Entry 27: Outreach Stories #4 (Dreams)

     Here is another story from my outreach to the Himalayan Mountains that took place at the beginning of 2023. In my last "Outreach Stories" journal entry I wrote more in-depth about my heart behind sharing these stories and why I feel it is so important to tell of God's miraculous deeds. Tap the link to read Entry 24: Outreach Stories #3 (Mudemia and Boosheti) In this entry I am going to share with you a quite unique but profound way that God used something as inconvenient as not being able to sleep to help edify and build up my outreach team. It is a story of God's supernatural omniscient power, relational character, and intricate creativity. As you read this I hope it also edifies you and possibly shines light onto a side of God's character you may have never experienced.

Trekking in the Himalayan mountains

Sleepless Nights

      About halfway into our outreach my teammates and I were in the heart of a mountain district called Jumla. We were staying in a cozy cottage being hosted by a Jesus-like-servent-hearted pastor and his family. At this point in the outreach, sleepless nights were something I had become acquainted with. For some reason, I would find myself waking up dozens of times throughout the night and it would leave me feeling exhausted and foggy day after day. I did my best to keep a good attitude and push through even in my dull stupor. I rarely dreamt throughout these sleepless nights but if I did I would make sure to write them down. I knew sometimes dreams can be significant and can have deep meaning or be from God. This is why I tried to write down each one to steward the dreams I was having. Most of the time they seemed more like pizza dreams or even spiritual attacks rather than important, meaningful dreams from God. That was until I had this very unique dream. The dream itself was pretty scrambled. The direct people and events did not seem super significant to me. The thing that was significant to me was the feelings I was experiencing during and after the dream. At the beginning of the dream, I experienced deep emotions of rejection. As the dream switched scenes with new people the feeling of rejection resided and there was also a sense that the people around me were not listening to me. It felt as if my words were just going in one ear and out the other. During the dream rejection was the main emotion and was pretty apparent. Then when I woke up I felt something 10x worse. It felt like direct spiritual warfare and was a feeling of immense oppression. It was ineffable and just made me feel as if my soul was being crushed from within or like a literal weighted blanket was upon me. I prayed that God would comfort me then I fell back asleep. I told my outreach leader about the dream the next morning but did not think much of it until the same feelings of my dream started falling upon my teammates later that day.

     Since we were deep in the mountains we would trek from village to village. When we would arrive at a village we would perform a bible story drama skit, pray for words of knowledge, and share the gospel. This was our sixth or seventh village in the past couple of days and previously we had seen God show up in some pretty crazy ways so we were all quite expectant. The thing is this village was nowhere near as welcoming and accepting as the previous villages had been. When we performed a skit no one paid attention, when we preached the gospel the people would just talk amongst themselves and did not listen. We did our best to pray and ask what God wanted us to do and after an hour or so of trying to be joyful and talk with the village people we left. Some of our team was feeling pretty discouraged and rightfully so, but for some reason, I felt an overwhelming sense of joy and gratitude from God. I was just happy we got to share the gospel and spend another day in God's beautifully created Himalayan mountains. On our way back from the village we stopped at a pastor's house who our current contact/guide knew. While at his house our team started to debrief what happened in the village and this is when I got reminded of my Dream. Malia, who is one of my teammates told us that she felt this deep, heavy oppression while being in the village and that she is still feeling it. I thought to myself and realized I had no feelings of oppression which was pretty unique because I would say I am pretty sensitive to the spiritual realm. Then I thought about my dream and how the exact way I was rejected and no one listened to me, we too were also rejected and not listened to while in the village. Then I asked Malia about the oppression and what it felt like and she explained exactly how I had felt when I woke up. I realized God had given me insight into the day before it even happened and because I felt a little bit of oppression and prayed into it in the morning, I was able to go into the village and not be hounded by the oppressive rejection from the people. We then went inside the pastor's house and figured out his wife was almost fully deaf in both ears. After praying for her ears and singing their mother tongue worship songs God completely healed her hearing. I then realized that the end of my dream when the people were not listening was specific to this miracle. I shared with my team all of this and they were amazed by God's kindness in giving me prophecies through my sleepless nights. Then Naomi, another teammate of mine, who was going through a pretty hard season of life 50% jokingly and 50% seriously said, "Since you are having prophetic dreams, ask God to have a dream for me"! I said I do not think that is how it works but if God is willing then I will.

