For the month of May our community, The Lisboa Matrix, focused on prayer and fasting. We had it on our hearts as we went into May to see spiritual break through for The Matrix, Lisbon, Portugal and the World. If I could share all the stories from this month I would. Let me try to give a brief over view.
We started with the National day of Prayer in the USA. We prayed for the states and the church there. Then we continued day to day with specific prayer for each day of the week, praying for our community. We prayed for things like the Gregg family and what had happened with them at the International school. We prayed for Morocco and the people there. We prayed for our children and their future. We prayed for the International Christian School of Cascias. We prayed for the prayer retreats coming at the end of the month. Every day there was something to pray for. There was also the Global Day of Prayer in there on the 11th of May.
From our prayers, we recieved many answers. For example; The Gregg's were offered many teaching opportunity's, even though it was very late to be job hunting for schools. (Check out their blog Gypsy Jesus on my blog links for more about this) We saw some Junior High students, kids P and I have had opportunity to work with, receive Jesus at the Christian School. (You can read about that on the Gregg's blog also) And we were blessed by God at both our prayer retreats. I can't really put into world how this month of prayer/fasting moved here, but it moved things.
Then there were the two prayer retreats at the end of the month. Before this becomes a book, let me share some about the prayer retreat at Casa de Uhler. (Up at our team mates house. Thank you sooooo much for those of you who covered us in prayer.) There were 20 people or so at the retreat. We ate, sang, cooked, cleaned, prayed, learned and lived together for the weekend. The weather was supposed to be rainy, but we ended up with tons of sun and a little light rain. There was a mixed bag of followers of the Way and seekers of the Truth. It was great. Community was built with the Lisbon people and the Porto people. Sunday morning we entered into a time of prayer for each other. We had walked through the weekend together, so if was natural for us to go to prayer together. Even those who were seeking entered in. If I were to say that the Spirit of God showed up in a powerful way, I think I would be understating it. For two and a half hours we prayed. We prayed for individuals one after the other. It was mind blowing. At one point during the prayer time, I was drained and thought, "I don't know if I can pray any more." But then refreshing came and I entered again. Someone else said we needed to get some water in us, because we were dehydrating from all the weeping and tears. At the end I think we all walked away from the weekend having encountered God in one of the most powerful times of our life. I am not over stating this either. Myself, Marty, Vitor (from Porto), we all felt it was one of the most powerful prayer times we had ever had. And I know that he is still working on the people who were there.
Ok long blog, but I wanted to share. If you want to look of picture of the Uhler weekend or of our prayer retreat in Tomar, (that I didn't even share about), you can click on the LisboaMatrix link to the right and go to gallery.The picture at the top is from the Tomar weekend, which was wild and crazy. I'll have to share about that too soon. Thanks for supporting us through prayer and giving.
Be Blessed; Life's Short-Pray Hard!