Love Does (Days: Tuesday)

(If you haven't read it, read the Saturday, Sunday, Monday post before this one.)
Tuesday was a full day of evangelism. This normally doesn't work out this way, but my family group was assigned both Home Visits (visiting the homes of Christians already in the Churches we are working with or people who have come to the church before but stopped going for some reason, with the pastor of the church after having made appointments to meet with them before that day. (that sentence doesn't make sense but I have slept for about 10% of the time that has passed since Thursday morning.)) and Door to Door Evangelism (random people in the community who we go and just knock on the door of their house and then start talking to them about why these white people are in Peru blasting Christian music and playing with children at the church.This usually ends with a presentation of the gospel.) In past years when I have been to the Dominican Republic, I and others have usually been the least excited about the day with evangelism like this, because it is generally difficult and awkward to just strike up a conversation with someone right outside their house about who God is and why we want them to know His love. So, a full day of this had me worried, but after getting a little bit of awkward out of the way with the first of our home visits in the morning, my family group got really comfortable with just talking to people. the second house we went to in the morning was a family of clearly strong and solid believers. When we walked in the woman who lived there was so excited to have us their and to share her story of salvation with us. She told us how when her son was only 18 months old, he accidentally drank some gasoline, and was very sick for about a month. The doctors did the little they could and then just sent him home. From there he was in a coma like state for a month and on the times when he did come to, refused food and did very little. During this time, the woman had heard of some missionaries who had come and were having an event near the community, so she and her husband went to that and both accepted Christ there and spent some time praying for their son. When they arrived home afterwards, they heard crying from the room with their son in it, and went to find him awake and begging for food, his healing was truly a miracle of God and he is now 15 years old and perfectly healthy. She talked about how that started her complete trust in the Lord to take care of her and her family. I think we sometimes forget that god does things like that here at home, we are so used to the doctors telling us what's wrong and their ability to fix it, but God works some amazing healing miracles all the time. (Another cool thing about this family: the mom had a dream the night before that God was going to be sending someone to visit her, and she had no idea we would be coming.) It's funny how we go to these things thinking that we are going to encourage the Peruvians, but they end up encouraging us.
That afternoon, we were given 2 hours to do door to door evangelism, and we were told that we would probably get to 5 houses to share, but God had bigger plans. The first door we knocked on was a woman and her neighbor just spending some time together. We began talking and we asked her if she attend a local Church, her reply opener up a major door for us to share with her. She said that she had gone to church for a little while, but when she had tried to attend consistently, she had had these terrible dreams about serpents that scared her away from going to church. We spent the next hour explaining to her that this was clearly satan trying to keep her from a relationship with the Lord, and that if she would put her trust in the Lord she could call on Him anytime for protection from such dreams. She and her neighbor decided to give their lives to the Lord right there. We then we to the house of a man who had lost his leg in an accident, but had found comfort and strength in the Lord, and when we asked him what we could pray for, he did no ask for less pain or anything for himself, but instead asked that we would pray that his family could find the Love of Christ that he had found. We then got to share the gospel with his grandson who was home with him, and he accepted Christ. God's love, once it's found, changes our hearts in a way that we want everyone to be able to experience.