Prayers Are Answered During a Visit to an Abused Girls Home
God Give me What I Need, Don’t Give Me What I Want

One of the outreach teams visited the Glenhope House of Safety today, a home for abused girls.

A team member who gave her testimony to the girls had prayed prior to coming to Jamaica, “God give me what I need and not what I want,” and asked God that she would have the opportunity to minister at a home for orphans, because she works with children and loves them.

As God would have it, she did not get to visit an orphanage but was sent to this home for abused girls instead. As she began to share her testimony she prayed for the strength to get through it. She testified that she had been sexually abused as a young girl by her stepfather for many years. She lived in constant fear of returning home from school because of what he might do to her, beat her or abuse her once more. She could not tell her mother or he would beat her mother as well. She often thought of suicide and of poisoning his food so that it would all end. In time she came to know Jesus and he healed her heart so she was able to forgive her stepfather and even try to love him.

The dividing wall that separated us from the girls suddenly disappeared and as each of the 12 team members went off with a small group of girls, we were able to just love them. The team member who had given her testimony was followed by several girls who shared similar experiences. Sushana had been raped eight times by five different men, became pregnant and then was raped four more times by different men during her pregnancy. She is only seventeen. Lisa was physically abused by her stepfather and she fought back. She feared that the stepfather had also sexually abused her younger sister. Unable to stay with her family, she was placed in the home. Another girl prayed that the Holy Spirit would come and give her the strength to open up about being sexually abused by her stepfather. As she cried and prayed with the girls, the team member realized how God had answered her prayer and how he always had a purpose for her own suffering.

Serving the One

One young girl remained outside the room where we first sang and gave testimonies to the girls, hugging the walls of the house and refusing the advances of one member of our team. The team member remained outside also and continued to tell her of the love that Jesus had for her. By the end of our visit her entire countenance had changed. She had accepted the Lord and was smiling from ear to ear.

Miss, You Know What I Prayed for This Morning?

Another young girl kept a sullen face through most of the visit. She kept apart from her small group and refused to participate in the prayer and conversation. As we neared the end of the visit, she began to open up and asked to talk to the team member alone. She shared that she had been baptized at 14 years old and become pregnant. She is now 15 and gave birth recently to twin girls who are still in the hospital. Her guardian refused to keep supporting her and brought her to the home. She wanted to leave the home and get her babies. After we prayed I asked her if she believed that God would answer her prayer for herself and her babies. She began to smile and said: “Yes, Miss, I do,” adding “Miss, you know what I prayed for this morning?” When the team member could not guess, she smiled again and said “that there would be peace and no fighting today.” She knew that her prayer had been answered. For where the presence of God is, there is peace.

A Cleaning and Extraction Leads to Jesus
The Medical Team Witnesses Christ to a Captive Audience

Two medical outreach teams have been providing medical and dental health services to communities surrounding No Man’s Land since Monday. One dental team member witnessed to a 200 lbs, six-foot man in his 40s who needed a cleaning and extraction. As she worked on his teeth she explained to him that Jesus had brought her to Jamaica because he loves him. That she could have easily stayed at her air-conditioned office in New York and made a couple of hundred dollars from the procedure she was performing on him, but the Lord had sent her for one reason, to save his soul. She then asked him if he wanted to accept the Lord and to her surprise he said yes! She led him in the sinner’s prayer right there on the chair. He asked her to pray for him. Not content to have only secured his conversion, the team member asked him if he had a bible and he responded that he had. She urged him to read it every day because as a father it was now his responsibility to lead his entire family to Christ.

Tonight, If You hear His Voice Harden Not Your Hearts
God Weeps on the Second Night of the Crusade and the Stronghold of the Enemy is Broken

Words cannot possible describe what has happened here tonight. There was praise and worship like never before. The heavens were opened, and as one team member put it “the battle was already won in the worship.”
Pastor Carter began his message in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 37 comparing No Man’s Land and Trench Town to the valley of dry bones spoken of in the scripture. He challenged the crowd to believe that God had the power to breathe life into their dead situations and bring new life. “Do you believe it!” he cried. Then he moved to John 11 and compared the unbelief of Mary and Martha to the condition of many in the crowd who did not believe that God could breathe on them and bring them back to life. Pastor Carter began to cry out to God with all his strength: “breathe the breath of God on their lives, breathe the breath of God on their community, and on and on. Then he just wept for the longest time, and we knew that God had come and was breaking through the unbelief and the years of bondage and oppression. Like the children of Israel when Moses told Pharaoh to let His people go.

Before he spoke even one word some of us had already begun to weep, not gentle tears rolling down our cheeks, but crying from deep within the belly, a cry of anguish for these people that God loved and whom he wanted to set free.

When he stopped weeping, Pastor Carter began to calmly command the powers of darkness to loosen the people, from the north and the south, from the east and the west as he faced each direction, and we knew that whatever was being loosed on earth tonight was being loosed in heaven. He danced with joy at the deliverance of the Lord. It was a God moment, and we all knew it. Hundreds responded to the call for salvation and the worship that followed was like a rush of fresh water after a long drought. We danced, we jumped, we sang and worshiped our God. How to describe it? Just as Jesus promised, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” Tonight, we beheld his glory.

The Unimaginable Becomes Reality
4,000 People Come to No Man’s Land for the Second Night of the Crusade

According to the estimates of the local police, some 4,000 people showed up for the crusade tonight, and at least 1,000 were from the communities surrounding No Man’s Land. The local bailiff, who has been working as part of our security team, remarked that he has never seen more than 300 people gathered together in No Man’s Land, but what was even more remarkable to him was that after the crusade, people were walking peacefully and unafraid in the streets nearby after dark. The enemy’s stronghold of hate, murder and fear has been broken. To God be the glory!