The Lord has shown us so many encounters this week!

On Tuesday at language school, we asked our language tutor, Jimmy, about his soccer game the night before.  He said they tied, but the real loss was that he got kicked above the ankle and it hurt him to walk on it. We kept talking and I was like, “Jimmy, can we pray for your ankle?” “Yeah, you can pray” “No, but I mean can we pray right now?” “Sure, you can pray…..in Spanish.” (Great.)  So David and I prayed (limited Spanish, mostly English) over his ankle/shin area and afterwards he brushed it off with a “Thanks.” When we asked if it felt better, he said “Yes, what did you do? Is that magic?” “Um, nope. It’s  the Lord!” : )

Then on Thursday, we had dinner at Amauta and Jesus’.  It was so wonderful and just what we had prayed for! Before coming to Peru we had prayed to make Peruvian friends and for our new friends to make us a home-cooked Peruvian meal. What we got was a night laughing, worshiping, singing, and eating the most delicious lomo saltado (rice, boiled then fried potatoes, and beef sautéed with onions and tomatoes = crazy delicious) and they thoroughly enjoyed my banana-chocolate chip bread.  Turns out Jesus knows English (from living in the States for 2 years) and we got to share some of our wedding photos and got to see their wedding video and talk about all things married. We jammed out to Hillsong (in Spanish) and David got to bond with Jesus and Amauta in a jam sesh with a cajon and guitars.  The Lord invaded that night with such joy and conversation and we are so thrilled to have them as our new friends! We hope to invite them over to our place soon for some Southern cookin’ soon!

On Friday, David and I were at Starbucks hanging out for a few hours before class. After awhile a group of hippie-hipster girls walked in and sat down near us. The Lord kept telling me, “pray for her…” The “her” He was referring to was a girl with dreds who looked like she was either tired, sick or on something.  Honestly I was like, “Lord, not now. These girls are intimidating.” And he kept saying, “It’s her, and I love her, go tell her how much I love her.” 30 minutes went by and I was debating the right time to go over and honestly I was eavesdropping on their conversation how she got sick but missed all of her antibiotics and got sick again…blah blah blah. So I made a deal with God, “Ok, make it an easy transition to talk to her.” God said, “watch me.” (Within 5 minutes, the loud German couple on the couch across from us got up and left and the girl’s 2 friends she was with got up and went to the bar). So I find myself getting up to talk to “her.”  After a brief introduction, I find myself telling her (her name’s Bracie) about how Jimmy got healed 2 days before and that the Lord wanted to heal her. I got a chance to pray for her before her friend’s came back and she went from being this sick/out of it looking person in the Starbucks booth to there being such light in her eyes.  Her reaction was, “Thanks, that was great. You’re very connected.” (whatever that means, yeah, connected to the Lord!)  She doesn’t know how long she’s in Cusco, just hanging out for an undetermined part of time, but I truly believe that the Lord was healing her and I told her that Daddy God must love her A LOT. Enough for Him to tell me about it and I’m a total stranger getting my vanilla latte on.  Thanks Lord! Yeah, it was awkward at first, but obedience is totally worth it!

Other PRAISES: 

1. Jordan was granted his residency! 

2. Our friend, Eric Lovin, is going to be our new neighbor mid-November in the apartment below us! Hello community!! 

3. David built me a shelf for the hallway and a bookcase out of some scrap wood in the yard today!

4. We enjoyed some McDonald’s on Saturday night and then hiked a mountain (in a neighborhood, but a mountain nevertheless) and sat at the foot of the Cristo Blanco statue (that overlooks the whole city) and prayed over the city with David Snyder.