Here begins one of the most massive, but most exciting, updates I have ever written. I tried to shorten it, but ultimately there is nothing I feel like I can leave out! So much happened over the last few weeks and my mind is just reeling from all that the Lord has done. Please stick with me as I share some of the coolest stories from the two ministry trips I went on between March 21st and April 7th!
La Crosse, Wisconsin
The first trip I took was a quick one over my Spring break here at IHOPU. I went with about twenty other IHOPU students (from all the schools and years) to La Crosse, Wisconsin for three days. Our primary focus was to minister to the teenagers of the area. What we did the most was pray—with the teens, by ourselves, with music at churches, all the time! Much of our time was spent at the Encounter Christian Teen Conference, which we organized and led. We had four sessions that were full of worship, ministry, messages by IHOPU students, testimonies, and dancing. About 40 teens, as well as some youth leaders and adults, attended the conference.
My main responsibility for the duration of the trip was to organize and take charge of some technical stuff: namely power points, videos and recording sermons. I had a fantastic time serving my team in this way, and the Lord really taught me through it all!
This trip introduced a concept to me that I had been largely unfamiliar with—being fat. Haha… “FAT” is an acronym that stands for Flexible, Adaptable, and Teachable. Plans would change rapidly and the whole trip was a great exercise in adaptability. Certainly the greatest thing I gained from this trip was affirmation to continue studying at the Forerunner School of Ministry here at IHOPU. I was so challenged by the juniors and seniors who were leading our trip; they instilled a lot of excitement within me to be an upperclassman!
It was also thoroughly amusing to listen to twenty random people try to speak with a northern accent. All I heard was “Don’tcha know?” and “You betcha.” Hahaha…
The Wisconsin team! Oofda!
Dallas, Texas
This second trip was an entirely different animal, so to speak. I can hardly even think of how to start talking about this trip… I suppose I should share the basics. We (TheCall Institute or TCI) went to Dallas primarily for an event called The Esther Call, which was orchestrated by all the same people who held The Call Detroit (see IHOPUpdates 6, 7 and 8). There have been dozens of Call events over the last 12 years; the first one being in Washington, D.C. with over 400,000 in attendance. Most Calls are in a strategic location with a specific focus. The Esther Call concentrated on the issue of abortion and was held in Dallas, Texas, where Roe VS Wade (which legalized abortion) was passed in 1973, 39 years ago.
The Esther Call was held on Good Friday, April 6th, 2012 and was specifically an all-women call. About 4,000 women came to fast, pray and repent on behalf of the nation for the grievous sin of abortion and the bloodshed of 54 million innocent children. The entire event was incredibly powerful!
A ton of crazy things happened in the week we were in Dallas, but I need to start at the beginning. We left on Saturday, March 31st with simply the address of our destination. The car I was riding in decided to stick with another car at first. In Pryor, Oklahoma (4 hours from Kansas City and 5 hours from Dallas) we stopped for lunch, got back in our dear car and, behold, it would not start! So began our first great adventure on this trip…
The Faith Adventure
This is what we lovingly dubbed the beginning of our journey. Katie Kotila, Gregg Rosenboom, Jarrod Elo and myself were in the car that broke down. Prior to leaving Kansas City we discovered the air conditioning was leaking inside the car and washing the passenger’s feet with about an inch of water constantly. Augh!
The moment we realized our car was not going anywhere, we paused and prayed, “God, send us someone to help!” because we were largely clueless about what to do. None of us could diagnose the issue. Not a minute after we prayed this, a nice looking man in a yellow shirt meandered by, looked at us, walked away, came back and asked if we needed help. We enthusiastically said, “Yes!” His name was Jerry, and he was a former pastor! We tried everything we could do to get the car to start—getting gas, praying over it, etc., but nothing worked! Jerry ended up calling a mechanic he knew and paying the fee for the mechanic, who had an epic hat that said, “God is good all the time” to come to us and check out the car for two hours! By this time Katie, Gregg, Jarrod and I began to feel like the Lord wanted us in Pryor, Oklahoma for some strange reason. We all had peace and didn’t feel any warfare around us, so we began to worship and express our trust in the Lord.
