England Part II – The Midlands

Yummy gift from my  Leicester host family

 

When we got to the midlands, we split into two teams of about 17; I had the great and unique opportunity to go to Leicester (pronounced “Lester”).  This portion of the trip was a little different than the rest for us.  The first day we get there we’re all still a bit jet lagged, and personally, I was adjusting to being released into ministry to the capacity that we were – it takes a lot out of you. On top of that, a lot of our team starts getting sick at this point. So we get to Leicester, meet their leadership team, have lunch, and then…we end up spending about three hours with their leadership. Normally on a mission trip it’s the mission team that does the ministering, but God totally set Leicester up to be a time of refreshing for us. The All Nations Centre leadership totally poured into us, allowed us to ask them questions, prayed over us, and brought the presence of God for us to just rest and be refreshed in for about three hours. It was such an amazing time for our team and gave us a supernatural boost for the rest of the trip.

Later that evening we were suppose to meet up with the worship team…that’s all the information that we had; we had no idea what that looked like. Anyway, after dinner we get the opportunity to meet all the amazing worship leaders, musicians, dancers, and sound people; and to start off, their great worship overseer, Dave, wants us to play a game. Even though I'm not a huge fan of ice breakers, this ended up being the BEST idea ever! This isn’t your normal board game or even church game. To begin, Dave tells his team that one of us are from Georgia (of course, I’m the only one), and they have to ask God for a word of knowledge on which one of us it is. Oooo, this is going to be fun! And this was totally a safe environment to practice words of knowledge, because it didn’t matter if they failed and got it wrong; what mattered was that they took a risk. Anyway, several guesses later, Dave pulls me into the middle of the circle since no one got the word of knowledge right. I thought I was just standing up to show them who the team member from Georgia was, but Dave had something else in mind. Now it was my turn – I had to ask God for a word of knowledge about who on their team played guitar. There were several that did, and I had to ask God for three of them.  I had a feeling about a couple of them, but then you know how you start looking at people and judging them by their appearance (don't lie, you all do it), so you second guess your instinct? So I pointed to the first guy…WRONG. Ok, that wasn’t so bad; I failed and I’m ok, feeling safe and loved still. Good practice. Then I point to the next three people and get them all right! Yep, we hear God’s voice even when we’re unsure. Next, Dave pulls a couple from his team up, and they have to sing a prophetic song over me – OH YES! Can this get any better!? We continue this way until everyone from both teams has stepped out in some way and has ministered to each other. It was an amazing time of risk-taking and refreshing that was followed by some free-flow worship time.  

Just a little piece of Leicester

The next day we had the opportunity to pour into the boarding school across the street from the church. The children’s pastors at ANC (All Nations Centre) have been building a great relationship with the staff and leaders of the school and God has given them some crazy opportunities to show them His goodness. The school teaches children about all religions and because Easter was coming up, the children came over to the church while we put on an Easter play…kind of. The children’s pastor, Ian, actually just read the Easter story of Jesus riding through the town on the donkey, the betrayal, His death, and resurrection. And our team kind of acted it out on the spot; it was pretty terrible acting since we didn’t have much time to plan, but it was fun and the kids laughed. Afterwards we gave the kids the opportunity to wave flags around the church like the people waved palm branches over Jesus when they shouted “Hosanna!” The kids loved it! They were running all over the place waving flags. So after explaining a bit about that and worshiping Jesus, we headed upstairs to have yummy hot cross buns and hang out with the kids. I got to sit at a table with some 3^rd/4^th grade kids and answer any questions they had about the play. I had some of the most amazing, inquisitive and hilarious kids at my table – plus their accents just make it even more awesome! Later, the kids went back to school to do research on Easter and look up some of the questions they asked that our team didn’t answer. I was able to go into one of the classes and help them research – SO FUN! We got to share Jesus with these kids and their teachers – God is so good!

A piece of history

The last day in Leicester was pretty laid back for us, as was most of our time here. We were able to meet with a group of leaders from the region that get together every so often to share what God’s doing in their churches, cities, and regions. These leaders dwell in true community as they are accountable to each other and encourage one another in all God’s doing. It was a blessing for our team to take part in this; at the end of the meeting we were able to pour into these regional leaders as we sang over them, prophesied over them, and prayed for them. God’s presence was surrounding us and bringing refreshing to the leaders of the midlands! Of course, afterwards our team gathered in the middle and the Leicester team blessed us and sent us out again – on to LONDON!!!