May, the Most Amazing Month....Entry 1
I can’t believe May was only one month. I feel like I have lived a lifetime this past month. I’ve drastically neglected my blog during this time so I’ll do my best to give a re-cap. Hang in there…this may be long but if you can capture even just a small glimpse of what I’ve experienced this month then I think it will be worth it.
Here goes…
One important thing to note is that the yearly prayer event called Global Day of Prayer actually began in Cape Town in 2001, so this year marked the 10th anniversary. Therefore, Transformation Africa, the ministry that has developed out of all of this made a decision to make the 10th year a time of celebration with a conference before GDOP and an invitation to people to come from around the world to join us here in Cape Town.
The man who obeyed God and started GDOP was simply a business man in those early days who got saved and made a choice to radically obey Jesus. Today his businesses have literally built half of the infrastructure of the nation of South Africa and God has used him to do so many great ministry works in this nation as well as overseas. One of the great things he has done was to encourage two ladies in Somerset West, South Africa to pray about using some property he owns near Sir Lowry’s Pass Village to glorify God and make a difference for the nation. Today, Eagles Rising Training Center exists because of this. If you don’t know, ER is where I serve part-time in official hours and where my prayers, love, emotions, and spare time also go. I love this ministry!!
The ER students were asked to be a part of the GDOP conference this year. They always help in various ways with activities being done by GDOP and its founder. Usually they serve as greeters, parking attendants, etc. This year God chose to set them in a different place. This year they were asked to be in the prayer room at the conference which was designated as the “ministry prayer room” or the room where people should go to receive prayer. There was also a second prayer room where intercessors prayed over the conference and people could go to spend time in prayer themselves. I actually got to be one of the prayer leaders in this second prayer room. The prayer leaders in this room rotated out ever 4 hours.
Between ER’s prayer room and the intercession room I spent a lot of hours, basically the full day each day in prayer and it was great!!!!
But let me go back in time just a bit. During the time when we were preparing for the conference I was staying on the ER farm with a team from Lubbock Christian University who came to do leadership and teambuilding exercises with the students. They were a fantastic team!!! They served continually, preparing meals and covering prayer room time slots on the farm so that staff could be free to also receive teachings from the two professors who came. This team really blessed my socks off. And even though they kept me up every night and I was so exhausted I struggled to function properly….I really, really enjoyed laughing with the girls on the team. They brought so much joy to me.
But I was staying on the farm with them (meaning that I slept there with the team and was there with them 24/7) during the time when we were preparing for the conference. One night during the week leading up to the conference I landed in the ER prayer room with the students. ER has a 24/7 prayer room. The staff pray in slots through the day and the students pray through the night hours. The girls pray one night and the boys the next, then they are up and ready for their classes each day. These students are really amazing and so dedicated to God!!! One night we were all in the prayer room together. We needed to end at 9pm for the students to get ready for bed. Just before 9pm I said to them lets spend the last 5 minutes praising God and declaring His names. They began to praise. These students can pray!!! If I had told them we were going to declare the names of God for the next hour they would have done it for an hour, but I said 5 minutes and being told 5 minutes they would normally stop at the end of 5 minutes. But on this night they didn’t stop, they kept going. There seemed to be no way of reigning things in. The students have powerful voices and I do not have the voice capacity to speak over them. I went to the student praying at the loudest voice and asked him to pray to close us up. He said okay but I could tell he was then praying about how God wanted him to close the time. He came back and asked if he could end with a song. I said okay but it just wasn’t time for the song. I was concerned about the noise level of the students because of our neighbor and about them being up too late but I heard so clearly God say to me, “Don’t you dare interrupt what I am doing.” So I stepped back and simply waited for the one student to close us in prayer when the time came. The students kept declaring the names of God and praying. They grew more and more intense, louder and louder. Then, different ones were dropping to their knees and falling on their faces before God. And these young people (ages 18 – 22) just kept going and going. And going and going. And I was just thanking God that I could be in that place at that time, right in the midst of His visitation. The presence of God was so tangible, so thick.
Then before the one student could begin the song to close us up, another one on his knees spontaneously began to pour out before God the song, “I surrender all, all to Jesus, I surrender all.” That song carried on for some time. Then, 30 minutes after our time was up this amazing praise time came to and end as the students began to share scriptures God had given to them about unity and breaking dividing walls. We ended the time with the decision to re-join in the prayer room the next morning, shoes off as a sign of the holy ground we were standing on.
