Day 44 – Prayer Walk

19 members of the River City Church Youth Group arrived today! Right after they arrived, we had a quick lunch and then headed out on a prayer walk. Now, if you have never been on a prayer walk, thay are really cool. The idea is to walk around a neighborhood, stop at a couple of houses of people you know and pray for them. The cool part is, you never know who God is going to put in your path that day, so every walk is different…

We stopped by Luis’ house today to pray with him as he is in a wheelchair and his aging mother (who has always taken care of him) just passed away two weeks ago (right after the Celebration Team prayed for her). Though we didn’t find him, we did find his grieving sister who is now responsible for taking care of Luis. She was a wreck… So we prayed for her and with her. “Blessed are those who Mourn, for they will be comforted.” – Matthew 5:4

As we made our way to the Juan Pablo neighborhood, I went to find Lalo and his brother Jorge. I had two sticks of gum and was ready for their usual requests! Unfortunately, no one was home :( I asked their next door neighbor if he had seen them, but he said no. He tried to speak to me in English as I was walking by saying “moment, please” but I didn’t get what he was saying as he seemed kinda out of it. A little later, Dave and the rest of the group walked by and the man stopped Dave. Dave called me over to translate and the story became clear…

The man’s name was (also) Luis and he asked us: “You guys help people, right?” Dave responded “Not us, God.” and pointed to the sky. Luis then took us into his shanti house… Mostly dirt floors with a few wood slats, patchwork walls and a leaky tin roof. He had two children: A young girl named Celeste who is at every activity and every event we hold in Juan Pablo, and a one year old baby boy sleeping on a half soaked bed (leaky roof…) It’s at that point that Luis tells us that his wife has left him and he has to take care of the children alone. He works construction, but only makes $60 / week. All he really wanted was a couple of sheets of tin for the roof as he said he could do the labor himself. Thus, Dave said we would help him out. As we were leaving, Jorge invited him to the new church plant and pointed out that Celeste was their every Sunday. Luis responded that he was the one who sent her to all of our activities and to our church. At that point we told Luis that God didn’t just love his children, but He loved him too. Next thing you know, Luis was on his knees in the mud (it had been pouring rain this entire time) with Jorge praying the sinner’s prayer…

Afterwards, Bonnie and I discussed how there is a difference between “being in need” and “being at the point of asking for help.” The latter is a far more serious situation as we have to get over our pride in order reach this point. Luis reached that point today.