Entry 23: Outreach Stories #2 (Delivering the Gospel)

     Welcome to my 2nd "Outreach Story" entry. Just to remind you, this is a series where I share about my experience's when I was in the Himalayan mountains for my DTS outreach. These stories take place from Christmas until mid March of 2023. My first "Outreach Story" can be read by tapping this link->Entry 20: Outreach Stories (Nadrin and his Mother) - 3/4/23, and if you would like to know more about this series tap this link -> Entry 19: Season Two - 3/26/23

     The story I will be sharing with you today takes place just two days after the story of Nadrin and his Mother (above). It is a beautiful and almost movie like story of my team and I trekking to a village and delivering the Gospel through speaking, a skit, prayer, and running. I hope you enjoy!

Me preaching the Gospel to a village of roughly 70 people.

Delivering the Gospel

   Cough cough cough, that is the 5:30 AM alarm in a small, mountain village church, where 8 of us guys were staying for the night. We just arrived at this church the day prior after a short 3 hour trek and 3,000 foot elevation gain from 7,000 to 10,000 feet. Our plan for the day was trek to 3 separate villages and preach the gospel and do a skit that would convey a message of forgiveness or grace or God's love. During our morning prayer I felt God tugging at my heart to volunteer to preach the Gospel in the first village we went to so when our leader, Gracen, asked who wanted to preach I made sure to make myself available. I am so happy I did because we ended up only going to one village and what God would do in this village is amazing. While we were trekking to the village I prayed and asked God what he wanted me to emphasize as I shared the gospel and if there was anything else specific I was supposed to share. I felt God tell me to emphasize his character and nature as the creator and all power God above every other false god as well as a his grace. The people of the villages surrounding us at this time were predominantly Hindu which has 33 million gods and is based on karma rather than faith through grace, so emphasizing God's character as a Gracious, all powerful creator seemed to really be a great idea. The Hindus do not have a single god of  grace out of their 33 million gods. I also felt God told me to ask if anyone needed healing in some type of way after I was done preaching. When we arrived at the village we stood on a large roof as you can kinda see in the picture above and it did not take long for the village people to gather around the strange abundance of white people. After waiting around for awhile we asked if we could performa skit for the village. The skit did not include words but instead was only actions. It was performed by two of my outreach teammates Devin and Micah. Devin gets a flower, candy, and water bottle and each one of those things makes him happy, but then each one fades away. The flower gets destroyed, the candy gets eaten, and the water runs out. This leaves Devin sad and he starts crying. The Micah approaches him and give him the Bible. Micah shows Devin that even I. the pain there is hope in Jesus and that Jesus will not fade away like those prior objects. This seems super simple and kinda childlike but it needs to be simple to convey a message transcending cultural and language barriers. 

     After Micah and Devin completed the skit I then explained what was happening in the skit to the people of the village. This was through our translator, Nabin, so I had to make sure to do it in a very simple way because not all English words make sense in a different language and Nabin did not know that much English. After I explained the skit I then intertwined it with the story of the Gospel. I spoke about how God created the entire universe then man sinned and how God then gave us his son to die for our sins. I explained that because of Jesus's death we have grace and it is by grace we go to heaven not by works. This is important to emphasize when speaking to Hindus because they believe in karma which means if they do enough good works then they will go to heaven. After explaining grace I explained how Jesus left earth and sent his helper, the Holy Spirit and that each one of us can receive the Holy Spirit. I explained to the village that the Holy Spirit is powerful. I said the Holy Spirit can do things like prophesy and heal people. That is when I then asked if anyone needed healing. After standing there with no response for long enough to be awkward I just continued with the Gospel then wrapped it up. I was so excited I got to preach the Gospel to 70 ish people and be obedient to God. I was a little discouraged that I did not get to see anyone healed but I prayed that any seeds planted would be fertilized by God.

