It has been one amazing week in Athens! God has been moving in our student body so much as we prepare for next year! He seems to be growing the ministry in ridiculous ways: this year, we have 51 full time ministry interns (this is what I do) for a total of 66 full time staff (directors now added in) and around 330 students on student leadership. As of right now, it looks as if we're going to have over 70 interns to bring us to 80 for total full time staff, and over 350 student leaders for next year. We're adding a Spanish speaking ministry, the details of which I really know nothing about, but when people get a vision for something, God uses that to expand into new opportunities and our community is amazing at facilitating such enterprise. Thursday was leadership day, and our staff interviewed near about every single one of those student leader applicants. The vision of Wesley Foundation is to send Christian leaders out into the world, and to have that many to get to disciple 1 on 1 or 1 on 2 with our staff, as well as for them to step into leadership in various ministry areas, is a very exciting prospect. I am so thankful to work in a place where we see God's kingdom take ground on a daily basis.
Here's a fun example: Once a month on Tuesday mornings we have a staff activity that the third year interns plan to facilitate community amongst our 51 interns, and when a lot of people were unavailable a group of us ended up playing ultimate frisbee on a quad between the dorms across the street. During the game, I was running and stepped awkwardly in a divot causing my ankle to roll outwardly, loosing a loud pop and toppling me to the ground where I writhed in pain for a good 5 minutes. I have rolled an ankle from time to time and this was by far the most painful ankle injury I have ever sustained; my first thought was that it was broken and I was cautious to let anyone touch it, as it hurt so badly. My burly friend Clark carried me back to Wesley, where for the next two days I got around by wheeling on an office chair or limping slowly when necessary. My ankle swelled out almost an inch to look noticeably worse from even a long distance away. Despite tons of people laying hands on it and praying for it, and hours of icing it on and off, and even some ibuprofen, it stayed just as swelled up and hurt just as much. I thought about going to a doctor, but really believed God's will was to heal it, plus I didn't want to spend any money.
Wednesday morning at Staff prayer while we were praying for our Wednesday night service, I had my eyes closed and attention focused on the Lord when I began to see a scene play out in my mind (some call this a closed vision). I saw a group of freshmen surrounding me, laying hands on my ankle, praying for it, and feeling the swelling go down as God healed it in the vision. Later that day when David (one of our directors and my discipler) were praying for it, I felt God impressing the number 7 on my heart constantly. Seven is thought of as the Biblical number of completion and so I thought maybe God wanted to bring to completion my ankle's healing (even though it felt just as bad in my physical body) all the prayers people had been sowing in that night at the service with some freshmen. Or maybe use seven freshmen specifically. I didn't know, I just was encouraged. So that night at Leadership prayer (before our service at 8), I limped into the room at about 7 PM to pray with for the service. I had texted several freshmen I know through Freshley to come find me and pray for my ankle, so at about 8 when leadership ended, I had 6 freshmen and my friend Thomas pray for it. As they did, the pain went away, the swelling went visibly down, and I got up and walked out of the room to go to our service in the room next door. We decided we wanted to get to service, but that in the opening worship set we would meet up and ask God to remove the remaining soreness and immobility. When that time came, we only had 5 freshmen and Thomas to pray, so they laid hands on my ankle and prayed for a few minutes. As everyone got quiet and Thomas began closing the prayer out, I felt two more hands on my back, to find out they were two more freshmen whom I got to know on our Jamaica spring break trip, making that seven freshmen and Thomas. I stood up, ran in place on it, and then even jumped on that one foot; everybody cheered, and then we went about worshiping God. It was a pretty good night. Feels great now, I even played about 2 1/2 hours of volleyball today, where I was constantly jumping on it.
The most amazing thing: not how God healed, I am actually becoming more and more convinced that is supposed to be part of normal Christianity. The craziest part of the whole thing is that testimonies like this are becoming almost normal in our ministry and the body of Christ in Athens. We rejoiced at how good God is, but I don't think we were surprised when God showed up and made miracles an everyday part of how He loves His children.
