It was the first day we would be praying for people after the impartation service the previous night. I have never prayed with anyone using the method I learned from the ministry training materials I have been studying for the past few weeks. I was excited as we all gathered downstairs in the lobby of the hotel waiting for our bus to arrive to take us to the church where I would have my first opportunity to put into practice what I had been learning. I suddenly realized that I didn’t have my name tag with me and I figured that was a bad thing. I said to my group leader, I will run to my room and come right back. My room is on the 6th floor so I planned to take the stairs because the two elevators for the hotel are almost always in use. However when I approached the stairs I noticed that one of the elevators was on the ground floor with the door wide open and no one standing nearby. I knew that God had put it there for me. I said “thank you Jesus” as I entered in and it quickly took me up to the 6th floor. After I retrieved my name badge, I got right back into the elevator to go meet the team. The doors closed and to my dismay the elevator started going up, instead of down. It took me all the way to the top floor of the hotel. The elevator doors opened and a woman began to enter the elevator and upon seeing me she stopped dead in her tracks. She wasn’t fully getting on but rather standing there blocking the door from closing. She looked at me and started speaking to me in Portuguese. She was really animated in her speech and gestures. Unfortunately I do not speak Portuguese. We were both trying very hard to understand each other and from the hand motions she was making I could tell that she wanted me to pray for her. She must have heard that we were there to pray for people. She had such a look of pure desperation on her face. I motioned for her to step into the elevator so we could go down and find a translator. We walked outside and I asked “is there anyone here who can speak Portuguese?” Lucy, a young woman who at that very moment was standing right next to me turned around and said that she could translate for me. Lucy translated as the woman began to list off her ailments – pain in her liver and other internal organs, pain in her leg, she pointed to her eyes, but we weren’t sure what that was about. As this woman kept describing all of her pains, Lucy turned to me and said, “wow she has a lot of issues.” I asked her to let us know what she felt as I prayed. After praying for the pain in her stomach and leg, I could see that the Lord was doing something and asked her what she felt in her body. She said that she was now experiencing pain in her collar bone area. I asked her if that was a new pain. She said yes. I remembered from the training materials that this was likely caused by an afflicting spirit so I commanded the spirit of infirmity to leave. She said that all the pain had left her body. She immediately grabbed Lucy’s name tag and was looking it over with great intensity. I thought that she was trying to read Lucy’s name for some reason. I asked Lucy what was going on. Only then did I learn that this woman had cataracts and she was testing out her eyes. Unfortunately by this time the bus was ready to go and I needed to get on. So I prayed a quick prayer for her cataracts. I could tell that the Lord was touching her, and she was very grateful. I had to leave not knowing how her eyes were affected.
Wayne C, Auto Engineer