Our team had been praying very hard for a move of God during this outreach. The students were just thirsty for a miracle. We felt led by the Lord to go to Colon to do some open airs and street evangelism. Now the city of Colon, Panama is notorious for robbery, violence, prostitution, etc. and we were told by several different people to not even bother going to this city because it's such an awful place. Well, that just made us want to go there all the more because the people of Colon needed Jesus!
We drove down the main street looking for a place to hop out of our vans and do an open air meeting. We found a place and set up. There were lots of people around watching us do our dramas, testimonies and finally the preaching and altar call. Nobody came forward at first. Then one person came forward, then another, then two, then four, then six.....until there were about 70-75 people surounding our little team, all desperately wanting to know more about this Jesus we kept talking about.
After they prayed and were prayed for, a man from the audience (who was a brother in Christ who just "happened" to be passing through) came forward and encouraged all the new believers to join a church in the area and get discipled.
Then another man came forward from the audience - one who just got saved - and told us why there were so many people in that area at that time. They had just been meeting in that very spot to start a riot because they couldn't find jobs and were unhappy with the government. In his own words he said that they were, "ready to have a war with the police." But, this man added, because our team was at that specific place at that exact time, almost all of the angry mob got saved and decided to start believing that God will supply all their needs - including jobs.
Talk about seeing the Hand of God move!!! Our team was so humbled and excited to be used by God in such an incredible way. It was definitely a highlight of the outreach.
Our YWAM Hainichen team joined with YWAM Frankfurt and other groups for street outreaches in the Frankfurt mall.
Our team went to this one particularly lousy location. People were streaming past, it was lunchtime and I could see that NO-ONE was going to stop and listen. But we were on so we had to do it.
We did our worship song - no-one stopped, our skit - no-one stopped, and then it was time for me to do a gospel talk. I decided to give it my all, because you know - its for God, even though I couldn't see anyone stopping. I preached my heart out and ..... no-one listened.
'What a waste of time that was!' I thought as I finished. I decided to walk over to our 'What does Jesus mean for you?' (Was bedeutet Jesus fur dich?) sign where sometimes people would stop to write something and we could talk to them.
No sooner had I stepped down that a woman came hurrying along, looked down at the sign and stopped. "So what are you? Hindus? Buddhists? What?" "No, I said, we're Christians," and started to talk but she cut me off. "So you believe in Jesus do you?" "Yes we believe Jesus is the Son of God ..." she cut me off again.
"Because I'd like to ask Jesus in my life. Can you help me with that." (!?!?!??!) (At this point I looked at her closely to see if she was one of the YWAM Frankfurt team having a little fun.) But no she was genuine. I prayed with her, she accepted Christ with tears in her eyes, then hurried off and I never saw her again.
So God showed me - you can do your fancy program, you can think nothing's going to happen, but I set things up so a woman walks along, sees the name of Jesus and gives her life to me!
While in Lyra District we visited several villages, encouraging people, conducting open airs, and doing door to door evangelism. The second week of our two week visit, we drove south to a town by the name of Otuboui. Our purpose here was to encourage this areas ministers by teaching them new concepts and sharing stories. We would do our teaching in the morning, but in the afternoon we had a crusade. The crusade took place every evening for 4 days, in the same spot everyday.
At the beginning of the week we decided who was speaking on what days and and who was sharing their testimonies. I was going to speak on the second day to the preachers and on the third day I was going to share my testimony at the crusade. The first night of the crusade was a huge hit, there were over 200 people there, and I began to get nervous. I had never seen a crowd so large and was not looking forward to sharing with them. You see normally we dealt with groups of 50 and less.
So as the week went on I tried to weasel my way out of it and finally got one of my teammates to take my place. However I felt a tremendous amount of guilt. On Tuesday night we were sitting as a group sharing and I felt a strong conviction of the Lord to speak, so I went to my leader and said I am suppose to speak tomorrow. So he said, "Great you're on."
The next morning as I went to spend time with God I asked Him "God what do you want me to share with these people?" and He said in His oh so gentle voice, "I will give you the words when you are up there." Now you have to understand a little something about me. I am a very organized person and need to be prepared for things. So I said to God, "Oh thats really funny God!" and I didn't like it. So being disobedient I began to prepare what I wanted to say, the whole time feeling completely guilty, but scared of looking like a fool in front of these people.
The day rolled on and it was time for me to speak. We had just performed the drama "Redeemer" and I had the microphone in my hand. I motioned for my buddy Ryan to bring me my Bible which had my notes in it. The instant I got my Bible there it was again, "Willem let me use you". So I looked at my Bible and then at the people and set my Bible down. I stared at the people for what seemed like an eternity, but then came the words, "Jesus Loves You" He loves You and He loves you and He loves you. The words flowed like water over a waterfall and I shared my testimony like had never shared it before. God broke me in front of those people. I cried and some of them cried with me.
