Q: What do a rat tattoo, a college baseball team, a used T-shirt, a clock radio, and the stereo system in a Chinese restaurant all have in common?

A: They all became part of the story of how God speaks to us on a daily basis.

This was one of the main things I saw on our Church Youth Missions Trip to New Orleans, over and over again (see previous two blog posts, HERE and HERE).  God speaks to us, every day, and in many ways, as we walk with Him in the ‘daily-ness’ of life.

I posted two long blog entries about what I saw God do the week of the New Orleans trip, but there were many smaller praiseworthy things that happened.  These didn’t seem to fit in the other posts, but I wanted to share them anyway.  So, consider this the ‘testimony pot pouri’, the tidbits of miscellany gleaned in the New Orleans trip – small, but still deserving of praise to God.

A vision, a T-shirt, and a picture:  One member of our team had a vision from God before the trip.  I won’t go into great details, because that is part of his testimony.  Suffice it to say that he saw a particular man in New Orleans that needed help, and wrote down a description of him before we left on the trip.  When we got to New Orleans, he recognized the man from his vision and was able to talk to him and provide help.  You can see a picture of the man on our Live Update blog – he is the man in the red hat with the borrowed T-shirt.  Please remember to pray for him.

That was the one and only picture I took at the BBQ outreach, and the one and only picture we have of this man.  The only reason I took it was because one of our New Orleans house hosts, Francisco, asked me to take it.  Francisco was a U of Miami graduate, just like me, and that fact rapidly developed a bond between us.  The man in the red hat had come to the BBQ while it was still pouring rain, so he arrived soaking wet.  Francisco felt impressed by the Lord to give him a dry T-shirt.  He made sure it was a U of Miami T –shirt, and wanted the picture of the man, the T-shirt logo, and the ‘U’ sign.  At the time, neither Francisco nor I had any clue that this was the man from someone’s vision.

OK, so it wasn’t like splitting the Red Sea, but I thought it was really cool the way all those small little ‘coincidences’ combined to make sure that we had a picture and a name for this particular man, so all you fine folks reading would be able to pray for him.

A Rat Tat, a Baseball Bat, and an Extra Sandwich:  God is a Univ. of Miami ‘Canes fan.  I know this because, everywhere I went in New Orleans, there were fellow-grads and ‘Canes fans, and this small piece of my past provided a bridge to many an interesting conversation.

One of the most interesting people our team met in New Orleans was a rough, gruff, tough former-Floridian who moved to New Orleans some time after he survived Hurricane Andrew.  Otis was a formerly-homeless man who had been taken in by a friend and now guarded his friend’s house from looters while he was at work and the house was being repaired.  He owned the clothes he wore, the piece of plywood he slept on, and the .44 magnum next to the ‘bed’ that served as his personal Security System.

Our team was assigned to help with prepping and painting the house’s exterior, while other work would eventually be done on the interior.  When we first met Otis at the house, he wasn’t overly friendly.  With all the teams that had been in and out of the area volunteering and helping, the team he most vividly remembered (and the only one he talked about) was a team from Missouri that had worked on the house, then stolen all the tools he used to own.  He was resistant to initial attempts at conversation or friendship, and cynical of our motives; but then who could blame him.

One of the youth leaders on our team felt strongly impressed that the kind of witnessing we needed to do at the house was to be ourselves and let the love of Christ show through our actions and interactions with each other and with him.  He changed the subject from the hurricane, and asked Otis what he most enjoyed doing in his spare time.  Otis started talking about how much he liked fishing.  Any kind of fishing.  Deep sea, off a boat, from a bridge, or with a cane pole on the bank.  Others asked about sports.  I found he was born on Key West and was raised in the Miami area.  I found out he was a big Miami Canes baseball fan (even though his parents had graduated from FSU - Grrrr!).  We talked about Andrew (the ‘Big One’ that hit Miami several years ago), and lots of places we both knew about – Kendall, Coral Gables, the U of M, and Cutler Ridge.  He showed me the ‘Ridge Rat’ tattoo on his upper arm – proof he was an ‘old school’ resident of Cutler Ridge, before it was all built up.  Others on the team talked about anything and everything as we worked.  It wasn’t long before he opened up and warmed up to all of us.

