We LOVE Lebanon!

We love Lebanon! Our family will forever be changed from our two week trip to Beirut. We are so thankful for what God has done and will continue to do in Lebanon. Our hearts were already tied to this place because of Blake and Marci, but now our kids have a picture of what it looks like when we pray for our team. Brian and I have both said that we would encourage, recommend, push anyone and everyone to go experience what we did!

I just had to throw in these pictures of my sleeping kids! It looks like it is completely sunny in both these pictures and that's because it is...These kids were AMAZING! They thrived on a schedule that college students and adults were dropping like flies on. It definitely took 2 weeks for us to recover once home, but it was worth it! My sweet kids will never be the same because of the things God has planted in them. Praise Jesus that their ceiling truly is already exceeding my floor!

I had to include this update from our sweet friends Drew and Mary. They are beautiful writers and communicated our trip better than I ever could have. We love you guys and look forward to December!

Early this morning the short-term trip from Norman Community Church boarded a plane from Beirut heading back to Oklahoma. Our team of 12 adults and three kids spent the last two weeks running hard with their team of 14 adults and three kids. It was chaotic and dynamic, at times intense and at times light-hearted. Most importantly, it was the most powerful two weeks of ministry in the Middle East we have ever been a apart of.

Our goal was simple. In Luke 10 Jesus sent out seventy two disciples into all of the villages he himself was going to visit. He sent them out with a simple message: “The Kingdom of God has come near to you.” He gave them simple instructions: “Heal the sick, deliver the demonically oppressed. When you find a man of peace, stay with them, eating and drinking what they set before.”
This was the model of our two week outreach in Beirut, Lebanon. We divided into small groups and went to any place Lebanese people were hanging out. We went to neighborhoods and parks and shopping malls, to vibrant downtown Beirut and the always crowded seaside walkway called the Corniche. And everywhere this team went, they made personal contact with Lebanese people and demonstrated, at times by loving words and gestures, and often by thepower of the Holy Spirit, that the Kingdom of God is near the people of Lebanon. We did not try to argue about religious creeds, but instead trusted the Holy Spirit to lead us to hungry people, and believed that if we came to bless people than hungry hearts would surely come to the surface.

And they did. Time and time again as we waited on God, he gave us “clues” (sometimes a picture of a person, sometimes a shirt color or name or need) that led us to people. We saw people cry as we told them God had sent us here to bless Lebanon. We heard time and time again people exclaim that they experienced something new, something inexpressible when we laid our hands on them and blessed them in the name of Jesus. Some felt electric tingling in their bodies, others felt deep joy and burdens lifted. We saw Jesus heal people instantly as we prayed- knee injuries, back pain, shoulder pain, disc problems, ankle problems all disappeared before our eyes. The last evening of ministry alone we counted at least seven people declaring that God had healed their bodies as we prayed for them.

And many of these people, touched by God in a way that disarms the intellectual and religious walls that stand between them and Jesus, told us (the long term team) that they wanted to read the Bible with us in their homes when we move to Beirut next year. It is hard for us to express how powerful such encounters are to us. They are the realization of things that for years we have dreamed about and labored for in prayer. When we look at what we saw God do in Beirut in two weeks it gives us complete confidence that a revival is coming to this war-scarred nation.

Attached to this update is a document logging over seventy testimonies of personal encounters here these last two weeks.