| Mission America - Day 18-22 |
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Mission America – Miracle Week of Days 16-21 Dateline, Tuesday, June 16, 2009 I have not had much time to write, we have been doing a lot of driving. When we first left San Diego we had no idea it would take over 21 days to arrive in Atlanta, we have truly been led by the Holy Spirit. I have been sharing with you the good news and mostly victorious, exciting events; however, we have had our share of trials on this trip and some have been funny! I understand now how the Apostle Paul wrote to the churches describing his missionary journeys and I will not even pretend we have experienced shipwreck or the same kinds of things. This journey from the West Coast to the East has not been a vacation. We have prayed for finances, gas, food, and lodging along the way. We pinch pennies as much as possible to stretch the money we do get, trying to keep a budget of $20 a day for five people to eat. I will now give you some highlights from the last few days. Day 16 - Benson, Arizona We try to stop driving before dark, driving 7-8 hours a day. We made it to Benson, Arizona after we left Prescott. Thank God there was a KOA Campground because you can usually rent an air-conditioned cabin for less than $40 a night; they are dog friendly, laundry area, internet access, showers and grills for cooking. When we drove into Benson KOA, they tried to overcharge us and did not want dogs. We were getting tired and started our search for a motel; I drove into the Super 8, they gave us an excellent price and accepted dogs. When I went to check out the room; I thought, “Well, we’ll be a little bit squashed, but it will work.” I did not expect the extra lodgers. Pulling back the covers of the bed, “Yuck,” not only was the sheet filled with someone else’s hair, through my peripheral vision, I thought I caught a creepy crawler, oh my goodness, there was more than one. Can someone say, BEDBUGS?! I immediately, went to the office, I tried to be as nice as I could and smiled, my t-shirt says, “Jesus, “on it. I told her, “I know you are probably not the one who cleans the rooms, but I think someone forgot to clean this room. Do you mind giving us another room?” She turned beet red, said, “Wait until I get that room cleaner?” and switched our room immediately. There were no bugs, dead or living in sight; except for the occasional cockroach, dead on the sidewalk. Super 8 was an excellent choice because the rate included breakfast, so we would eat for free, too! 
Day 17 – El Paso, Texas Along the way, we started investigating whether we could find a KOA or military housing. Nothing could be found; so we decided to try Super 8 again. We found one right off the Interstate, we were all hot and tired including the dogs. When I went to the room, it was one-third the size of the room in Benson; talk about a match box. Two double beds stuffed into it, with a 12” wide night stand between two beds, a desk and dresser against the wall. We all just kind of smiled at each other. It was too late to keep driving, so we stuffed five women and four dogs into the motel room. The temperature in El Paso was around 100 degrees. Praise the Lord! After we started winding down, I noticed a bug on the pillow; “Oh, no, not again.” It was too late, we were not budging! I said, “Everybody close your suitcases, everybody ran for towels to wrap their heads and Beverly started itching. I said, “Beverly you just got here, stop itching wait for tomorrow.” Suddenly, Jill was itching. I put my socks on and they asked, “What you are doing?” I said, “I don’t want bed bugs between my toes.” If I could have jumped in a plastic baggy I would have. We pulled out the air mattresses, some slept on the floor and others in the bed (with bugs), Kaweah sleeping underneath the sink, Rhonda sleeping underneath the desk, by the door and the air conditioner was not working right. We were all packed like sardines into this tiny room. In the morning, ever been to the zoo? Ever take notice of those little monkeys searching their little friends for little bugs; suddenly we’re doing a bed bug check. One trial of this trip has been not getting a good night sleep, except for the Bed and Breakfast; this has not been easy for anyone except for Beverly who could sleep on concrete. Day 18 – Midland, Texas We were trying to make it to the Abilene, Texas KOA; but I felt checked, we had over 200 miles to go, it was hot and we were getting tired. Beverly started searching for other campgrounds, military housing and motels. Guess what! Nothing! Even the Super 8, Motel 6 and every motel were completely booked, there was no lodging. I told Beverly start calling the local Foursquare Churches; the first one she called was Living Way Church; she talked to Pastor Gary, the youth pastor and explained about our mission and how we could not find a place to stay; he transferred her to the senior pastor, Pastor Jon. Pastor Jon did not hesitate; he received us and gave us directions to the church. When I met him, I thought he was the youth pastor, because he looked so young; he is only 34 years and his beautiful wife Pastor Ashley is only 24 years old. 
