“Trust for Miracles”

Story Time from Papua!

I spent the month of August in the island of Papua, Indonesia. I was part of a Discipleship Training School team where we were leading the students on a missions outreach to the island. And I just wanted to share a story of God’s faithfulness and of something miraculous that happened while I was there!

Indonesia, and Papua specifically, was at a state of unrest and restlessness. The Papuan people want independence from the Indonesian government and there was also a lot of unrest caused by racial tension between Indonesian and Papuan people. This unrest came to a boil in protests, riots, burning, violence, etc… and we were there just in time for it all!

This tension seemed to be holding us back in ministry, but God was still at work!

One morning, I was praying with my fellow staff members on the team in order to plan the day. and I felt like God said “trust for miracles today”. Up to this point we had been able to pray for a lot of people and share about Jesus, but we had not seen any massive miracles take place… so I was trusting for that.

After our time of prayer, we learned that our ministry had to be cancelled for the day because the area was unsafe, but our contact said we could safely go to the hospital and pray for people there. The hospital was mostly outdoors. The waiting areas and even recovery rooms were just concrete slabs with a concrete wall separating people. We approached a family in the recovery area.

A middle aged woman was there with several family members. They were from the highlands in papua; the mountain region which is quite remote. The family spoke their own native language, and not the widely spoken Bahasa Indonesia. As we sat with her, (and with the help of 2 translators) we heard her story:

back in her village, her husband left her for another woman after she got pregnant. She became very sick and was bedridden for a month which caused a open wound and a lot of pain in her back. She came to the city for medical care but she while she was in the hospital, she lost the twins she was pregnant with. Now she sat outside, on a mat, with her family, just recovering. She couldn’t walk or stand on her own.

We shared several testimonies with the woman and her family. Some of the students on the school I was staffing shared about different ways that God had healed them: physically and emotionally. Then we offered to pray for her.

After praying we asked the woman to stand up and see if she could walk but it was a slow and painful process so kept praying. After a couple minutes of prayer, there was a change. She stood up and took a step… then two… then three, until she was walking all around the recovery area on her own!!

The looks on the faces of her family members were unforgettable. They were shocked… amazed… in awe at the power of God.

We were able to share about the love and power of God and how Jesus died for each of them to live free of pain. I’m so happy to say that every single one of them chose to follow Jesus that day. Its exciting to think of the change and hope that they will bring when they return to their mountain village and share what Jesus did!

God said “trust for miracles” and then He blew us away with His power, love, and faithfulness. He is a God of miracles.