Sunday, May 27, 2007

post encounterrr

my encounter weekend boys!
(L to R) jarrell, glenn, kenneth, shaun, me, gabriel

so i was away at ps william's encounter this weekend as a guide for the very first time... i've been to encounter weekend twice... 1st as a participant (cried like a baby)... 2nd was as a logistic (cried like a baby)... and this time i had to take on the role of guide and big brother to 5 young lads... i had absolutely no idea what i was getting myself into... i didn't know them at all and i wasn't sure what was required of me for the weekend... i was quite apprehensive of what being a guide was about... and i told dennis about it... dennis just told me this was a good opportunity for me to "die to self"... less of me and more of the Lord and the Holy Spirit... so I did... I went to the weekend with the thought that I'll leave everything to the Lord and try as much as I could to move in the Spirit...

went off a little quiet because i didn't know how to talk to these guys... i mean they're 15 and i'm almost twice their age... so during one of the sharing sessions, one of them said that it was kinda too quiet around... so i took a step and starting to talk more... we just sort of shared about our lives and stuff... and i told them my ns stories and life story and we sort of started to have something to talk about... then the rest of the weekend was slightly better now that we could talk...

and the praying has really been more spirit-led than ever before... i didn't have any preconceived idea of what to pray for... but just followed whatever prompting that came to me... here's a little testimony:

months back i watched a documentary on channelnewsasia on tourette's syndrome... about this bunch of kids dealing with the medical condition and that they have to live with having twitches or muscle spasms... then the last week i was trying to remember this medical term... i couldn't remember it no matter what... the name just didn't come to me...

then during the 1st nite of encounter... i noticed one of my bois kept having involuntary twitches... but i didn't dare to ask him about it yet... and on the 2nd day... the term "tourette's syndrome" suddenly popped into my head and i suddenly remembered that its the same term i tried to remember the entire week... i didn't know why i kept trying to recall the name but at that point i understood why! i felt this prompting to pray for the boi but i wanted to make sure first...

so on the 2nd nite i spoke to him and asked him whether he had a medical condition... he replied yes, but seemed really uncomfortable talking about it so i didn't pursue further... by the 3rd day morning... the Spirit was literally shouting in my head to go pray for him! i wanted to make sure i was praying the right thing so i asked to talk to him privately after lunch and asked if he knew what his medical condition was called... i was thinking to myself if he said "tourette's" then i'd have hit the jackpot... he said he didn't know... but i just told him i was prompted to pray about it for him... so i just prayed a little prayer over him for healing to begin and for him to receive this healing...

other than that... i prayed for one of my bois and william's james (with ps william) and this other little boi (with joe) during the Holy Spirit session and they all received the gift of tongues! hallelujah!

the Lord uses all of us in greater ways than we think! now can i hear an Amen!?
lennel || 10:30 PM