Praying with the President

This week has been an exciting week of ministry, healing, divine appointments, and fun!

Monday began with going to visit the local hospital, where we prayed for the patients, encouraged the people that had been in the hospital, and prayed with their families.  It  was a wonderful ministry time and it was a blessing to encourage and pray for so many people. As we prayed, God healed some people of different things - like knee pain - in the pharmacy area!

After we spent a few hours in the hospital, we walked down the street to go to visit the slums.While we were there, we got to play with heaps of children, build relationships with the parents (and grandparents), and pray for many of the people in the slums. It was amazing to see how blessed many of the people were through prayer - some who received us a little hesitantly said goodbye with huge smiles on their faces! Overall, it was a great day!

   

We kicked off our Tuesday with some worship and prayer as a team before walking over to the office of the President of Vanuatu. We showed up there just hoping we would be able to see him and pray with him, but God had even bigger plans. It turns out that all of Vanuatu's provincial leaders were there for a council which happens only twice a year, and they welcomed us into their meeting!  They let us sit in on the meeting for a few minutes, share the words we had received from God in prayer that morning, and pray for them!  It was so exciting!

After we prayed, they asked us to pray for their guest house (where all the non-local leaders stay when their in town), so we went and prayed for it. It was such a cool opportunity because it essentially meant we could affect the spiritual atmosphere of the place by welcoming the Holy Spirit, praying against any evil that was there, worshiping (putting God in His rightful place), and praying for every leader that will be staying there. It was a great way to directly sow into the leadership of Vanuatu spiritually. Then we wrote a letter to the President and delivered it to him in person before we leaved. It was really cool! 

After the exciting morning, we came home and ate lunch, and then both the Medical and GO Team went to a local Christian school to sing songs, do skits, teach, and play games with the kids. Our team did a skit on the Good Samaritan and Charlene taught on loving God and hearing His voice. Next, the medical team took over to do some health education, especially teaching on washing hands and brushing teeth.

We split the kids up into two age groups, and the older children went outside to play a crazy type of tag involving long lines of people holding hands!

Wednesday was the day that we had been invited to go back to one of the homes that we distributed Bibles to the previous week. Unfortunately we hadn't really taken into account island time, in which Wednesday "afternoon" could apparently mean anytime between 3 and 7 pm... So as we showed up around 1:30pm, we were told that they hadn't expected us until the evening. Oops. In the end, we waited around for a while, singing and playing with the kids, as they gathered the people of the community for the church service. After some worship, Hannah and Abbey spoke on unity between each other in families and as a community.  We had a time for prayer ministry with them, and even had a little children's activity time!  

Some of the girls from the medical team came with us and they helped do some wound care for the children.  One thing that was forgotten to be mentioned was the heavenly downpour of rain the entire morning and afternoon. The sermons had to be projected with our voices because the rain was really loudly hitting on the metal roofing. At the end of our time with the family and community, we were served island food and were invited to come back the following week for a farewell celebration. We are all excited for that!  

Once we returned home, we rushed to eat dinner and then get back on the road to do devotions with a group of troubled youth in the area. It had almost been canceled because of the rain, but in the end we were really glad we still came! Bradley shared a message about John 3:17, then we opened up the floor for questions and they asked us several really good questions about church, hearing God's voice,  and about life in general. We finished the day really tired but very happy with the results of all our ministry.

On Thursday, we headed out to the V2Life YWAM base to do praise and worship in the morning, along with some prayer and intercession. After that we waited for a break in the rain to do some work around the base.  Although it is easy to write about, it took us a long amount of time to plant vegetables in the garden, help build their new prayer chapel, "weed" with machetes, and babysit. 

On Friday morning, our Go team went back to the Christian school to lead chapel.  Brad spoke and we sung "Every Move I Make," "Deep Cries Out," and "Lord I Lift Your Name On High" and some of the children were singing at the top of their lungs. It was absolutely adorable seeing the children getting so into worshiping Jesus!  Brad's message was on the triumphal entry, repentance, and the parable of the lost sheep. He had definitely heard from God as he wrote it, and it was super awesome!

  

Later that evening, we went back to the Christian Fellowship group held at the university.  We had a wonderful time building more relationships and hearing people's testimonies on how good God has been to them in their lives.

  It was a wonderful week, and to top it off, Hannah, Abbey, and Mallory (a girl from the Medical Group) helped make cinnamon rolls for breakfast on Saturday morning! Yum!

~The GO Team!