God, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit transforms lives! Dan and I have testified to this truth over and over again. It is a joy to share two of the transformed lives within that last two months!
This is my friend Christina! One day we were playing soccer with a bunch of kids and I saw her sitting and watching and my heart started to beat very fast and I was drawn to her. I started to walk over and sit next to her and started talking. She spoke English and shared she saw difference in me as well as some of her friends and she wanted the same. We prayed for knowledge of God to grow into an intimate relationship with her Dad and lover. I invited her to come to a kids program again with her nephew and she came the following Monday. We started talking again about God and our conversation led to forgiving people in her life and asking God for forgiveness for holding on to bitterness and not forgiving. As we finished praying she said that she felt "lighter" and more free! I love how personal our God is that He wanted to touch Christina heart and He asked me to come along with Him to do it! What a joy it is to work with our Heavenly Father!
This is Keath and he is 16ish years old is from the ingenious parts of Costa Rica. He and his cousin Maxi help out with NIKO, the one week adventure camp learning about God. Keath and me were parnters for NIKO and got to know each other. During NIKO he shared that him and his family were having struggles with his cousins family. We prayed for him but God had bigger plans. God actually called us as a team to spend a week in Talamanca where he lives serving with his church.
We had a youth ministry one day and the only people that came where Keath's and Maxi's sisters. We did not know it at the time but it was between the sisters where the family problems started. The students did a program on forgiveness and gave the girls the opportunity to write down something they wanted to forgive or heal and burn it in the fire. After this activity, all four of the girls, two sets of sisters, started to argue.
And three girls (the same three girls in Keath's NIKO group) took the girls to a private place to discuss. They shared that their families started to take turns going to church on Sundays so they did not have to see each other and there was a huge division in the church because of these two families disagreement and unforgiveness. One father is the worship leader and the other father was the youth group leader and since the arguement the youth group stopped and many church members took sides. The pastor had been praying for the families to forgive each other for 6 months.
After 3 hours, the girls decided to forgive each other and ask for forgiveness! They were hugging and laughing! They went home and shared with their parents what happened and one girl felt called to challenge her parents to forgive as well. Her mom felt convicted and at 3 in the morning with her husband and daughters walked over to her sisters house to ask for forgiveness. And the sisters (moms) forgave each other! At 430ish Keath ran to the pastors house and shared the testimony with him! He was so joyful the whole day and that day three of the sisters showed up together to work with us on our service project!
Our God is a God who forgives and heals us through forgiveness! God had a plan for these two families and their church and he used our group to unite them!
This is Jorgelis the pastor of the church with big smiles! And below is a picture of the sisters and cousins serving together! It was the same morning the moms forgave each other, the day after the cousins forgave each other.
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