Ohio Baptisms

Another amazing weekend baptizing folks in Ohio!

I feel like a broken record when I say it’s too hard to pick which stories to share of how awesome, amazing, and good God is… but I’ll do my best.

It’s always extra special when you get to baptize someone you’re close to. Our friend Col, who we’ve gotten to know over the last year, came to be baptized. She has been on this beautiful journey discovering God’s eyes and heart for others. She spends so much time in prayer for our family as well as many others, and we see the immense impact it has had. It was truly an honor!

Kiah has started helping serve in different roles on the team. I’m so thankful she has a space to learn to serve in such a precious moment in a person’s life. She served in the “salvation” role and was able to share the gospel with a family that had not yet understood the good news. She walked them through receiving Jesus as their savior! She also had an amazing experience during worship involving angels, but I would probably botch the story if I retold it, so I’ll let her share that another time. :)

Amber was watching our little man (along with a few other children) and dragging me where I needed to be when I needed to be there. She is pretty awesome!

Some wild stories that really stand out:

I had prayed Saturday morning and saw a cigarette burning while I prayed. I thought maybe it would come up during the day, but in the morning session no one particularly stood out to me as dealing with that. Then, when I got out of the water, I was walking down the drive and a lady came up to me out of nowhere. She asked if it would be alright if she got rebaptized. She said she had been baptized before but really wanted to repent and be baptized again to be freed from her addiction to smoking cigarettes and marijuana. So we took her right down and baptized her. She had an amazing experience and believed she was set free, trusting the Lord to give her everything she needs to walk in that freedom.

Then there was a lady whom the Lord had miraculously healed a few days earlier of liver issues and lesions. The Lord then told her to come and get baptized. Needless to say, He had more to do in the water!

There was also a couple who had come up for prayer earlier in the day. The Lord showed me the wife holding a baby, so I shared that with her. Later, when she came through the line to be baptized, she was placed with my partner and me. She shared that she had also had a vision a few weeks earlier of having a baby, but her main concern was an illness she had been struggling with for some time. One of the team members had been healed of that very thing, so we brought her over to help pray. Our teammate was overwhelmed to pray for someone going through the same difficulty she had gone through. She was praying fervently for the woman’s healing when she suddenly stopped in the middle of the prayer, and she too, believed they were going to have a baby!

Another lady had never been in water above her knees because of a deep fear of water. But the Lord made a way for her—not only to get in and be baptized, but to be overcome by the presence of the Lord. She ended up laying back in rest and floating there for a bit! Her friend on the bank was so overcome (knowing how deeply she had feared the water) that it multiplied her own faith. She came back the next day telling us how powerfully it had impacted her. :)

There were many powerful deliverances, healings, and encounters over the weekend. Part of growing in the Lord is trusting Him even when things don’t make sense. So often, if we wait and watch, we eventually see what He was doing—and it’s so much better than if it had gone the way we thought it should. The things that take even longer to understand, when we truly wait on Him, believing “It is finished,” we get to see the very things into which angels long to look.