     Then I see my outreach teammate, Micah, get that one look in his eye. It's the type of look I became familiar with after spending so much time with him and it was a look of "God is speaking to me and I got a prophetic word for someone". I watch as Micah approaches a random man and later he told me what he said to this man. Micah says to this man who he has never met, with the help of our Nabin "I believe God is speaking to me about you. I hear the word father and I think God is saying you are a great father or that God is proud of you for being a father." Micah could not put his finger exactly on what God was telling him but he knew it was something to do with the word father. He was kinda confused about it because the man was pretty old and did not seem to have a wife or any children. After Micah was done encouraging this man, the man says that his wife had passed away and that he has no children. But there are these 2 children whose parents passed away and because he felt bad for the children he took them in and is like a father to them. This man was around age 70 and the kids were under 10. Micah was so happy to hear that what God was telling him about the word "father" was correct. Micah kept encouraging him and speaking life into the old man. Then he said there is a women who helps him parent the children. He explained that the woman was not all there mentally and said she would have crazy mood swings and run away from the village for days at a time. Micah then asked if the man could get the women so that some of the girls from our team could talk with her. He went and got the lady and now it was the girls's turn to partner with God. Meanwhile the entire village knows about the old man and unstable woman and are all just watching us talk with them. 

     Naomi, Bree, and Malia start talking with the woman whose name I sadly do not remember. While Naomi was talking with this woman and just asking her questions about life, Malia had a vision. It was of this woman in a prison within her own mind. Malia said she saw her fighting and trying to break out of the prison but could not get out until she accepted God and let him give her freedom. Not by her own strength could she escape her pain and chains but by God's strength. The translator relayed this message to the woman but she was not understanding. Like she was not even understanding his words let alone the vision. The girls then started praying that God would give her understanding. All the sudden her eyes lit up and she said to Nabin "I can understand now". The girls started praying for her and led her through a repeat after me prayer of asking God to come into her life and be LORD of all. The reason we do a repeat after me prayer is to give someone language for what their soul is feeling but their tongue does not know how to express. After awhile the woman told Nabin that she felt an overwhelming sense of peace and joy that she has never felt before. The girls then started telling the women how God viewed her as a daughter, and how she is fearfully and wonderfully made and then read Psalm 139 to her. She could not believe that God knew her and created her, it blew her mind that such a big God was also relational and says all these great things about her. While all this was happening there were a couple ladies that were watching and Naomi felt God was highlighting them to her. Naomi approached them and asked if They wanted to give their lives to Christ as well. The ladies stated that they knew what was wrong with this woman and how she would ran away. The ladies said if this woman stays healed then they and the rest of the village with accept Jesus Christ as the one and only true God. It is very common for entire villages to commit to one single religion or belief and if something miraculous happens then it is also common to see the entire village convert. 

     This was not the end of the story though. Salvation is amazing but without scripture, the bread of life, it is so difficult to grow in relationship with God and learn more about him. That is why we bring bibles with us in the form of a SD chip. Even though we were deep in the heart of the Himalayan mountains they still have cell phones and solar panels for charging them. The thing is we accidentally forgot the small bag of SD cards a mile and a half away in our packs back at that small church we were sleeping in. When I heard about this I instantly said "I will run and get them". I asked a 13 year old boy named David who was native to the mountains but also spoke english to run with me. He came along on the trek and was the pastor who was hosting our team's son. As we started running I felt my right hip pop. Thankfully it was a relieving type of pop and I felt God in that moment tell me that my hip was healed. I broke my femur when I was four and it grew back an inch longer. I have x-rays that show one side of my hip an inch higher than the other. I had previously been experiencing hip and back pains while running and on a daily basis but ever since that day I have not experienced hip or back pain. I even end up running a marathon later in my outreach which will be a story posted at some point. Back to this story though, my hip pops and my right hip pain is healed, but David and I need to still run a mile and a half on a snowy mountain trail to get bibles for the people of this village. After just a short time of running David asked me to stop running because he was tired. Earlier while being around David I felt God put it on my heart to disciple him so I had been speaking life into him already. Right now I felt this was a great moment to disciple him some more. Even though he asked me to stop running I encouraged him and said I believe you have the strength to keep going. I told him that our minds are weak and will tell us to quit long before our bodies actually need to quit. "The LORD is our strength and he will take you much farther than you can even imagine" I proclaimed as we kept running. I told David the purpose for why we were running and sparks ignited in his eyes and he sped up in excitement. David and I would yell out things like "the Lord is my strength" and "he trains my legs that I might run up mountains of tremendous heights".

