Tonight I experienced what I am going to call a miracle from God.
I was sitting in the back row of church and listening to the sermon about following the purpose of God, and the holy spirits leading. Perviously they played a video which included several members of my church affirming a man I greatly admire, Dr.Tito. He runs La Mision in Guatemala and I got to serve with him and his team on medical missions in 2010. I was sitting in my seat thinking about all the good so many people are doing. Now, I am going to be completely transparent about one of my major insecurities. It’s not something that is constantly on my mind, but it pops up every now and then. At this particular moment it was racing through my head. I’m scared that people who supported me to go on my mission trips, wish they hadn’t. Or people who read my stories and see my pictures think that I’m just prancing around the world, doing whatever I want and labeling it as a “missions trip”. I always try to re-assure myself to not care what other people think, that God sees what I do, knows my intentions, and was the one that told me to do it anyway. But sometimes I can’t help but feel insecure.
So I was sitting in church, thinking about all of this and started to feel really down. The pastor said something that I wanted to remember, but I didn’t have anything to write with so I went into my iphone to write it in the “notes”. I created a new note and when I was done writing went back to the main page of the notes. The note I had just written was there, along with another note titled Prayer List and dated August 25. It was a note I had started writing at the beginning of my trip in July while I was in Australia. I was meeting so many amazing people, I wanted to make sure I didn’t forget anyone so I started to create a prayer list on my ipod of all the people I met and wanted to continue to pray for. The thing is my ipod was STOLEN in Athens, Greece at the end of September (which I previously wrote about). The iphone that was in my hands was only a week and a half old, this note was dated back to August 25 and said it hadn’t been updated in 79 days. It wasn’t even connected to my itunes (my itunes is in Hawai’i). I haven’t even fully set it up yet. icloud is off so it can’t possibly link to any of my other apple devices, and even if it could on my previous ipod I had over a dozen different notes, the prayer list only being one of them, so even if somehow the note was transferred from my stolen ipod to my new iphone why weren’t any of my other notes transferred with it?? I’ve searched my new iphone and there is NOTHING else on it form my old ipod, none of my pictures from traveling, NOTHING. Just this simple prayer list, of the names of people I met while on my trip.
So I sat there mesmerized, looking at my prayer list, and then I heard this, “this is why you went on that trip.”
All of a sudden all of my insecurities were gone. I no longer cared what people thought about my travels (if anyone even does think anything! I’m probably just paranoid!). God originally told me to sell everything, to go out into the nations and encourage dreams. He told Suzanne to go for “the one” and later put that word on my heart as well. Well here in front of me I had a list of all “the ones” that I had the opportunity to meet while traveling. I look back at that list in tears now, there are 29 names on it, and even more names in my head because it hasn’t been updated in 79 days. Each of those individuals has a unique story to their lives and is equally important to my heavenly father, the king of kings. I can look at each name and remember their faces and our conversations, and you know what, it was all worth it to travel around the globe to meet them. It sounds so silly but I just feel so much love for each one of them and I know it’s not my personal love, but God’s love for them.
I’m so thankful God miraculously put this list back on my iphone at this moment. It reminded me of why I wanted to travel around the world originally. It reminded me that He was the one that moved people to support me to travel. But above all it reminded me that HE was the one who sent me, and that everyone I met on the trip was for a unique purpose.
Believe what you want. I know it was a miracle. Thank you for letting me be so transparent. Aloooha
Here are some screen shots from my ipod if you were curious. I crossed out the names on the prayer list for privacy reasons. =]
FreedBird 