We had an unexpected blessing last night. The phone rang about 10:15p.m., and when I answered, there was an unfamiliar voice. My first thought was, "Not a donation appeal at this hour!" Instead, I heard someone say, "This is Paco, from Cabo." It turned out that this was the young man that Burt and I met when we went to Mexico for Jonathan Lafevers' wedding. He was the most incredible pianist who was playing for dinner one night in the "fine dining" restaurant. Because we enjoyed his music so much, we stopped by the piano to thank him as we were leaving. After talking to him for a short while, we detected his Christianity, and to confirm our thinking, he cut loose with "Amazing Grace." It was beautiful.
We didn't see him any more over the weekend, and we regretted that we had not asked for a CD. On the day we were leaving, we were making a phone call to the states, and as I turned around, guess who was coming down the hall in his wheel chair? It was his day off, but he had had to come back to get his check beacuse he had forgotten it. What timing! As it turned out, we spent about two hours talking to him in the outdoor bar there at the hotel. In the process of our discussion, he expressed his desire to go to Brazil and minister to the people through his musical talents; he even speaks Portuguese! We told him about Rick Bonfim and his ministry in Brazil. But the important thing was the prayer time we had with him. He wanted us to pray for the empowering of the Holy Spirit in his life, and of course we did. I took it a step further and did something I had never had the courage to do: I prayed that he would walk again! He told us that he had just returned from France where he had undergone a stem-cell procedure, and that he was a good candidate for it to regenerate the nerves in his spine and legs. (He made sure we knew this was not an embryonic stem cell.) I prayed that his miracle would bring glory to God.
When he phoned last night, he was calling to report that the feeling is beginning to come into his legs. He is undergoing rehab in California. But here is the best news: He wants to come here to Georgia, and testify in "our church to our friends" what God has done because he said that we were the ones who prayed for him to walk again! I assured him that if he got to the Atlanta airport, we would take care of him from there. I want to have a church filled up with a group of people who will see this as the miracle that it is, and give God all the glory for it.
I think the Holy Spirit is waiting to show us what He will do if we will learn how to believe and then have the courage to obey! I'm just beginning to learn!