The mechanic, meanwhile, could find no issue with the engine or AC, but claimed there was something wrong with the key! Something was preventing the key from communicating with the dashboard, and it therefore needed to be reset. The key, for crying out loud! The mechanic tried to do this, but it turns out only the dealership can. Praise God the dealership was only a mile away, but alas it was closed until Monday morning. This meant we had two nights to spend in Pryor. We tried to think of other ways to get to Dallas, but just kept coming back to the belief that the Lord had ordained this random adventure. We ended up sending the other car (four sweet girls had stayed with us until we decided to stay in Pryor) off to Dallas, Jerry referred us to some nearby hotels, and our leader, Brett, told us his suggestion was to call area churches and ask them if they could support us by giving us a place to stay, money to fix the car, prayer, or anything else! We had nothing else to do, so we decided to follow his instructions. None of us wanted to pay for a hotel or fixing a car, so we trekked across the road to Chili’s. We used their Wi-Fi, called 21 area churches (from the Catholics to the Pentecostals to “The First Church of God of Prophecy” and the “End-Time Apostles of Jesus Christ”), and even Facebook messaged a few pastors. We got nothing. Nada. No one answered. Apparently the body of Christ cannot be reached on a Saturday evening…
We were all feeling a little worn out and discouraged, not to mention viciously sunburnt. Just when I was feeling the worst, the family sitting in the booth behind us said, “Sorry, we didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but we heard you guys were in a rough spot,” and then handed us a wad of bills. I started to cry and felt a weight lift off my shoulders. The Lord would provide. They gave us $100, which perfectly covered one hotel room for one night. RELIEF!!! PROVISION!!! Our adrenaline was racing! We decided to go through with the hotel, but only after praying for our waitress, the family that gave so generously, and the elderly couple on the other side of us. The elderly couple ended up knowing all the influential people in the town, including the owner of the dealership (they went to church with the guy), and they gave us his personal number and said that he would definitely help us out! CONNECTIONS!!!
Our next spot to get was the hotel, which was two miles down the highway. We packed some clothes from the car and began to head down the road, when Gregg declared, “Do we want to walk there or ride there?” We were all willing to walk, but riding would be ideal, so Gregg shot up a quick prayer and not a minute later someone pulled up to us, helped us load everything in his car, and took us to the hotel! Joe, the helpful young man, had dropped off his mother and baby sister just so that there would be room in the car to help us out! He said he wanted to give us a ride because he had been in our same situation once, and no one stopped to help him.
At the hotel we were able to pray for the receptionist, who said she and her husband were struggling to have children. How fitting that we could pray for her womb when we were going to an event largely about the unborn and motherhood! The hotel itself was super nice—nicer than I felt we needed, but the Lord had a divine appointment for us with the receptionist, so we knew he would provide the money for us! We went to bed and I ended up having a profound dream about the generosity of the Lord: I kept singing in my dream about how the Lord is not a pirate, because a pirate steals and is cruel and rude, but God is loving, generous and blesses His children! The next day we went to an amazing church with Jerry, saw Joe again (his uncle was the guest speaker), were prayed for by the leadership and saw the final $100 we needed come to us by the generous people of Word Fellowship Church. We were floored. We were all getting to the point of not knowing how to respond because the people were SO KIND. SO GENEROUS! So like the Lord!!!
Here’s the icing on the cake. After church we went to try to start the car, thinking maybe it was just overheated. Katie put the key in, turned it, and immediately the car started with ease. We are all shocked, but still a little nervous. We drove it to the hotel—no problems. The AC wasn’t even leaking anymore! At the hotel we said goodbye to Jerry and decided to go to Tulsa, one hour from Pryor. There we would stay at a friend’s parents’ house and have a mechanic there check out the car on Monday morning. The car made it to Tulsa just fine and we had a great night with Grant Nordean’s parents (AND HIS CAT, PEACHES).
Monday morning we got the car checked and the mechanic declared nothing was wrong at all. Absolutely nothing. The key was fine. The AC was fine. They even filled up the tank for us. We were off to Dallas. That was our crazy faith adventure. We missed the first two days of pre-call events and prayer meetings, but that was totally okay. We wouldn’t have traded it for anything!
The Lord ordained every divine appointment and taught us each so much. He showed me His generosity and provision in a way I had never experienced! He spoke volumes to me about being generous to others in return; because that is what Jesus praises in Matthew 25:31-46. Jesus says to feed the hungry, welcome strangers into your home, clothe the naked and visit the sick and imprisoned. Suddenly we were the strangers in a ‘foreign land.’ Suddenly we were the hungry ones in need of food. There is SUCH a blessing set aside for those who helped us, and even the single church that called us back. You heard me right—only one of the 21 churches returned our call. It’s a tragedy that this probably doesn’t surprise most people, either. The church needs to step up and serve one another, especially fellow believers in need; we believe the Lord used us to bring this to the attention of some of those churches. I know I’m going to be much more deliberate about giving freely, because I have now been on the receiving end! My perspectives have shifted!