They were so sweet and filled with the love of the Lord, they let us sleep in their air conditioned, nursery rooms. (Praise God!) We enjoyed the fellowship with this special couple; Pastor Jon shared how he just taught out of 3 John about receiving the brethren two nights before (Maybe he should teach some of the other senior pastors!); when we called, he had an opportunity to put the Word of God into practice. The trial for this day was the heat. Thank God for the Holy Spirit, the following day we discovered, had we not stopped we would have run right into two tornadoes and flooding. God is good, thank you Jesus for Pastor Jon & Pastor Ashley! Day 19 – Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas We stopped for gas in a little tiny town in Texas, we were getting hungry when an elderly couple saw our trailer, they came up to us and said, They were so touched by what we were doing, one man 75 years old said, I just told my wife this morning, if God doesn’t do something, America is in trouble! “We don’t have much money, here’s $20.” We had lunch, we split sub sandwiches. The Lord has been taking care of us like that since we left. After about six hours on the road, Beverly thought about her aunt a family member who lived near Dallas, I remembered meeting her aunt at Beverly’s dad’s funeral. She was not more than 20 minutes off our route, “Yahoo,” she called Beverly back and said she would love to have us stay. 
She and her husband blessed us tremendously, we were very thankful for the air conditioning. We were able to catch up on our laundry, have showers, nice rooms to sleep, they fed us dinner and home cooked breakfast, including fresh tortillas. We discovered the wonderful talent of Beverly’s uncle; who is an artist, his specialty is in oils. He painted just for fun; I thought to myself, “Get those paintings in a gallery!” 
I shared some ideas with him, he truly is gifted; I’m sure it would take care of them financially, she would not have to work at Wal-Mart at 57 years old. While we were getting ready to leave after doing three loads of laundry, having a full breakfast and basking in the air conditioning; we knew we had to pry ourselves away and get back on the road. Thank God they opened the door for us that night; we would have been in tents in an unbelievable lightning and rain storm. Beverly asked her aunt, “Do you have any sandwich baggies?” Her aunt asked, “What for?” Beverly smiled from ear to ear when she said, “Tortillas!” Her aunt woke up early that morning and made a large stack of homemade tortillas. Beverly came out of the kitchen smiling real big holding several baggies in her hands and said, “Three tortillas for a $1.” I’m sure her aunt was pleased as Beverly loaded up the tortillas in her bag. We didn’t realize the stop before, Beverly loaded up little cubes of butter and jelly; God was preparing for our next days breakfast. Did I forget to tell you about the several semis that almost ran me off the road? And a couple of guys giving their IQ as they waved their hand at me. I told you, there is just something about that name of Jesus, they either love ya or hate ya! The only trial was driving the Interstates in Dallas/Fort Worth to get back to our destination; there are over 6.5 million people in the metro area. Day 20 & 21 – Monroe, LA We left Texas, and back on the road again, it was getting late; I knew we needed to find a place quick, it’s always better to set up your tent in the day rather than the dark. Oh-oh, no motels at a reasonable price, I told Beverly look for campgrounds. The detective went to work, and said; I found one, “Shiloh RV Resort,” sounds real good doesn’t it? All the other campgrounds were booked, except for this one. I won’t go into all the detail of why, but I can see why! First of all, it was almost 100 degrees and the same amount of humidity. 
All of us looked like little wet rags including the missionary puppies. As we drove to our Shiloh Resort, I saw some nice big churches; with nice yards and green grass, I thought to myself, let’s just go there and park at their doorstep, but I figured, we better get to the “resort” it had showers. Setting up our tent, we were not too far from the swamp, can anybody say, “Alligators?” Eeks! Well, we decided, we were not going to complain, we were going to rejoice! 
Realizing we were out of water and I couldn’t go the 19th day without having a good night sleep, I had to find some kind of foam or something. Backtracking to the store, I saw a few vehicles at the Evangel Temple Assembly of God. Jill and I both looked at each other and I said, “To everything God has a purpose, let’s stop.” The only problem was we looked like homeless, sweaty bums. How was I going to walk in and say, “Hello, I’m Dr. Luauna?” Well, I looked in the mirror, and said, “This is going to have to work, I’m in trouble, Holy Spirit give us favor.” Jill rang the bell to the office and started to return to the car after there was no answer. Suddenly the door opened and there was a young gentleman standing there, he looked at us as he said, “Uh, hello.” I jumped out of the car and said “My name is Dr. Luauna,” I put out my hand immediately, we started to talk, but the air conditioner noise outside was so loud, he said, “Come on into my office.” I said, “Oh, air conditioning.” He looked back and smiled at me, saw the sweat on my forehead and knew I didn’t have that Louisiana accent, he knew I was not from that neck of the woods. As we sat down in his office, he looked at me and said, “Yes,” basically asking what I wanted. I knew right then, I had about three minutes to convince him we weren’t homeless. He asked me for a letterhead to prove our ministry, I noticed his laptop sitting right in front of him and I said, “Sir, do you have the internet? Let me just take you to our website, I don’t have anything on me right now.” I immediately took him to the website and shared our mission. Pastor James was his name, he was the assistant pastor. I knew God was doing something special right there and then. He said, give me your number, the funny thing is my phone was dead for several days and I almost forgot Beverly’s number. Giving him the number, he said, he was going to talk to the senior pastor, I figure I might as well be bold, and say, I’d like to have an opportunity to share our mission at your Sunday service. I said, God bless you, thank you for your time, and we left. When we got back to the campground, the Senior Pastor, Calvin Stapp had called Beverly he asked her about Dr. Cho, because he saw the pictures of Dr. Cho on our website and wanted to know if I was Assembly of God, he said he was going to pray about giving me 10 minutes to share or the whole service. That night we prayed and thanked God for favor, got ready to sleep, well, can I say hot and humid! In the middle of the night, two of the dogs needed to be walked, Jill and Beverly took them and were eaten alive by mosquitoes from the ankles down, some bites on the arms, we are talking about some real big swamp sized mosquitoes! Getting up early in the morning, everybody prepared for church, we didn’t know if we were getting 10 minutes or the whole service. We just knew God was going to do something. When we arrived at the church what a sweet spirit both the assistant and the senior pastor had. 