     We finally got to the church and picked up the SD cards then we headed back. I encouraged David on the way back and told him that someday he is going to be a great leader one day. I told him to set a common mission for himself and the people he is leading because it is in the similarity of a greater purpose that people become unified. It is by Christ that we have become unified as one body of Christ. While doing this I had a revelation of leading others. I let David lead me back to the village. As he was "leading" me I was leading him from the back encouraging him and speaking life into him. I believe the best leaders are ones who know when to step down and let their pupil lead. Then as we were running on the magnificent mountain trail with a picture perfect horizon of mountains to my left as far as the eye could see I received a vision. It was a vision of me when I was in Kona training and exercising. I would wake up early in the morning to go on runs and load my trekking bag with rocks so I could be as fit as possible to be in the best condition to do God's will. I would do the workouts that were on campus and while feeling so fatigued and thinking as if I had nothing left I would think about the lost people, and the people without the Bible and I would push just a little harder for them. I would say under my deep breaths of tiredness "this is not for me, this is for the lost, for God, for the people who do not have the Bible". The only difference between the flashback and present is this time I actually was delivering the Bible and it was right after I had delivered the Gospel. I exhorted David, saying we are delivering the truth, we get to partner with God in his miraculous acts. We get to be apart of a gaining a soul for the kingdom of heaven, and now we are bringing her the good news. As we ran the last leg of the 3 miles the outreach team cheered us on and it was a powerful moment. I then handed the pastor from a different village who had come with us the SD cards. He connected with the woman and other people from the town and handed them Bibles out. 

Conclusion

     Because I have faith that I serve a God who heals, I fully believe that woman is still healed of her mental disassociation and oppression. I also believe that because of her healing testimony, the rest of the village gave their lives to Christ. Regardless of the outcome I am so grateful that I got to be an instrument to God's will and partner with him in such a beautiful way. I do not know if you realized or not but throughout that whole story each one of my outreach teammates plays their part. My leader Gracen felt God confirming that I should preach, my preaching, Devin and Micah with the skit, Micah with the prophetic word, Nabin translating, Malia's vision, Bree and Naomi's prayers and encouragement, and all of our intercession while the others were doing these things. I also found it so cool how before we even arrived I felt God had told me to offer healing to anyone who wanted it while speaking. Even though no one spoke up and at first I felt I may have not heard God correctly, someone did end up getting healed. 

     After all this happened there was a night I could not fall asleep and I felt God put this story on my heart and to write it in a psalm form. Below you will read a poem encapsulating what the run with David looked like. You will read how I felt God bring up memories long before I was even in YWAM. When I was going through a hard season which felt like being in a low valley surrounded by massive mountains. In this time I was at home in the cold of the winter, wearing a weighted vest walking around my property preparing myself to trek.

   Thank you all for reading this story and the Psalm below, I hope this encouraged you and edified your spirit.

Mountains and Valleys

On mountain sides I run following David. Running to a village to deliver a Bible for a new heavenly gained soul. My mind flashes between the view of the mountain and valley below and beside, to the mountains and valleys that once laid in my mind a year ago. I see a vision of me marching in the cold Minnesotan weather with a weighted vest preparing to trek and carry Bibles. I hear the audible affirmations of so many prior workouts, at the most fatigue, during the most pain I pushed a little harder proclaiming, “I do not do this for me” “this is for God” “for the lost souls” “for the children who do not know” “for truth” “for the Bible.” One after another each phrase firing in my mind like a beautiful rose surfacing in great speeds from the depths of my subconscious to the surface of my present mind. The seeds planted long ago, now by the grace of God their beauty is revealed and the fertilizer in which they were planted shows sufficient. Lord oh lord what have I done to deserve such an awe inspiring gift. By your grace I have become the ink in which you have written a beautiful story.