Seeing God

This Saturday I went to a place called Calacali on a retreat with teachers from the school. I didn´t know hardly anyone, but I decided to go so I could get to know people. We went to a cabin on a beautiful farm. A few of us climbed a mountain and there was such a beautiful view. While we were there, we ate a great lunch and just talked and ate S´mores on a fire. Then, we went to Mitad del Mundo, the middle of the world. There, we just walked around, took pictures by the equator line, and ate dinner at a nice restaurant. I got to know a lot of teachers and how God brought them to the academy. At dinner, I sat with the director of the academy and he was telling me how one girl who student taught there last year is now a teacher there. So he said, That happens sometimes, you know! I can see they are already trying to recruit me. Apparently, they lose teachers all the time because many just stay for a couple of years.

Today, I went to church and there was a time for testimonies. Everyone who spoke told about something that happened Thursday night. At the church, they were having the Bible study, about 20 people, and 4 men with guns came into the church. Immediately, the Pastor told the people to pray and speak in tongues. So the people all started doing this, and the men looked like they were fighting with someone, but no one was there. They could not hold their guns up. But one man took a knife to the Pastor and tried to cut his throat, but could only make a red mark, not even any blood. Then, all four men were trying to push the Pastor onto the floor to beat him up, but they physically could not push him down. As they were trying, one man got up to try to help the Pastor, and one of the men shot him. He was only 3 meters away, but the bullet did not touch him. It was on the floor. The man giving this testimony said that when he took a shower later, he was searching his body and stomach, but he had no mark at all. After the men saw that the bullet did not go into the man, they got scared and left the church. It sounds hard for me even to believe, but I heard the testimonies of so many people who were there on Thursday, and I know God has the power to do these things! It´s just that I´ve never personally witnessed something like this before, and I´ve never even heard a story firsthand like this. But wow! God really was protecting his people, and showing Himself to those men also. This is not uncommon here, because another young teacher at the school was telling me that she was at a Bible study and men came in and held her and some girls up with guns, but they were not hurt either. So, this is something to pray about here, for safety. When I first heard the girl´s story about being held up by guns at Bible study, I was scared to even be in a church almost, but God can clearly protect his people. I just still am in awe of that whole situation.