Ok, so this day has to be my absolute favorite day of this ENTIRE week so get ready for an insanely long post. Sorry not sorry, haha! First and foremost, we got to sleep in and I didn't get out of bed until 9:30 this morning. It was great. Since we got to sleep in our schedule was pretty different from the rest of this week. We had worship, a lecture, lunch, and then another lecture, which meant we had to leave out quiet time and our "teach one" sessions with our mentors. We were supposed to leave for our nursing home around 2:15 because with traffic we wouldn't be getting there till 3:00 and we'd have to leave at 4:15 to get back in time for dinner. Today our lecture was supposed to last until 2:00, but just like all the other lectures we've had this week, it went over. By a lot. 2:45 rolls around and we are finally loading up to head to the nursing home. So we don't get there until almost 3:30 which doesn't give us hardly any time to go and share with people. I honestly was ok with this because to me our time at the nursing home seemed to be absolutely pointless. People either didn't want to talk to us or they were already Christians. And we'd already met with every person on our wing.....twice. So I was ok with not being there long, and I was basically ready to go as soon as we arrived.
So we start walking and decide to start from the end of our wing and work our way back to the lobby where we would meet the rest of our team at 4:30. Now, let me tell you, this decision to start at the end was a total God Thing. We even chose a hallway that was insanely busy when normally we would try to avoid them. And obviously, there was a reason. We walked down the hall, poking our heads into the rooms to see if there was anyone we could talk to. And again people were either eating, asleep, or had visitors. So in my mind it was just going to be another day of just pointlessly walking around desperate for some random person to share with. Until we walked by a room that had a familiar face in it. This familiar face happened to be the lady I mentioned in Day 4: The Nursing Home. We hadn't seen her in her room the last few days and had even witnessed the staff deep cleaning her room as if she were gone and not coming back, which had really discouraged us. But thankfully we saw her smiling face in her room again as we walked by and we excitedly rushed in to talk to her. She remembered who we were and immediately started talking to us and telling us about how she'd had a doctors visit and forgot to leave a note letting us know she was gone. So sweet. We told her today was our last day at the nursing home which really saddened her. When we left she wouldn't have anyone to pray with her or talk with her, and she still didn't have a way to read the bible since her eyesight was bad. So Jennifer (my mentor) and I again brought up the idea of an audio bible that she could listen to in the nursing home so she wouldn't feel so disconnected from God. "Oh that would be so wonderful" she said over and over again.
Determined not to leave this sweet woman without a way to hear God's word, Jennifer and I decided that we would run out to try and find the rest of our team and ask if we could leave a little early and run by life way to get this sweet lady an audio bible. So we quickly start making our way to the other side of the nursing home and run right smack into another God Thing.
So, backtrack again with me to earlier this week, after our first or second visit to the nursing home. By this time we had already met with most if not all of the residents at the nursing home and I was starting to feel kind of discouraged. Surely theres someone else to pray for besides just the residents. I mean, this place is full of staff members! But they were always so busy the thought of trying to hold a conversation with them or even just pray with them real quick just seemed impossible. But God had kept that on my heart all week, and today as we were yet again going to the residents, I tried to keep my eyes open for a staff member who looked like they might have a minute or two to spare. Of course there weren't any. Until we decided to go look for our team.
As we are going up and down the halls, looking in each room to try to find them, we accidentally run into this OTA (occupational therapist assistant). And by run in to I pretty much mean run into. I stopped just in time to avoid colliding with him as we were walking across the hall, and instead of ducking across in front of him and apologizing like I normally do, I just flat out stopped to let him keep walking between me and my mentor. But instead he takes a few steps, pauses, and then turns and asks me, "Are y'all the ones going around praying with everyone?" ....ok at this point I have like a .5 second freak out, but I promise y'all the Holy Spirit just immediately took over and I was like "we sure are!" and so this man stops and talks to us for a while and tells us about how amazing he thinks that is that we are doing this and how inspiring it is. He tells us about his time in the navy and how he is a believer along with several other things, and as our conversation is clearly drawing to a close (i'm about to just explode with excitement right now as I watch my prayers be answered) I blurt out "would it be helpful if we prayed for you?" And he says yes! So in the middle of the hallway we pray for this OTA and his time at the nursing home, and that God would just continue to use him to bless the people he works with. Let me tell you, I was literally like this confetti cannon ready to explode into a shower of glitter and colored plastic-ribbons after that. I pulled my mentor aside after we parted with the OTA and told her about how God had placed that on my heart and then put that guy in our path and had him start up a conversation with us. Like this was ALL GOD you guys it was so cool! But that's not the end of it.
We finally find our team and they agree to go to life way and help us get this lady set up with an audio bible. So we start this scavenger hunt trying to find life way and Walmart to get everything we need for this lady. We end up buying her a new CD player that she could set in the bed with her, a Life Choices devotional (because the bibles were about $50 for just the new testament), some awesome headphones, and some batteries. We wrap it all up in a gift bag and rush back over to the nursing home to give it to her. I wish you could have been there to just see the joy on her face when we gave it to her. She just went on and on about how God just answered her prayers and how she was so thankful for us and what we did and we were just all so excited to have been able to provide something so important for this woman and just bring her so much joy. As we were getting ready to leave we all laid hands on her and prayed for her healing and for God to just use what we'd done to encourage this lady in her walk. But again this isn't the end!!
As we leave we decide to stop by the therapy rooms to see if the OTA was still there, we figured that since this lady was looking for someone to talk to about Christ and since he was a believer and seemed like he really wanted to integrate his faith in his work, we thought we would let him know about what we'd given her so he could help her work the CD player and maybe talk about Christ with her. And surprisingly (and again this was another God thing) we find him, still there at the nursing home, way later than any OTA would normally be there. He even told us he normally doesn't stay late but for some reason today he had. And so we share with him our story about the lady and he promises to go and check on her before he leaves for the day. And then he starts asking us a ton of questions about what we are doing and where we were from, and then suddenly he asks to pray over us! So we follow him into the gym and he prays one of the most beautiful prayers I have ever heard. I mean, he had asked us for prayer requests before he began but you could just see the Spirit working in him because he prayed not only for the request i'd mentioned but also for other things for me that i'd been struggling with that I hadn't even told him about. I mean to him the words probably seemed common and like typical attributes that you would pray for but I had never had someone pray for something like that that really hit so close to home and really described what I needed from God. It was incredible.
Man, you guys, God has just been amazing today. Like all I could see today was Him and how he is just working in every single detail to draw people to him. It was like i'd gotten corrective eye surgery and could now, actually SEE God. He was EVERYWHERE. I don't think i've ever been so excited in my entire life. And even during the worship this evening He was just working in me still and revealing so much more to me than I could ever imagine. Today might have been the last day of our sharing experiences at the nursing homes but we literally went out with a bang. Despite every day before feeling mediocre and just like we weren't making any progress, today just made up for everything. It was beautiful.
The rest of this week is less structured and includes a lot more free time for us, so this may be my last consecutive post of this trip. I'm not sure though, it'll just depend. I may post some pictures tomorrow of our time in LA but after that I have no idea. But i'm so thankful for the opportunity to have been able to come on this trip and to just refocus and really start to break down my faith and build it back up in Christ this week. It has been such a blessing to just see Him and grow so much closer to Him. My last prayer request for this week is that I won't just leave this excitement here, but that i'll take it back home with me. Pray that God will just give me the motivation and desire to seek after Him more when i'm home and that He will just continue to show me more of who He is and who I am in Him.
Romans 15:13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Luke 1:47 And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.
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