Edifying The Church

     Surprisingly enough I went on to have a prophetic dream for Naomi. Then night after night for 11 straight I had a dream for each person on my outreach team, our translator, and contacts. Each one was uniquely intricate and beautiful. They were all so different but so personal to each person I dreamt for. Most importantly they were all from God and were positive dreams that were given to me to encourage and edify my team. This is how it happened. After I received a dream for Naomi that caused her to cry and find a little relief in the current pruning season she was in, Bree then asked me to have a dream for her and so on with each person on my team. Every time I would go to bed praying for the person who had requested a dream and then the person would be in the dream. The meaning of the dream was usually pretty mysterious, but as I started to write it down when I woke up and prayed into it God would make the interpretation very clear. One of my favorite dreams I had was for my teammate, Devin. It was so deep and had levels of meaning beyond my comprehension. The interpretation was only made known to me by the grace of God. It was clearly straight from the Spirit because I could not even try and make up the vision/prophetic encouragement/poem/dream inside a dream that I had for him. This next paragraph is the rough report I took of the dream directly after I woke up from it.

     It was as if I was talking to a translator and slowly telling Devin something but God represented the translator and how he translates our words. As I was explaining something to Devin in the dream I was having a vision within the dream of the very thing I was explaining. I started seeing virtues like love and grace, peace, and patience and they represented strong columns. I also saw generational columns that were negative ones and they were being broken, crumbled, and decimated. Devin became a new foundation built up upon these good columns then the generations after him started being built up more and and more because of his solid foundation.

      I knew right away that this was from God when I woke up and did my best to write down the important details. At this point in the night, it was around 4 AM, but I could not fall back asleep. Because of my restlessness, I started praying about the dream and instantly received an impartation from the Holy Spirit. I felt as if I wanted to present to Devin his dream in the form of a written word, so I started writing inspired by the Holy Spirit a much deeper and poetic version of the dream I had just received. This is what I came up with.

      In the middle of yet another Jumla night, the Lord awakes my subconscious and speaks. A dream for Devin, or maybe a vision of Devin, or better yet Devin’s vision starts to form in my mind. It starts with the imagery of a column. Beautiful and white like the Columns of splendor and magnificence that would be seen surrounding and holding up a Roman colosseum or Greek temple. Only one specific column lies built in the depths of my subconscious, and then a scene appears. In the scene, I am explaining to Devin the meaning of this column and the importance of what it represents. There is a translator by my side, I think to myself “Why would I need translation to speak to Devin?” but I realize the translator is God. I will speak to Devin’s mind but God speaks to his soul. I start explaining the column and suddenly within the mind of my dream self, I have a vision. It is of columns representing the spiritual realm that lies within Devin. Columns of generational lies and curses are being broken down. Addiction and passivity were decimated, anger and fear of man were destroyed. One by one columns that of which held up core lies from the enemy are being dismantled and are no longer standing. Then other columns start rising out of the ground. Columns that represent love, joy, peace, devotion, and other Godly characteristics. They start to rise up from the ground much greater and much stronger than the previous cursed columns. Then the vision broadens and the building in which the columns hold now represents Devin. It is a single level and Devin becomes the foundation. Generations upon generations start to form on top of him. The quality of Devin’s foundation through Christ is under pressure and heavy force but because of the time laid down and the conscientiousness in the making of his foundation, he does not crumble. Because of Godly columns that he built up in his foundation many others will build upon him and will not be knocked down because it is the Lord that will hold them up.

      It is so fun for me to look back and read this because I know both the dream and the writing for Dev came straight from God. One of the reasons I was reminded of this story is because Dev recently reminded me of how it says God is our translator and will translate the words we say from mind to spirit. Devin told me that he thinks of this often and prays that God will translate his conversations every day with those around him. This is not to glorify my little dream but rather to show how relational God is. That even in my sleepless nights he wanted to partner with me and use me as an instrument to encourage and build up his followers. The cool thing is not only did it encourage the people I had dreams for but God also used it to encourage me and bring excitement to a time that was sometimes really hard and tiring. In conclusion, I hope this entry inspired you that you too can be an instrument of God's plan to encourage and build up others.