We had all made sack lunches to throw in a cooler that morning, so we wouldn’t have to take a long lunch break while working that day.  The same youth leader who had the leading about reaching out to Otie had felt impressed to make extra sandwiches that morning (God bless you, Danny!!  Did you realize you were hearing from Almighty God when you made that extra lunch?).  We invited Otie to join us.  He made it clear he wasn’t the type to take our charity, but when he saw that we genuinely wanted to have lunch with him (not just hand him some sandwiches), he sat down with us for lunch.  He shared more stories about ‘life before’, and we continued to work on the house afterwards.  By the time we left for the day, we all felt like he was family.

Later in the week, our team had A.T.L. time.  This was a block of time left open (no scheduled projects or activity) specifically so the team members could pray together and Ask The Lord what we should do.  Several team members felt a strong urge to get some money together and buy Otie a fishing pole and some gear, so he could do what he enjoyed most.  Our AIM Missions hosts took us to the local Wal-Mart, and the guys with fishing experience in our group picked out a tackle box, some lures, weights, hooks, and a pole.  We all prayed for our friend Otie, then drove to the house.  It was a moving thing when we gave the gift to him.  We stayed for a while and he joined us for some prayer and praise in the shade of the carport. We all hugged before we left.  I hope he saw the love of Jesus Christ in us.  At least I know that now he will have a different volunteer team to remember and talk about.

Clock Radios and Blurry Vision:  After all the things that I saw on the NOLA trip, I was convinced that God was speaking and directing, all the time, even in the every-day occurrences of life.  This convinced me that maybe I should be actively looking for this direction, listening a little better, and even expecting it.  The evening we got home, after two days and 25 hrs in a van, I was fairly exhausted.  My husband and son met my daughter and me for dinner, then they went home while I vacuumed the van, gassed it up, and got the mail from the post office.  When I backed up out of the parking space in front of the post office, I glanced at the clock radio in the van.  It said 91.9, the number for the local Washington, DC-based Christian radio station.  I thought that was odd, because I knew the radio was off.  I re-checked the clock radio – my mistake; the radio was off, and the time was 9:19.  “That’s a sign,” I said out loud to myself, with a big stupid grin, as I turned the radio on.  Anyone who was on our team for the trip, I’ll give you one guess what the radio station was playing at exactly that instant.  That’s right, it was blasting out our team’s unofficial ‘theme song’ for the week, “Sweetly Broken.”  I felt the peace of knowing God was with me, that I had obeyed and finished what He asked of me, and that He was pleased.  There is nothing else like that feeling in this world.

A Message from God with Your Fortune Cookie:  The day after we returned from our trip, we all stood before our entire congregation at our Sunday church service to thank God and share testimonies.  Right now, I would like to interrupt my regularly scheduled blog to tell everyone just how proud I am of my daughter.  She went on this trip and showed the love of God.  She heard from Him and obeyed.  She spoke to total strangers, prayed for people on the street, worked hard, and never complained.  And at the end, she stood before a congregation of 150 people and testified of what God had done.

Tomorrow, she will turn 12. 

We now return to our regularly scheduled testimony.  So, after church service, we let Kelly pick where she wanted to eat lunch (a part of our regular Sunday after-church routine).  Kelly immediately picked her favorite Chinese restaurant in the area.  We sat down and enjoyed a nice meal, while Kelly and I continued sharing with the family specifics of what had happened in New Orleans.  Suddenly, my husband stops the conversation to ask, “Is that what I think it is playing?”  We all stopped talking to listen carefully to the restaurant’s sound system.  We could not make out the words, because they were in Chinese, but the tune was absolutely unmistakable.  There, in the Chinese restaurant, while we were celebrating and thanking God for our safe return from the missions trip, the sound system was playing the song “Go Light Your World”.  I knew what that song meant to Kelly, and I knew that we were in her favorite restaurant – I hope this simple message spoke to her the same way the clock radio did to me, the night before.

Carry your candle; Run to the darkness
Seek out the hopeless, confused, and torn
Hold out your candle for all to see it.
Take your candle, go light your world.

Truly, we serve an awesome God!