Southeast Asia – July 27, 2023

Today’s theme seemed to be to expect the unexpected! We headed out to go to, not one, but two compassion kit parties in the morning. However, we ended up waiting and waiting in the car on the side of the road in a town, and later realized we were waiting for a person, a local connection, to actually take us to the compassion kit party at his church. It was not anything a GPS could find! However, he was a good bit late, and by the time we got to the church, they had dismissed the people and asked them to come back later. So, we improvise and go on home visits!

Even the home visits were a little different than we had been doing. We incorporated some of our presentations.  We prayed for a number of people, including a young 20-year-old girl who did not have an education beyond the eighth grade, no husband, and no prospects or employment for the future.  We later learned that this type of person, of which there are many, are the prime candidates for human trafficking.  A grim reminder of how easy it would be for someone like this young lady to slip through the cracks into an evil system that exploits her vulnerabilities.

We went to the second scheduled compassion kit party, our first to be held outside! We were finding out anyway that as hot as it is here, it was hotter inside one of those block buildings, especially if it had a tin roof!  Often times, instead of a refuge, these buildings felt more like an oven.

We had lunch at the local church, provided by a number of women who were very hospitable. The people who were invited earlier for the compassion kit party, and had to be dismissed, came back and were waiting for the compassion kit party by watching the Jesus film in their very own native language! That was certainly an unexpected thing to see! However, we found out we were not doing this particular party as another one of the teams was instead, so we went on more home visits. Honestly, we simply followed our translator wherever he told us to go! We really did not have much of a clue as to what was going on since as plans changed it was being talked about in their native language.

We ended our day at a compassion kit party, also held outside, at someone’s home. This is where we saw more of the unexpected! A lively senior woman approached us with much joy! She told us she had known the Lord for 25 years and was dancing in the Lord, and showing us what that dance looked like! Her daughter had been abandoned by her husband, lost her adult son, and was raising her about-10-year-old son, developed neurological issues it appears, and her biggest concern was the impediment this could be to serving in her church! When we began to pray for this one precious woman, such grief came out! And many of the local church leaders, who were familiar with the situation surrounded us, and we all joined together in prayer vocally and loudly to the Lord! Her grief seems to reach the same level of our passion to beseech the Lord on her behalf!

Once we got back to the hotel we heard that a team that had a few other of it PBC attendees were confronted with at least two cases of demon possession. Another person on their team from another church was the daughter of missionaries in Guatemala was very familiar with what this looked like and every time she commanded the demons to stop in Jesus’ name there was a physical manifestation of the behaviors stopping!

And that drew a conclusion to a day full of the unexpected!