I don't recall how long I spoke, I don%27t even recall a lot of what I said, but when I was done I set the microphone down and turned around to sit with my team. I was surprised to see some of my team crying. As I sat down it dawned on me that I forgot to offer them a alter call, by now the pastor that we were working with had the microphone in His hand and said lets sing some songs. I though, 'No their going to loose the conviction of the spirit!' So we sang two songs. If you have ever been to Africa you know that their songs are quite long. Anyways after singing two songs the preacher said " Ok, Who wants to receive Jesus." And Dave they came, the people came, some crying, some smiling. Then I remembered what God had told me and I rejoiced and then shared it with my teammates. We saw 50 people come to know Christ that day.
Never until that day did I realize how important even small obedience was. God is awesome, AMEN.
Venezuela's Amazon is a forever green land or a land of eternal spring time with endless wide and long rivers, it's hard to think that people live there away from all civilization, more than 30 tribes has been found, but there are good reasons to think that there are some other communities still hiden in this thick jungle.
As you know every tribe has its own language and culture, which makes the advance of the Gospel aparantely slow.
We went to an unreach tribe two hours away by "Bongo".(A very long boat) through the Orinoco river, just imagine yourself going to a place were people have never heared about God, plus a very strong movement of wichcraft, we spent some days explaining the Gospel from the creation of the world until Jesus' returned, while the rest of the team took care of the children and teens.
Finally the Holy Spirit visited us one morning went most of the community decided to receive Christ as their personal savior. Wow!!! The Lord is soo good He has given His eternal life to this people. "GLORY TO HIS NAME." We also brough some donations which gave them great joy.
To start the process of establishing the church, the other Christian Community will be visiting them once a month to have a worship service and we will go back there next year.
Just a few days before we got to this tribe a child was born. His mother asked us if we could give him a name, some days later the Lord gave us a name "Emmanuel" God is with us, while we blessed this child we felt the presence of the Lord confirming the begening of the gospel in this community.
I have been on several missions trips throughout my life (my first foreign missions trip i was only 13). I truly love God and have a heart to see people come to Him and receive His salvation. That is fairly natural to someone in missions. The interesting part is the fact that as of yet I have still never led someone in the sinner's prayer.
My outreach in Nepal was absolutely wonderful. My team saw over 80 converts, but not a single one of them was converted by me. That was something that would often bring me down. I thought that I was useless to my team because I never talked to someone and had them get saved.
However, several things happened to keep me encouraged. The one that truly made it clear to me that I was still being used by God happened in a small village in the district of Chitwan in Nepal. My team all went out (on a 3 hour ride in a tempo, if you've been to Nepal, you understand) and we did our program, which included worship and a drama. I played an interesting character in the drama, so I usually got a little attention for it afterwards. But this village was different. Instead of a little attention, I got a lot of attention. All I was doing was sitting there, and people just started to gather around me.
It started off with some kids, and I kinda talked to them (using all 2 of my Nepali sentences). The crowd kept growing around me and I had no translator. So, I stood up and yelled for one. Instead, a guy on my team came over. Of all the people on the outreach, the 2 of us were the least Nepali. He's about 6'5" and has bright red curly hair, I have blond hair and blue eyes and the fairest skin ever witnessed (the Nepalis often said I resemble a baby doll). So, when he came over, it got just about every other person who was there to come to us.
Well, that was all that happened. No translator came, I didnt preach, nobody was healed or even prayed for by me. What I didnt know, though, was that a woman on my team was talking to a group of people. There were 5 young girls in that group who were very interested, but were insecure because of the others around them. At the exact moment when the woman gave the call to salvation to that group, I stood up and called for the translator, drawing a big crowd. In fact, it drew all of the crowd away except those 5 young girls.
They all gave their lives to Jesus right then, and I learned that you dont necessarily have to be center-stage to be used mightily by God. He works in mysterious ways, and just because I've never led someone in the sinner's prayer doesn't mean that I haven't led someone to Christ.
In the summer of 1979 we went on outreach to Venice along with 500 other Ywammers and prayed about where we were to travel for the 2nd half of the outreach. We felt we were to lead a team to a certain city in a large nation in North Africa to remodel the only Christian bookstore the country. We learned the bookstore had been closed because it had been selling Bibles in a certain forbidden tribal language, but the government had promised it could re-open provided no Bibles were sold to that unreached tribe in the future. Our team was brought in to remodel the store.
One day my husband found a box in the back of the store...it was the printing plates for that tribal language Bible!!! We contacted Brother Andrew's organization and somehow managed to get the printing plates out of the country. We heard that they ended up somewhere in Spain, but that was all we knew for nearly 15 years.
Then in 1994 while swapping missionary stories with friends at a restaurant in the USA, a man we didn't know from the table next to ours stood and came to our table. He had been a part of Another large missions organization, had worked in North Africa and had over-heard our conversation and so he wanted to introduce himself to us.
In the course of the conversation we mentioned the tribal language printing plates and told him we never knew what had happened to them. He slowly smiled and asked us if we'd like to know what had happened to those plates. We were amazed he would know and responded "Yes!!" He told us the plates ended up in Spain where they began printing the Bible for those tribals and his job was to smuggle them back into that North African nation to get them into the hands of that unreached tribe!!!
It took nearly 15 years to find out what happened to those plates, but God was faithful to let us know where they ended up. Shortly after that, we learned that a revival had broken out amongst that unreached tribe and many were coming to know the Lord. We were overwhelmed at the goodness of the Lord to allow us to be a small part of what took place in that country.
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