We traveled to Lebanon last week, and took a day to adjust to the ten hour time difference between California and Lebanon. We were totally blessed by the guest house we are staying in. Such a beautiful view! We’ve been enjoying the opportunity this week to bless our host as well! We have been lending a hand to build a school for Syrian refugee children, and to help restore a building that will be used as a community center.
Friday was our first time in the city. It was an exciting, albeit harrowing, adventure through traffic to get to the Christian bookshop where our contacts have a ministry. But so worth it! They provided a huge spread for lunch, with the first shawarma for many in our group. Hummus has never tasted so fresh!
Then our Lebanese friends gave our team an orientation to Lebanon and Middle Eastern culture. The most impactful part of the talk was the caution to be vigilant of the common spiritual strongholds present in Lebanon. Our precious friends also prayed over our team and our outreach and gave us encouraging words from the Lord. One even saw a picture of our team queued up in a battle line; everyone united, carrying spears and yelling the battle cry of Jesus! Then we had the opportunity to minister to everyone in the bookshop. The atmosphere of the bookshop was thick with the presence of God and He used our team to speak right to their hearts.
They invited us to a house church that night, where we had the pleasure of praising the Lord while the church worshipped in Arabic. Toward the end of the message, our team started to feel the Lord highlight specific things He was healing in the room. This opened the floodgates for a time of healing ministry. As people were healed, more came forward for prayer. Multiple individuals with severe, long-term back pain and knee pain were healed. A woman with scoliosis was healed, and we have full faith that another woman with Leukemia was also healed! At least 6 or 7 felt the touch of God in their bodies, and more hearts were touched.
A few days ago two members of our team went to get lunch at a local restaurant, and as they were finishing their meal, they struck up a conversation with a man at a nearby table. They were able to share the whole gospel with the man. He had heard it before, but it was obvious that God was really tugging on his heart. He admitted that other people had talked to him about Christ and had invited him to church, but he hadn’t made the commitment. At first he was hesitant, but then they shared that they felt God wanted him to know that He saw him and the depression he had been struggling with. It turned out that this man had struggled with depression along with other things for 10 years. This then opened the door for one of them to share their own story of depression and how they had walked out of it with God’s help. They offered to pray for him and he excitedly said yes. They again invited him to accept Christ, and this time he prayed to accept Jesus! They also prayed for his depression, and he even came to church with us all that night!
One lady we prayed over invited us to speak at her Filipino-Madagascarian church on Sunday and to do prayer ministry during the service. So on Sunday we encouraged the church to let the light of Jesus shine through them into the Muslim world they live in. Others in the team shared testimonies of healing on outreach as well as in their own bodies, and a student spontaneously launched an altar call for healing in the church. About half of the church got healed by Jesus and some even experienced deliverance!
The school we have been helping to build is located in the same area that we will move to for the next several weeks. The students have been excited to check out the area and begin building relationships while we do this service project.
Please pray for more Arabic translators to join our team when we head to the refugee camps. Also pray for supernatural grace and energy for the team. And praise the Lord for all the people who have already been healed and set free in just the first few weeks of this outreach!