Can God Still Answer Specific Prayers?

An endless beach, a small object and lots of prayer.

Costa Azul, Nicaragua

Sometimes in our daily, busy preoccupied lives God feels the need to shock us with the realization of his power to answer specific prayers. We just had an awesome week in Nicaragua with our home church, Broadneck EP, from Annapolis, Maryland. After a hard week of working, we brought the team to a beautiful, open beach on the Pacific Ocean. It stretched on for miles in either direction, a purely natural setting without the presence of any hotels or boardwalks. Simple vast beauty! The team had a great time in the huge waves, collecting seashells and playing football on the beach. After an intense game of beach football, the team was rinsing off before lunch when Paul looked down and noticed his wedding ring was missing from his hand!! Paul calmly came over to me and told me I needed to remain calm after what he tells me, and then he showed me his hand without his ring on it. He said that he's pretty sure it came off during the beach football game, so the team gathered together and we prayed. Then we decided to walk the beach where the game was played in a line-search formation. I had little hope of finding the ring and was preparing myself for the bad news, but still I looked. The group walked the entire football game area and ended at the other side, and still no one had seen it. I looked down the endless beach line, assessed the odds, and then we all walked back again. Everyone seemed pretty silent as they walked and I'm sure most were praying. Just then I looked down and saw a cylindrical shape in the sand where it looked like a circular object had been pressed down, so I ran my fingers through the sand and there it was!!! Paul's ring buried just beneath the surface of the sand!!! I could not believe how good God is!!! and how amazing it was for me to be the one who picked it up, among all the group!!! Everyone cheered! Paul picked me up and everyone was really happy. It was just amazing to see God demonstrate how he can, and will, answer specific prayers offered in faith!!!! The odds of finding it among the waves and endless beach were incredible, but with God and through God it was possible.

An Unexpected Encounter

Hey this is Paul, I was asked by Jenny to write a blog post about an event that happened recently. This is my first time ever "blogging" haha, but this is an event that might give you an inside look at our time here. We had a church Mission Team that was painting the Ministry Center and we were making great progress. While Jen and I were painting, a few of the street boys I know from the community came to the gate and called out to us. So we took a break and went over, started talking to them and then began kicking the soccer ball around. While we were outside the gate, on the dirt road passing the soccer back around, this one big Nicaraguan guy came angrily walking down the road. The kids didn't notice him until he was passing by, and to our shock and amazement the man angrily kicked our soccer ball far away! He then gave us all a menacing look as he continued walking. We stood there kind of shocked, and confused and I asked him in spanish "what's up with that, man? why'd you do that?" He then turned and stared me down in anger and started walking over towards me! I thought for sure he was about to fight me, but I noticed as he staggered over, he was extremely drunk. He could barely even walk straight to me, so I thought to myself "good, this will be easy" haha. As he got close, I stayed relaxed and tried talking to him, I asked him how he's doing and offered to give him a friendly bump with my hand. He then stopped 3 feet from me, broke down in tears and sat down next to me! I asked him what's going on, and he began to tell me how upset he was! I invited him into the Ministry Center and there we talked in private about his life, his marriage, his drinking addiction and how he doesn't want to keep living this way. I got to pray for him, and tell him of a better way, with Christ as his direction and strength. It was a pretty emotional moment for him, and Jen got to see this big, burly Nicaraguan guy hugging me with both arms and crying on my chest! Quite the change from our initial contact where I was sure that he was gonna charge at me! I sent him on his way and told him I'll be at this Ministry Center if he wants to return again. It was a great, unexpected ministry moment the Lord let me be a part of! -Paul