Imagine the scene.

A church of 300 people or so gathered for a service and our team is leading the ministry time after the preaching.

It’s hot.  There is no air conditioning.

The worship song set had lasted nearly 90 minutes of up tempo worship music that had many people dancing and jumping for nearly the whole time. . .

I was tired

We had been ministering for several days already.

Add the mental exhaustion from

• days of cross cultural communication,
• teaching in a second language,
• and a persistant head cold,
• on top of back to back weeks of international travel and ministry

meant that my body was reaching a functional limit of strength.

By the time the service was moving into the most intense part – personal prayer ministry – I was wiped out.

Stumbling in Prayer Ministry

We had assembled several ministry teams from local church members and spent time going over ministry guidelines.

But the demand for ministry was greater than the number of our teams so we got personally involved as well.

I paired up with another team member to start prayer ministry.  She was fluent in Spanish, but when it comes to healing prayer, we both found we were stuck with not knowing words for interior body parts.

For example:

• gall bladder,
• kidney,
• spleen,
• bladder, etc.

Those don’t usually come up in an evangelism conference.

People were seeking physical healing for interior infirmities, for body organs we didn’t recognize Spanish names for. . .

On top my exhaustion, now add the stress of language confusion. .

Not all prayer was for physical healing

• One man’s store had been robbed.  He wanted justice and the return of his musical equipment.
• Another one wanted faith to believe their prodigal child would come home.
• Another was wanting God to provide a job.

Committing theological mistakes in another language.

One man in particular was a husband wanting prayer for an aspect of his marriage.  After hearing his story, I launched into prayer.

This is where exhaustion overpowered the ability to pray clearly in a second language.

Even after 5 years, I still mentally translate some things in my head before speaking, though it is getting less and less.  I’ve not yet made that switch to thinking in a second language.

I’m in that in between mode where some phrases mentally form in Spanish and some phrases mentally form in English.  In my tiredness, the fine filters that keep everything straight were no longer in place.

I meant to pray:

Thank you Lord for this man’s wife.

Instead, I prayed

Thank you Lord for your wife.

It went on.  Nearly every reference that should have been “her” (3rd person pronoun) came out “you” (2nd person pronoun). . . I didn’t catch it.  My prayer partner did and graciously informed me of this a little later.

It’s really easy to commit theological errors in a second language when one is tired and exhausted.

At the end of February, the next teaching trip took me to Matagalpa Nicaragua.

We received an invitation from 5 city churches to teach on the Healing Ministry of Jesus.  This is a new step in the growth of the work for us in Nicaragua, as we move beyond the work with Vida Joven and into the city.

The Healing Conference

Over the course of a few days, nearly 100 people attended the conference.  We taught on the five areas of healing that Jesus brings:

1. Spiritual
2. Relational
3. Emotional
4. Physical
5. Deliverance

Most of the time was focused on Emotional and Physical Healing, given the context of the churches we ministered in.  Each section had a prayer time associated with it, where we moved from theory to practice.

Lots of tears where shed, as Jesus brought significant healing to various people.

The stories are too personal to share here, but people gave testimonies of forgiveness they encountered, forgiveness they granted, freedom, and some reported physical healing as well.

Relational Healing

Sunday morning was my turn to preach.  The church was packed, and the Lord had me focus particularly on relational healing:

• Between spouses
• Between parents and children
• Between friends
• Between pastors and leaders

The ministry time wound up being a time of surrender for people, inviting them to surrender their conflicts, seek forgiveness, and pledge to work towards a solution rather than destruction.

Sunday night

Sunday night was a healing service at yet another church, with nearly 300 in attendance.  Some of our friends from Vida Joven ministered with us.  Team member Sam Hale brought a message of faith and then moved us into a time of prayer ministry.

There was so much need for prayer that even 9 ministry teams were not enough. . .

My reflections

We are intentional not to be the North American superstars.   Historically, I’ve seen a mentality that the “preacher” is the “anointed one” and all personal prayer must be done by this one person.

Instead, we teach how the Holy Spirit empowers each one of us to cooperate with the loving work the the Father wants us to do.  Thus, we encourage local people to form the prayer teams and practice what we’ve been teaching.

Rather than a line of people seeking us out, there are multiple teams that can provide prayer ministry.  This is intentional equipping on our part.

A second marvel for me is the cooperation of the 5 churches that brought our team to Nicaragua.  Praise God for their unity and their sacrificial offering to help continue to spread the teaching in other churches in Latin America.

What’s next?

We’ve been invited back in the fall 2012 for another conference with these churches, and hopefully with more churches participating in the city.  Planning is in the works.

Your gifts support this work and enable us to get airplane tickets for events like this.