He just smiled as Beverly told him about our dogs, she asked, if they had a room for them because they are kennel trained, he said, “Bring them right into my office.” What a Godly welcome, he was filled with God’s love, compassion, kindness, later we met several other people, they all had the same spirit. What a joy to be in this church. He got up and ministered for about 15 minutes and called me up to finish off. I challenged the church about winning the lost and reaching the harvest, this precious church was filled faithful, older people who I knew have experienced revival in this country before, the call came forward, “Who will make a stand, who will win a lost soul?” The altar was packed! As I began to lay hands on each one for the power of the Holy Ghost, God’s presence was so strong. God was stirring up a new fire and a new zeal in the hearts of his people. At the end of the service, Pastor Stapp stood up and said to his congregation, the Lord brought this lady to encourage and challenge us. Go back to the table and bless her ministry. Thank God for a man of God that welcomes the servant of the Lord. What a privilege and divine appointment! During the altar call as I prayed for every single person and got to the end of the altar, to the last person, I noticed a very distinguished gentleman in a black suit, with silver-gray hair, weeping in the humility of God, praying in the Spirit, as I reached my hand out; to pray for him, I felt like the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart and said, “This is a mighty man of valor.” 
I reached for him and asked him to please stand to his feet and pray for the gentleman that stood before him, what a powerful man. Later I discovered he was 90 years old, has been in ministry over 70 years and was the superintendent of the Assemblies of God for the state of Louisiana for 50 years, Mr. Lowell Ashbrook. He is truly a General of the Faith, I knew I wanted this man to anoint me with oil and pray for me; he prayed for God’s favor, blessing, and health and for every need to be met. As he looked at me with those Godly piercing blue eyes, he said, “I’m proud of what you are doing, keep up the good work. You blessed us today.” I felt as if I was in the presence of Samuel the prophet! 
I understood before we left San Diego I would come in contact with churches and ministries along the way; some would receive me, and some would not. I also understand that they do not know us; yet some have received us in the unity of the Spirit with the bond of peace. We have been praying God will prepare such Christians and ministers, just as when Jesus went from city to city, and the other disciples, they were received by some and rejected by others. Our only goal is to win souls, encourage local churches and build up the Kingdom of God in the United States of America. I know that God will bring a great blessing upon those who receive us because when we leave, we leave a multitude of souls. Its amazing, I have traveled around the world and have been received in Africa, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and South Korea and many other places; Dr. Cho, the pastor of the largest Christian church in the world, more than once received me and my whole team into his office, without any reservation. He truly is a man of God; this is why he has the largest church in the world, because of his humility, love for God, and love for God’s servants which outweighs fear and suspicion. 
I am wondering if the condition of Americas Christianity is not hinged on the lack of love. Maybe because America has been so plagued by religion it has tainted the hearts of ministers and their minds; with suspicion, unbelief and fear. We have called over 50 different churches since we have been on the road, I could write a book alone on the response from those calls. I have to admit one of those calls still makes me laugh, I won’t tell you which city or even the name of the church; but when I heard they needed to talk to legal counsel before they could receive us, I wanted to laugh. I wonder if they told the Apostle Paul, we need legal advice before you come, then I remembered, he was beat up a lot and cast out of the city more than once, oh well. 
Jesus said, “Come to me as a child,” the purity of child-like faith to receive the brethren, is greatly needed. It’s terrible to feel like you have to pull out names and credentials to be accepted. I am learning so much on this journey, I will prepare, Lord willing, when we return home, a beautiful missionary cabin on the prayer mountain, so when the brethren or sisters come from around the world, I will welcome them with open arms. We have prayed with 100 brand new souls, we have distributed over 7,000 gospel tracts and we have just begun. I want to give a special thanks to Mr. George, Pete and the team at home at the Prayer Mountain in San Diego County, although we are apart, we are one in heart! Great is our reward, one soul at a time! We have just arrived in Atlanta, Georgia, now our work REALLY begins! Copyright Dr. Luauna Stines, June 2009 |
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About ATFA Mission America Mission America - Miracles Day 18-22
About ATFA Mission America Mission America - Miracles Day 18-22