Stitches

Proverbs 12:18 Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

Can I just pause and emphasize the power of words? Here goes:

I was at work, doing the usual, mixing up some waffle cone batter with a machine grade blender that looks like this. It's at least a foot long. So, as I'm mixing the batter in a container a little less than half the size of the blender (Yes. I know. Bad idea), I turn it on low, turn around behind me, and scoop some more powder into the mix. I did this a couple of times til I heard my co-worker gasp, "Oh my gosh!"

Naturally I spin around thinking, "Oh crap, the batter! Watch out for the blades!"

Too late. It got me.

Aside from the pain in my finger, I noticed red stuff on the floor and all over my hand. Praise the name of Jesus that I was working with someone who is competent on handling this red stuff, because I am not!

Aside from almost passing out due to blood loss, praying the Holy Spirit to stop the bleeding, my sister came to the rescue, and a whopping 12 stitches later: my finger's fine!


Back to the power of words: I was wondering why this happened. I went through these declarations by Steve Backlund in the morning, one of which says:

Any adversity, attack, accidents and tragedies that were headed my way are diverted right now in Jesus' name (Psalm 91).

I was like, "What's the deal? I mean, I declared that, and believed that, so...." About that time, I got a text from another co-worker that I worked with the day before. It said something like, "Weird how yesterday we were joking around about cutting our fingers."

Wow. I forgot about that. We totally opened a curse on ourselves. What I then realized is as followed:
1. The co-worker that saved my life switched shifts with someone else that day. That other co-worker cannot handle red stuff.
2. The bleeding stopped.
3. My sister answered her phone on the first call. That never EVER happens.
4. My finger's still attached. No tendons, bone, or anything got damaged. Aside from it being deep, it was fine.

ihop

Over the past couple of month, random people started giving me words saying they say me ministering to people in Africa. My reaction: "God, I have no problem going to Africa, but I need to hear from You." Well, I did.

I was at this place called ihop. No, not the international house of pancakes, the international house of prayer! The end of every December, they have this conference called onething. My sister and I went last year and got totally ripped over the book of Revelation. Naturally, we followed it up with another trip to it this year with a handful of our friends (that made it a lot more fun, as noted by the traveling puppet show below).

One night Loren Cunningham, the director of ywam was speaking about Nigeria. Somewhere in the midst of him talking, I made the connection that he was talking about Africa. I think my response was something like, "Huh, Africa again. Bizarre." God then screamed at me in the spirit, "GO!" I mean, aside from the audible voice of God, you can't get much more clear than that.

So, next stop: Africa.

Lifegroup Leader

Don't you love titles? They just give away what I'm writing about. So on to polar bears and penguins:

Yup, me and two other cool people are leading a lifegroup (<- click). What this means: I really have no idea. I figure that's for the best as it leaves more room for Jesus, right?

P.S. There are also a bunch of random words throughout my blog that you can click on...many of which do not appear that way until you mouse over them.

Dallas Outreach

As part of our Equip discipleship school, there are two outreaches that our class goes on. One is to a church plant in the United States, and the second one is to a church plant overseas. This past weekend, we went on our outreach in the United States, to a church called Mercy Place in Dallas. We arrived Friday at 7pm and left that Sunday at 2pm.

Just about everyone in our class saw a first hand healing. I know factually of at least 7 salvations that happened, but I'm also quite confident there were more. You see, we didn't have time to allow everyone to share how Jesus moved that weekend because there were so many stories! Majority of our time was spent treasure hunting and prayer walking, but we also had lunch with patients at a near by mental institution, where the following happened:

A couple of people in our class were talking with one gentleman. He explained to them how he was schizophrenic, always hearing multiple voices. When asked by one guy on our team if the voices were saying anything now, he said, "Yes, they're telling me to run away from you guys." The guy in our class asked this gentleman if he could pray for him, which he responded, "I'd rather you didn't." Our guy was determined, however, and went to one of our class directors asking what to do. Our director told the guy to tell the gentleman with schizophrenia that he was going to pray for him, and to do it. So he did.

As soon as he started praying, tears started flowing from the gentleman. When he finished, he asked the gentleman if anything happened. The gentleman replied, "As soon as you started praying, all of the voices stopped, and one loud voice said, 'Be at peace'." The gentleman was then so overcome with emotion that he ran into his room, locking the door behind him.

