You better Belize it!

After spending a few extra weeks in Mexico than originally planned, our team leaders discussed the possibility of cutting out Belize from our trip itinerary.  We could save some time and head directly into Guatemala rather than taking the circuitous route from Mexico to Belize and then Guatemala.  In addition, our contact in Belize fell through, so we had no solid plans or place to stay.  However, a few people from the team felt strongly that we needed to go to Belize, and as they expressed their opinion, everyone else on the team quickly agreed that we couldn’t cut this country out.  Soooo we drove an extra two days and made the trek to Belize. 

As soon as we crossed the border, it felt like we had stepped out of Latin America.  There were Rastafarians everywhere.  Everyone spoke English.  Most people had dark skin and spoke with thick Caribbean accents.  I felt like I was in Jamaica…wahoo!  We were so surprised that we forgot we had no plan or place to stay.  We asked around and were directed to an RV park in a small town called Corozal, just miles from the border.  We drove there and set up camp for the night. 

In the morning, we met as a group and prayed together about our plan (a very loose term on our team) for our time in Belize.  We hoped to go into the town square and connect with some locals who would be willing to take us into nearby villages to minister.  Since we had no agenda, we were all totally open to what God would arrange.  One of my team members said he’d been praying that God would give us diamonds—a weird prayer right?  But his wife prayed into that and felt that the “diamonds” he was praying for were people—God’s treasures.  She felt our mission in Belize was to go and seek these “diamonds”.

After our meeting, a few of the guys from the team went off to explore in the town.  As they were eating lunch, a Belizean named Godfrey approached them. “I don’t know why, but I felt like I was supposed to follow you,” he explained as he sat down with the young guys. 

The guys welcomed the conversation with Godfrey and soon found out that Godfrey had recently turned his back on a life of drug abuse.  He had struggled with crack, alcohol, and other drugs, and had been sober for only a couple days.  “I’m tired of this life.  This isn’t me,” he went on.  “I want to stop.”

The guys prayed for Godfrey, breaking off the chains of addiction and oppression.  Godfrey walked away feeling encouraged, declaring that his load had been lightened.

Later that evening, a group of us headed to the town square to “seek God’s diamonds.”  Quickly, a group of people gathered around us foreigners and struck up conversations with us.  One of the girls on my team laughed to herself as she noticed the design on one of the Belizean’s hats.  “Look at his hat,” she whispered to me.  As I glanced over, I saw a large picture of a diamond on his hat.  Surely, we had found the first of God’s treasure in Belize.  Godfrey approached the group as well, recognizing one of our guys from earlier in the day.  He talked about how much they had encouraged him and how he truly wanted to be better and do better.  He offered to take us around Corozal, exactly what we had been praying about earlier.  Godfrey said he had been praying to God for an angel to change his life and that we were the answer to his prayers.  And we had been praying to God for his diamonds in Belize, so he was also the answer to our prayers.

The following day we went to a nearby village with Godfrey as well as the town hospital.  There was a woman who had drunk bad water and was pretty much on her deathbed.  The poison she’d consumed had made her incredibly sick and weak.  One of the girls from our team told the sick woman and Godfrey that God had the power to heal, and they prayed for the woman.  As they prayed, the woman sat right up in bed and exclaimed that she had been healed!  She had gone from dying to feeling great in a matter of seconds.  She was very excited to say the least!  Godfrey had never seen God heal someone before and was blown away to witness it firsthand.

After a few days in Corozal, we felt ready to move on to another town.  But we didn’t want to leave Godfrey behind.  So we invited him to join our team for the rest of our time in Belize.  He gladly agreed to come with us.  He wanted to get away from Corozal where his friends were into drugs.  He wanted a fresh start, so we adopted him into our family and encouraged him to stay clean.

We decided to drive to Dangriga, an area right on the coast full of Caribbean flavor.  When we arrived, Godfrey said he wanted to be baptized in the Caribbean Sea.  We walked down to the ocean, and some of the guys baptized Godfrey.  As he was getting baptized, a local man named Kareem started talking to one of my team members and expressed interest in being baptized as well.  So Kareem stripped down to his boxers, jumped in the ocean, and the guys baptized him next! 

The rest of our time in Belize was pretty slow-paced.  We met another local who took us to peoples’ homes to pray.  We ran a children’s program in a park one night, which was chaotic but fun.  We drove to a village called Punta Gorda and prayed with some people there.  But after coming from a really hectic schedule in Mexico, I honestly wondered, “Are we accomplishing enough?  Are we spending enough hours doing ministry?” 

