories the team will experience. While waiting, we can continue to pray. And pray. And pray some more. Let's honor our team by lifiting them to our Father.



1 John 5: 15-15 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, he hears us. And if we know that He hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we asked of Him.



The key is for us to seek His will. And if we ask for His will to be done and for us to clearly see His will, then our prayers will be answered. It's all about alignment!



Father, I come to You with a soft heart tonight. We miss the members of this team so much. While it would have been really good to hear form them, I know that You have annointed each of them and they are in Your will. Please continue to bless them and those they encounter. I know Your light is shining through them. Thank You for that. Thank You for using them to teach us. Thank You for giving us the opportunity to lift each one of them up to You. Thank You for giving us patience and a sense of calm while we eagerly wait to hear from them. Whatever Your will is for this team, I gladly ask You to reveal it to us. It is not about us. It's about You. We want to glorify You in all we do and all we say. Please use the team of people who are here supporting and praying for the team. Use us to glorify You with our words and actions when we tell other people about this campaign. I ask for these and all other blessings in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.

My name is Larry and I am a Pole Vaulter..

I, obviously, am a fan of Facebook. When used with the right intent, this social network can be a great tool to reconnect with people, make new friends, share ideas, faith and resources. A users’ ‘status’ allows us to share, in a sentence or two, what we are doing or thinking at any given time.
I typically don’t have very interesting status updates and on this particular day, I shared that I had a dream about being a champion pole-vaulter. That was a strange dream. But a friend of mine, Amber Wheeler, had an answer to this dream… I asked her if I could share her thoughts with you and she agreed.

“Hi, Larry. I believe this to be from the Lord for you, but as I usually tell people, pray about it and see if it comes into alignment with what others are thinking. The Lord woke me this morning saying, “remember what Larry wrote on his status about pole vaulting?” “Tell him that he can fulfill his goals, but I need him to fulfill My goals. And My goals are higher and beyond his reach. He needs to set the bar higher so that he can only accomplish the goals with my help. I AM the Champion who will get him over that bar!”
Have a great day!”
Amber

Wow. Thank you, Amber! You hit the mark with your interpretation and I appreciate your courage to share. I think we all can take a dose of courage from her example to be bold and share with others!

Journal Entry

Basic (excerpt) journal entry on June 7th, 2008.

The Children of Thulwane – it is so difficult to comprehend the life of an orphan. We walked to three different homesteads to visit and take food – I was scared to death during the walk – and it was daylight. I imagine the nights are very lonely. No electricity. No streetlights. Heck, no streets. Other than at the carepoint, there is no place to provide very basic care. Not because they won’t – but because they can’t. A simple runny nose can turn into flu. Flu can turn to death. In Swaziland, it is about survival. The strong make it ~ the weak don’t. Orphans stand very little chance of making it to the age of 15. In America, we stand a better chance of dying in a plane-to-plane collision than to die of starvation or a runny nose. It’s like two different worlds. God help them. And please give us the heart to help them. But for Swaziland to heal, it must heal from the inside-out. Her people must experience revival. We must experience revival.