Tornado Time
If you watch the news and don’t live under a rock, you may have heard that there were insane tornadoes in Dallas, Texas on Tuesday, April 3rd right around where we were. We arrived in Dallas on Monday afternoon, spent the night in prayer, and were planning on having meetings, prayer time and a pre-call rally on Tuesday. We ate breakfast at our host home (one of the most generous families I have ever met allowed 20 of us to come from Kansas City and stay in their home/mansion for a week), and then found ourselves sucked into the news, which was declaring tornado warnings, touch-downs, and all the craziness that comes with a system of bad storms. That day 17 tornadoes hit, the most intense being an F-3 that wrought a path of destruction 8 miles long.
Now, this wasn’t just storms. Throughout scripture there is a measure of the prophetic related to the weather. Elijah stopped and released rain through prayer, Romans says that all creation is groaning, and Jesus says that at the end of the age there will be signs in the heavens and signs on earth, including earthquakes and other disasters. TheCall organization has a ton of prophetic history actually involving tornadoes. We believed the Lord’s hand was in this, mostly because the first two tornadoes touched down at the exact moment that 39 amazing women walked into Dallas County.
Therein lies another aspect of The Esther Call. During the three weeks leading up to the event, 39 women were walking from Houston, Texas to Dallas, Texas—over 270 miles. Each woman represented one year of legalized abortion in America, and each had a testimony about how they were impacted adversely by abortion. Some women had abortions in the past, others had siblings or family members who were aborted, and others were just burdened by the issue. They walked from the largest abortion clinic in America to the courthouse in Dallas where Roe VS Wade was passed. The last leg of their journey was in Dallas, and after weeks of walking, interceding, bleeding and blistered feet, the power of what they were doing in the heavenly realm was made manifest, we believe, in the physical. That’s what we attribute the tornadoes to, in a nutshell.
Instead of being afraid and worried, we trusted the Lord and prayed on the front porch. We saw some heavy rain and cool lighting in our area, but no hail or intense stuff, so we were very safe, physically and spiritually! We had a wonderful time getting a taste of the power of the Lord. We also learned to be flexible when all of our prior plans were dashed because of the bad weather!
The Esther Call
At TheCall event itself we had a ton of prayer focuses and teachings throughout the day. Some of the topics included:
- Feminism—women need to repent for using their sexuality to manipulate and control others.
- A release of the Biblical mindset that children are a blessing from the Lord.
- Contraceptives—many are abortive in nature. It was really interesting to note that the Bible states that life does begin at conception. In Luke 1, immediately after the angel came to Mary and the Spirit hovered over her, she rushed to her cousin Elizabeth, whose child in the womb leapt at the presence of the unborn Jesus, who was probably just a zygote!
- An exposing of Planned Parenthood—Carol Everett (a former leader in the organization) spoke about their agenda to actually perform more abortions by targeting children at a young age through pornography, and, when they kids do become sexually active, giving them cheap forms of contraception.
- Ending the one child policy in China and the atrocious forced abortions that occur there.
- A release of an adoption movement and for the church to become pro-child in addition to being pro-life.
This is a massively massive update. Forgive me for the length! There is so much I haven’t even touched on! We did night prayer sessions from 10 PM to 2 or 4 AM for a few nights, and as exhausted as we were from our funny schedules, we found great intimacy and power in our prayers during those sets at the Dallas House of Prayer. We enjoyed being led by the Spirit those nights and letting Him take us wherever He wanted us to go in intercession. We had two pre-call rallies at area churches and were able to minister and be ministered to during those times. We prayed, prayed, prayed about everything and in every place we went. Healings happened in the registration line for The Esther Call. Our team was incredibly unified and brought together by the Lord. We overcame differences. We conquered individual fears. The Lord reminded me of the value of being a mother and the glorious way he has created me—with the capacity to carry a human life within! Lou taught the book of Esther. We worshipped. We cried. We had a meeting outside the courthouse and welcomed the 39 women to their destination. We had a silent life siege. One of the girls in our company (who was supposed to be aborted but whose mother chose life just days before the procedure) was interviewed by the Dallas paper and got to share her story with the nation. We testified of truth. We contended for breakthrough… and we got it.
Words can hardly express the impact we know we made through prayer. We believe we are winning the battle for LIFE in this nation, and the world! Since coming back to Kansas City so much has happened…
Just recently (4/11) we found out that a Planned Parenthood in California is currently doing 40 days of prayer FOR abortion and the choice of women to kill their unborn children. The brochure makes my stomach twist. Planned Parenthood is crumbling, everyone knows it, and they might feel like their last hope is to call on God, but He is not going to listen to them! Isaiah 1:15-17 says it so clearly, “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood! Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” YOU CANNOT GET CLEARER THAN THAT! The Lord hears the prayers of the righteous and answers those!
Thank you all for your prayers. If you have any questions or would like to hear more, please don’t hesitate to get ahold of me!
Be blessed, y’all (I have been to Texas and can say “y’all” now)!
Rachel
TCI with Don and Mischa--our lovely host parents!
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