What a moment in time!
Okay, this really is turning out long….I’ll share my next story in another blog entry tomorrow. I hope you enjoyed this one!
Here goes…
One important thing to note is that the yearly prayer event called Global Day of Prayer actually began in Cape Town in 2001, so this year marked the 10th anniversary. Therefore, Transformation Africa, the ministry that has developed out of all of this made a decision to make the 10th year a time of celebration with a conference before GDOP and an invitation to people to come from around the world to join us here in Cape Town.
The man who obeyed God and started GDOP was simply a business man in those early days who got saved and made a choice to radically obey Jesus. Today his businesses have literally built half of the infrastructure of the nation of South Africa and God has used him to do so many great ministry works in this nation as well as overseas. One of the great things he has done was to encourage two ladies in Somerset West, South Africa to pray about using some property he owns near Sir Lowry’s Pass Village to glorify God and make a difference for the nation. Today, Eagles Rising Training Center exists because of this. If you don’t know, ER is where I serve part-time in official hours and where my prayers, love, emotions, and spare time also go. I love this ministry!!
The ER students were asked to be a part of the GDOP conference this year. They always help in various ways with activities being done by GDOP and its founder. Usually they serve as greeters, parking attendants, etc. This year God chose to set them in a different place. This year they were asked to be in the prayer room at the conference which was designated as the “ministry prayer room” or the room where people should go to receive prayer. There was also a second prayer room where intercessors prayed over the conference and people could go to spend time in prayer themselves. I actually got to be one of the prayer leaders in this second prayer room. The prayer leaders in this room rotated out ever 4 hours.
Between ER’s prayer room and the intercession room I spent a lot of hours, basically the full day each day in prayer and it was great!!!!
But let me go back in time just a bit. During the time when we were preparing for the conference I was staying on the ER farm with a team from Lubbock Christian University who came to do leadership and teambuilding exercises with the students. They were a fantastic team!!! They served continually, preparing meals and covering prayer room time slots on the farm so that staff could be free to also receive teachings from the two professors who came. This team really blessed my socks off. And even though they kept me up every night and I was so exhausted I struggled to function properly….I really, really enjoyed laughing with the girls on the team. They brought so much joy to me.
But I was staying on the farm with them (meaning that I slept there with the team and was there with them 24/7) during the time when we were preparing for the conference. One night during the week leading up to the conference I landed in the ER prayer room with the students. ER has a 24/7 prayer room. The staff pray in slots through the day and the students pray through the night hours. The girls pray one night and the boys the next, then they are up and ready for their classes each day. These students are really amazing and so dedicated to God!!! One night we were all in the prayer room together. We needed to end at 9pm for the students to get ready for bed. Just before 9pm I said to them lets spend the last 5 minutes praising God and declaring His names. They began to praise. These students can pray!!! If I had told them we were going to declare the names of God for the next hour they would have done it for an hour, but I said 5 minutes and being told 5 minutes they would normally stop at the end of 5 minutes. But on this night they didn’t stop, they kept going. There seemed to be no way of reigning things in. The students have powerful voices and I do not have the voice capacity to speak over them. I went to the student praying at the loudest voice and asked him to pray to close us up. He said okay but I could tell he was then praying about how God wanted him to close the time. He came back and asked if he could end with a song. I said okay but it just wasn’t time for the song. I was concerned about the noise level of the students because of our neighbor and about them being up too late but I heard so clearly God say to me, “Don’t you dare interrupt what I am doing.” So I stepped back and simply waited for the one student to close us in prayer when the time came. The students kept declaring the names of God and praying. They grew more and more intense, louder and louder. Then, different ones were dropping to their knees and falling on their faces before God. And these young people (ages 18 – 22) just kept going and going. And going and going. And I was just thanking God that I could be in that place at that time, right in the midst of His visitation. The presence of God was so tangible, so thick.
Then before the one student could begin the song to close us up, another one on his knees spontaneously began to pour out before God the song, “I surrender all, all to Jesus, I surrender all.” That song carried on for some time. Then, 30 minutes after our time was up this amazing praise time came to and end as the students began to share scriptures God had given to them about unity and breaking dividing walls. We ended the time with the decision to re-join in the prayer room the next morning, shoes off as a sign of the holy ground we were standing on.
What a moment in time!
Okay, this really is turning out long….I’ll share my next story in another blog entry tomorrow. I hope you enjoyed this one!
posted by Jeanne at
2:23 PM
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