But then I realized that our ministry was simply hanging out with Godfrey.  Whether we were going to different houses to pray for people or just sitting around telling jokes, we were showing this man love.  He was hanging out with our team instead of hanging out with his old addict friends who wouldn’t be able to support him during his transition off of drugs.  God’s love is so lavish that it’s worth it to Him to send twenty-something people to Belize, a two day’s journey out of their way, just to hang out with a guy and give him the encouragement he needs to push through his first few days of sobriety and not have to do it alone.  Our God is the God who said he would leave ninety-nine sheep to find the ONE that got left behind.  He is not so concerned with DOING…He’s concerned with LOVING.

And the story gets better…our last day in Belize, we drove to a small town on the border of Guatemala and camped there for the evening.  That day happened to be the 21^st birthday of one of the girls on the team.  One of the older girls, Liz, was praying that somehow we’d be able to find a cake in this small town (which seemed somewhat unlikely when we drove in).  I was far more concerned about finding a connection for Godfrey.  The next day we would drive to Guatemala, and he would stay behind in Belize.  He said he didn’t want to go back to the town where we met him, fearing he would stumble into temptation if he were around his previous bad influences.  But how could we just leave Godfrey at this random town by Guatemala without a single friend?  We could pay for a few nights in a motel or something, but then what would he do? 

While I was sitting around worrying, Liz decided to venture into the town to find a birthday cake.  I wasn't concerned with the cake, but Liz insisted that God loves His children and cares about even the little things like a birthday cake for His daughter’s 21^st birthday.  So she went into town praying and ran into a random guy riding a bike who happened to be selling pieces of cake from his bike basket.  Liz asked him if he could make a big cake for twenty-something people right away.  The cake man looked pretty surprised but agreed to do it.  Liz returned back to where we were camping, grinning from ear to ear.  She said God had answered her prayer and provided a divine appointment.  She invited me and a few others to go back into the town later to pick up the cake.  So a couple hours later, Liz, Godfrey, two others, and myself went to pick up the finished cake.  Liz had written down the cake man’s phone number, but none of our phones had service, so we went to a pay phone and asked the cake man to come meet us.  Moments later, he appeared on his bike and told us to follow him back to his house.  We drove down a very bumpy road while he led us on his bike.  He allowed us to come inside while his wife finished up putting the frosting on the cake.  As we spoke to her, she mentioned that she was a Christian.  Liz explained that we were Christians as well and that she had been praying for a birthday cake for one of our girls.  As she told the woman she had been an answer to her prayers, the woman got teary-eyed.  While we girls were chatting, Godfrey and the cake man talked outside.  Godfrey explained his situation and asked the man about housing options in the area.  Turns out, the cake man was a former drug addict who had been clean for seven years.  AND his brother happened to be in the housing market, so he had some connections for Godfrey.  One of the guys on our team decided to pay for a month’s rent for Godfrey and get him situated before we crossed into Guatemala.

So, by the next morning, Godfrey had a free place to stay for the next month as well as a Christian family to connect with.  And our birthday girl had a delicious cake.  Liz’s prayers were answered, my prayers were answered, Godfrey’s prayers were answered, and the cake family was touched by it all.  I was amazed at how oddly God weaved everything together so perfectly right at the last moment.  And while I had been wondering, “Am I DOING enough?” Liz showed me that we can take time to slow down and care about things like a birthday cake…because when we are praying even about the little things, God works them into a plan that is much bigger than we can really imagine. 

Mas de Mexico!

As we travel through the second half of Mexico, I can’t deny God’s power or faithfulness.  I’ve never seen Him working like this before, and I’m so excited to share stories of His love with others.  It’s crazy, because the less my team plans and controls, the more God steps in.

In most of the Western world, we are taught how to “do church.”  We have eighteen and a half minutes allotted for worship, three minutes for announcements, four for collecting the offering, and then a perfectly planned sermon that has been prepared for hours and hours.  But on the Iris Latin American team, “church” looks very different.  We don’t plan a ton; we just do what Jesus did.  The Bible never mentions anything about Jesus preparing a sermon for twenty hours or auditioning people to be part of His worship band.  He simply does three things—preaches the good news, heals the sick, and drives out demons.  So His model is what we follow on our team…which is craziness for a group of people who grew up in the Western church.  But guess what?  It’s working.  It’s working!  It’s woooooorking!  We go as a team into the darkest places—slums, isolated villages, and garbage dumps—and we do the three things that Jesus did.  We share testimonies and the good news of Jesus’ love, and then we call the sick forward.  We pray for people, and they often get healed physically.  And sometimes we have to pray for deliverance, and people are freed from spiritual and emotional problems.  We don’t go in with an agenda or timeframe or anything like that.  We simply imitate Jesus’ ministry, and God does the rest.

