No Experience Needed, Will Train

No Experience Needed, Will Train

This bright, bold, and red-lettered caption at the top of the flyer said it all…perfectly defining me.

A month old in my faith as a follower of Jesus, I felt a gnawing to do something for my Savior. But what? Then my youth pastor announced domestic and foreign positions for service. So, I signed up for every team, assured to be selected for at least one.

Being on my way to El Salvador for three months to a leper and typhoid colony wasn’t exactly what I had envisioned. Suddenly my vibrato waned and I admitted I was in over my head. Not raised in a church, 17, a babe in the faith, and with only four training sessions, I was incredibly unprepared.

But the Intern Mission Board was satisfied with my finely honed Christianese answers. I am a very quick learner and four years on a highschool debate team blessed me with poise under pressure.

“Yes, I’ve seriously prayed about this or that and do know God’s leading,” etc. To be candid, I had prayed, the best I could base on what I knew of prayer. But the concept of speaking to the Almighty still seemed surreal. That, mercifully, wondrously was soon to change, in the jungles of Meanguerita, my summer home and El Salvador’s colony for deadly diseases.

During the first week, I saw more mangled, mutated, and dying people then I could describe or forget. I was a pest to our senior nurse, Katherine, whose serenity never faltered and hands were always easily extended to every body racked by hideous ailment or injury. She was thirty, worked triage in Boston, and had spent four months in Vietnam. Enough said. But it was the calmness of her words, uttered with resolve and unquestioning faith that pierced my mind with the deepest desire I’ve ever known: to pray like she did.

When an 11-year-old girl in labor staggered into our clinic, Katherine embraced the child as she gently lowered her onto a pallet. She began her exam, explaining each step, and offering the sweetest prayers I’ve ever heard. What I saw was something so wrong – a baby having a baby. But Katherine saw a child of God who needed to know her Heavenly Father.

As Mia was born to Evalina late that evening, heaven gained another citizen. Evalina surrendered to the words of Romans and the steadfast prayers spoken in love and by the power of the Name of Jesus.

A week later, the El Salvadorian Coast Guard deposited 20 wounded soldiers at our colony from the latest coup d’état violence. Our team wasn’t prepared for this, but all looked to Katherine. Her inner peace and expansive prayers soared above our limitations. Katherine’s prior military service provided her with the knowledge of how to relate to these broken men, assure them of our care, and offer them the comfort that God the Father extended. During the seven weeks of rehabilitation, each soldier accepted Jesus as his Savior.

Late one evening, one of the men had a severe setback while I was on duty. Fumbling with what to tell him, his trembling hand took mine and asked me not to worry about his body, but pray like Katherine for his soul. But therein was the problem; I didn’t know how to intercede like Katherine. So I said I’d go get Katherine. But the young man had other ideas.

The tremors in his hand increased pressure on mine and forced me to my knees. He insisted I pray now! But what was I supposed to say? Oh, I’d watched with laser beam intensity the way Katherine lifted others to the Lord. But there was nothing out of the ordinary in what she said. That was my stumbling block. She spoke to the Father with all the authority of one who knew the mind of God, who claimed His power, who wandered through His limitless resources with a familiarity I yearned for. Then it came to me.

As I began to recite a variety of Scripture to the young man, I did so inserting his name in each verse and ending it with, “in the Name of Jesus, we ask that this be in your will.”

Even in the poor lighting, I could see vital blood pooling on the floor and I knew this man would be our first loss. But I also knew that this man had received Jesus as Savior and needed the dying grace God gives. The more I prayed in the Word and the Name of Jesus, the more I sensed the presence of Jesus engulfing the fledgling faith of two new believers. 

Though I desperately wanted to leave and get help, I knew the matters of eternity were more important than the temporal issues of earthly life. As my voice grew in intensity, I was unaware of the five team members who had entered some beginning work on Xavier while others joined me on the cold, stone floor in prayer.

Pre-dawn found our team rejoicing at the divine healing that had taken place in this young soldier’s body. Not only were his vital signs perfectly stable, but he was holding down food and water, despite extensive internal injuries. The Great Physician had not done a repair job, but a full replacement work.

When summer ended, I found myself completely confident to enter the throne room on behalf of others. Through the example of Katherine’s prayers and knowledge of the Word I’d gone through in my own spiritual “boot camp,” I found immeasurable joy in interceding for others as well as laying my own requests and praises before the Father.

The photo journal Katherine made for me sits to this day in my nightstand with her inscription as a reminder of the power found only in prayer.

“There is nothing magical, but rather marvelous in prayer. We are sharing our heart with the Lover of our souls and He is anxious and elated to hear from His children. Never neglect meeting with God, for He is always fighting for you.”