Oh, and we also saw someone's leg grow at the Sunday service, healing their scoliosis.

What a weekend!

Holiday Malfunction

Coming from a university where students pride themselves on never going to a football game, it's a bit of a shock moving to a football culture where the outcome of the game dictates the emotional stability of everyone the following day. Imagine my surprise when the city of Norman up and cancels Halloween due to the fact that a game was scheduled the same day.

Halloween to me has always been a holiday dedicated solely to candy. Any way you look at it, it's still a holiday, right? October 31st is/has/continues to be Halloween. You see, when the Sooners played the Kansas State Wildcats, it was a humongous interference. Oklahoma could not deal with this horrible atrocity of something overshadowing football, regardless of the fact that is was a national holiday, so it up and canceled Halloween.

OK! So it wasn't a full on cancellation, but Norman DID switch the days of trick-or-treating to Friday October 30th! No joke! That is how seriously they take football. People are so serious about football that I found a total of 2 articles on the holiday switch. Both of which I can now no longer find.

assaulted by a knight in shining armor

A morning cancellation just about made my day as I was able to sleep in! The fallout to that was being unable to sleep past 9am :( Whatever. I got up.

I headed out of my room in search of some good coffee, reached for my door, opened it, and came face to face with a knight in shining armor! Adrenaline surged through my veins as my three blood curdling screams ricocheted throughout my house. It was at that moment I realized the knight's feet were built into a stand, and I heard my sister's laughter come wafting at me from around the corner.

You see, my roommate the night before reacquired this knight in shining armor statue, exactly 5 feet tall. Why is this important? 5 feet is also my height to a T, so I literally came face to face with it when I woke up. Anyway, she decided the best place for it before the knight went back to its owner was directly outside my bedroom door, mainly to get back at me for all the times I scared her.

It worked.

So for the next two weeks, the knight found itself in many a place to illicit a most terrifying response. It rarely worked. The sad thing about this picture is not where it was taken (my roommate's closet), but the fact that it took her a week to find out it was in there.

Treasure Hunt

As part of my class, we have to share the Gospel at least 3 times a week. I really don't enjoy convicting myself to go up to complete strangers on no urging but my own to share. My solution: Treasure Hunt. You wait on the Lord for peoples names, locations, articles of clothing their wearing, and things they need to be prayed for.

I hadn't done it before, but I wanted to, so I invited a friend of mine from class that hadn't done it either. So we're sitting in my living room before we go, waiting on the Lord. I am so convinced that I'm making up what I'm getting, but I decide to write them down anyway: Wendy's chocolate frosty, Ben, blue shirt, Carrie, left foot, cursive white writing with a red or black background restaurant sign. Also got a white T-shirt and left foot from earlier that I decided to add to my list. My friend got the name Sarah and flowers.

What happened? We started at Wendy's with chocolate frosty's, found no one there contained any of our names, so we moved on. Drove around for an hour stopping at random locations at which EVERY male was wearing a blue shirt, none of them named Ben. We even managed to hit Sonic where all employees wore blue shirts, again with no luck. Frustrated, we paused in a parking lot, asked Dad for more guidance, when my friend got a certain intersection. I got a picture of a building a lot like Walgreens, but discounted it because I was staring at one before I closed my eyes to pray.

At the intersection, I noticed immediately a CVS (which is another type of Walgreens), and eventually we hit it after more unsuccessful stops. We decided not to strive, and just walk around asking people's names. How many guys in that store? At least 5, all of which were wearing blue, and none of which were named Ben. No Sarah's or Carrie's either.

On our way out, we decide to ask the cashier what her name is. Before we could she ducked down behind a blue bin. She pops up, and what's her name? Carrie, who is also wearing a blue shirt. Of course. We struck up a conversation with her, told her about the Treasure Hunt, and that she was our treasure! We then asked her if her foot hurt. "Yes!" she says. "I know," I say to myself. "Which one?" I say outloud. "My left foot," she says. "I know," again to myself.

So we pray, "Holy Spirit come". That's it. "How's it feeling?" We ask. "The pain is gone!" she says. We asked her if she knew Jesus, got into a nice conversation, and left totally filled with faith. Yay Jesus!