Here are two of my favorite stories from the past week or so:

One evening we drove into the slums of Guadalajara to minister to the people there.  We walked down the street, greeting people and playing with the children.  A bunch of us congregated in one area and asked if there were any sick people who needed healing.  A woman came forward whose face had become paralyzed.  She couldn’t really speak because of the paralysis.  Several of us laid hands on her, and the paralysis left her face!  She said her face was hot, and she began to speak!  She was so happy that she invited a few of us to go back to her home and pray some more with her.  Two of my teammates, a bilingual woman from the local church, and I went to her house and continued to pray.  I felt the Lord speaking into my heart the story of the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years and told herself that if she even touched the cloak of Jesus that she could be healed.  As she reached for him in a large crowd, Jesus called her out in front of everyone and said, “Daughter, your faith has made you well.”  I shared the story with the woman and told her I believed that her faith in the Lord had made her well.  The four of us prayed a bit more, and the woman began to cry.  She said that she felt like something was being cleansed inside her mouth, and she felt something she couldn’t explain.  She said she felt so much joy and so much happiness.  And as I watched this beautiful elderly Mixteco woman rejoicing in her healing and her new NOT paralyzed face, I felt incredible joy as well.

A couple nights later, our group was invited to run a church service at an outdoor street church.  Again, we planned very little and just worshipped, shared God’s goodness, and prayed for people who needed healing and deliverance.  I started to pray for a woman with my friend Rose.  The woman was complaining of pain in her chest and stomach.  We prayed for release from physical pain, but nothing happened.  Maria, a bilingual woman on my team, came over to translate and found out more information.  The woman had gone to the doctor, and the doctor said there was a problem with her appendix.  We continued to pray for physical healing, but still nothing happened.  I got a weird feeling that there was some emotional pain that was binding the woman.  I haven’t had many words of knowledge like this before, so I wasn’t sure if this strange feeling was from God or from myself.  But as I kept praying, the feeling persisted.  I finally decided to speak up and explain to Maria what I was feeling.  “Maria, I don’t know how to say this in a way that isn’t rude or accusatory,”  I explained.  “But I really feel like there is some emotion pain this women needs healing from.  I think it’s manifesting in the physical, and that physical pain won’t go away until we deal with whatever the emotional pain is.”

Maria immediately nodded and responded, “I was feeling the same exact thing, but I wasn’t sure if I should speak up.  I think what we are feeling is right.”

“Yeah, something weird is definitely going on here,” Rose now chimed in.  “As we prayed for her, I started to feel a bad pain in my stomach.”

We agreed that we needed to take the risk of offending the woman by asking what was going on in her emotional life.  As Maria spoke to her, the woman began to break down.  As she cried, Maria translated for us and explained that the woman had a bad relationship with her husband.  She got no pleasure out of having sex with him, and she only slept with him out of obligation.  She was unhappy in her marriage and wrestling with depression.  As Maria continued to minister to her, more bits of her story were revealed.  The woman admitted that she’d also been abused by her father and had been emotionally scarred by his actions.  Maria explained to the woman that forgiving her father and husband was the key to emotional freedom.  We prayed for the woman to be free from the sins of her father and husband, to be released from the chains of depression, and to enter full emotional, spiritual, and physical healing.  As we prayed, the woman said that the pain started to leave her body.  Rose said that strange pain she’d felt in her stomach also disappeared. 

After we prayed a bit more, our team leader spoke in front of the whole church about receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit.  He told everyone that they could receive the gift of tongues, healing, and the ability to prophesy.  When Jesus left the earth, he told his disciples they would be do even greater things than he did, because they would walk in the power of the Holy Spirit.  The woman said she wanted to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.  Maria, Rose, and I continued to pray, this time asking the Holy Spirit to fill this woman.  I prayed she would feel and know the power of God’s divine peace, love, and joy.  As we prayed, the woman began to speak in tongues and sway back and forth a bit. Suddenly, the power of the Holy Spirit fell on this woman—TANGIBLY—so that she actually fell backwards.  Surprised, I awkwardly caught her and I left her in a chair to just be still for a while.

Later on in the evening, Maria went to check on her, and the woman looked completely different.  What once had been a face of stress and depression was now a countenance of joy.  The woman came up to Rose and me and gave us each a big hug, thanking us.  She said all of her physical pain was completely gone!  But more importantly, she felt JOYFUL and said she was ready to go home and make love to her husband!  Hahaha!  Amen!

I love seeing people healed.  It never gets old.  It’s great when someone is healed physically, but it’s soooo much better when they are healed emotionally too.  When you can see in someone’s eyes that emotional scars are being healed, it’s so beautiful!  I love that God shows up in random slums in Mexico, in isolated villages, and in little street churches.  It’s such a wonderful display of His character and crazy radical love.