CRAZY stuff happening in Comas

CRAZY HAPPENINGS IN COMAS...

Listen to this...

So the other night we were doing our drama and evangelism thing as usual, in front of a church in the street, when a weird looking drunk guy came stumbling up and started talking to some of us girls. We immediately called over one of the guys, and this man started telling them he would destroy this church because he had legions of demons encamped around it, he hated them and would kill them, and he knew all about their past. So by then we realized that not only is this man drunk, but he is definitely possessed. He was making really creepy signals to us girls, like pointing at his eyes then pointing at us, and we called over the guys with the church to get him out of there. We had already started the dramas, so we switched over to a drama that shows the power Jesus has over the power of darkness, and this man started coming closer and closer to our group. After a guy from our team explained the drama, he asked everyone to pray for more of the Holy Spirit´s power over the church and over the place we were at, and when we were praying our whole team was praying directly at this man. The whole time he was making these weird signals and looking DIRECTLY at me and my friend Tere. So we started praying even louder things in Jesus´name, and every time we said Jesus´name this man would kind of cringe and shake his head and put his thumbs down.

By this point some of the girls were getting freaked out and upset, but the man turned away and walked down the street. We could just feel this spiritual struggle going on as we finished up the program, and Tere and I saw the man watching us from around the corner one block down. Sure enough, when we started leaving, all walking very close together with guys out in front, the man jumped out in front of us and started speaking really weird, slurred language that was barely even Spanish. Andre, Mark, Felipe and the pastor with us blocked him from us girls, we went around the corner down the street with other members of the church who were with us, and the guys started talking to him. Basically they started rebuking the spirit in him and praying over him and telling the spirit to get out of him. The man wasn´t acting dangerous anymore, he was kind of weak now and on the ground rolling around sometimes, but this went on for about an hour while us girls were praying around the corner.

In the end, the man actually accepted their prayer, rebuked the spirit inside of him, and prayed a prayer accepting Jesus as his Savior. Our God is THAT big! There is so much power in His name!! But even though this guy prayed with them, he was still acting weird and trying to follow us when we left. There were even police nearby that told us they would take care of him if he followed us, but when we turned around, they were gone and the man was still behind us. So we kept walking faster, and Felipe took us girls back a different way to the church, while Andre and the pastor went a very long way hom to lose the guy. We prayed A LOT that night over our team, over our safety, over our minds and spirits after seeing all of that happen, and over our sleep and dreams. After seeing something so intense and so spiritual, if you have a spirit of fear it can definitely open doors in your heart and mind for the enemy to attack you, but God has been protecting us so much, both when that happened and since then.

It was such a crazy experience that opened our eyes even more to the reality of the spiritual warfare going on around our team. Sometimes the enemy is attacking our unity, sometimes our health, sometimes our energy, sometimes our willingness to serve, but this time the enemy was directly attacking us through this man, and the power of the name of Jesus was really our only weapon. But the victory is already ours, and His name is all we need.

Besides that crazy night, we have had lots of other struggles here, including lots of sicknesses (all of us Americans are still sick and having problems with the food), sick of living out of the suitcase and always being sooo dirty from the dirt roads and lack of real showers here, LOTS of sleeping problems, a hard time working with the pastor of this church, and just tiredness. We are SO tired. Seriously pray that God gives us energy!! Doing two or three programs every day, plus not being able to eat what we want, when we want, plus being sick, plus getting poor sleep for the past two months has taken it´s toll. Also pray that God decides to strike dead the roosters here. There are actually three or four gigantic roosters living IN this church with us. Yes, you heard me right. The live inside the church with us, and the only thing separating the room where we sleep from the rooster´s home is a tarp which is supposedly a wall but really its a tarp. And that guy I told you about earlier is not the only thing demon-possessed around here, because I am convinced the roosters have evil spirits inside of them because they DO NOT STOP CROWING. It´s actually incredible how much they crow. Like every five minutes from 3 am until midnight. It´s insane. That´s why we havent slept much here! We are definitely learning how to rely on His forces and asking for the joy of the Lord to be our strength.

On another note, we are all really excited because we´re leaving Monday and staying in Pachacutec with the last church we went to, until Tuesday when we leave for Ariquipa! By the end of our week in Pachecutec, we all fell in love with the people there and all us girls cried when we left, ha! They were the most generous, loving, fun, welcoming church we had been to, and I really didnt want to leave. Basically the whole church is one big family, literally, because the pastor has 12 kids, and along with half of them being married and having kids, the whole church is all related. Plus they all loved us a lot and didnt want us to leave, all the kids in the town loooved us and we had so much fun working with them. The last night there was the most fun - after a concert by a Christian rapper from Dominican Republic which was amazing and brought 15 or so gangster kids off the streets and converted to Christ (so cool! I am bringing a CD home, don´t worry you will all be rapping in Spanish soon), they had a goodbye party for us and taught us all the traditional Peruvian dances and games. It was such a great time of sharing stories with them, learning more about their culture, and feeling like a part of their church family. A few of them actually drove here (two hours away!) just to visit us yesterday and conviced our leader Felipe to agree to come back to Pachacutec Monday until Tuesday night :) It will be a huge relief to leave here even one day earlier, especially because the church here consists of nine people in TOTAL and the pastor has been really hard to work with. Pachacutec here we come, then onto the home stretch of the outreach in Ariquipa!

If there is one thing this outreach has been showing me, although there are thousands of things I am learning, it is APPRECIATION!!! It really is true that you don´t know what you´ve got till it´s gone... even just a hot shower in a clean bathroom would be an unbelievable luxury right now. Having toilets that work, having clean clothes, going out to eat in a restaraunt, walking down clean streets that aren´t covered with barking dogs, dead dogs, dog poop or tons of trash, watching real, non-bootleg movies in English... all of these are simple things I will definitely be ready to enjoy again when I come home. But on the other hand, these are the conditions that these people live in every day, and they won´t be able to escape this reality at the end of the outreach and go home like we are looking forward to doing. They are home. This is their life.

Sometimes that makes me feel really hopeless, sometimes I feel very snobby and almost superior against my will simply because I can say ¨Only one more month then I can go home and be clean again¨ and they will never live in a clean place. In the end, the only thing we can do is our part. Love them while we are here, serve them, bring them the gospel that will never leave them hungry, and keep praying for them when we leave. Sometimes is doesnt feel like enough, but we are called to do our part and God is also showing us that we can´t save the world and it´s in His hands. Thank God for that! He is holding our team together, He is working in us and through us...

Ok time to go because I am finally talking to Kels on Skype. Love you sister!!