Cincinnati, Ohio!

April 16, 2014

Hey guys I just returned from my last ministry trip of my IHOPU career! It’s so crazy how fast it’s gone. I am just a little over a month from graduating! I wanted to do a quick recap of my trip. Thank you for everyone that was praying for us. We truly felt your prayers!

One of our main focuses during our time there was a juvenile detention center called the Lighthouse. This is a place that houses boys between 14-20 who have committed felony offenses such as assault, sexual abuse, etc. Basically if they were of age they would be in the normal prisons. There is a very precious couple who have a ministry there and they have been faithfully leading church services for the boys for over 20 years! That particular Sunday morning we got to lead both services. It’s totally voluntary for the boys to come or not and we had about 30 out of the 60 in the facility that chose to come to our events. The next night we put on two worship concerts for the boys. The boys are really hungry for God and they have really desired to learn how to do prayer meetings so we showed them a bit of how we do it at IHOP with the harp and bowl model. That may have been my favorite night. I love how the Lord just loves to meet us where we are at. The boys love a Christian rapper named Lacrae and so we all started rapping one of his songs and the boys loved it. Then one of our team got up and did a spoken word and started rapping the Bible. The boys ate it up. They all wanted a try. There we were in the middle of Podunk nowhere with a bunch of hardened criminals (scared little boys who have had a hard life) and they were all rapping the Bible. They were doing the model except instead of singing, they were rapping. It was so cool to witness and I have to admit I teared up a few times because it was just so precious. I think the most impactful part of the Lighthouse was the night we prayed for the boys. We had a night of prophecy where we just asked the Lord what He wanted to share with each boy. They were all so moved as they could feel and see that God saw them and loved them. Several even committed their lives to Lord that night! It was a very fruitful week.

There was a wonderful couple who hosted us for meals and the husband owns a painting company. Some of his employees are saved and some aren’t. We were given the opportunity to go and prayer for all of them in small groups. Again it was so cool to see how the hearts of the guys were touched when they heard how God felt about them and how He saw them. The most impactful one was the guy’s business partner grew up Catholic but wasn’t really walking with the Lord. After our time praying for him he asked the boss if he told us anything about him because there was just no way we could have known the things we were saying. When he said no he said how can I not believe there is a God after all that? So exciting and encouraging!

The rest of our trip was kind of sporadic. Some of the church leadership in Cincinnati really felt like we were to go to strategic places and just worship and bring the presence of God to those places. So one day we went on the top of Carew Tower, which is one of the tallest buildings there and also to a park and just had some sweet times of worship and praising God.

One of the days we had the opportunity to lead worship in the middle of the campus of University of Miami. Those that were not on stage got to go around and evangelize. I got to talk to a lady who loved Jesus and was having a really hard time in her life. I prayed for her and she was really encouraged and edified. We saw quite a few salvations as well. One guy was a violin player and while we were worshipping he came over and joined us. After we were done a couple of our team members started sharing the Gospel and he got saved. It was so fast! I was sitting next to him the whole time listening to the conversation. After he walked away I was like how did that even happen so fast?

Our last day we went to the Cincinnati house of prayer and did an Encounter God service like we have here. One of our team shared a really powerful message out of John 13 and Jesus washing our feet and then we did more praise and worship. I even got to sing on the mic this time. It was really scary but I did it. Baby steps…

Oh and the craziest thing happened the last night. We went to a gas station for some ice cream and afterwards we were all standing outside in a circle eating and debriefing and this woman walks up randomly and goes, I was just driving by and I saw you guys standing here in a circle and I was wondering if you are a prayer group? I just gave my life to the Lord today. What in the world?! That’s how it was the whole trip. It was like they were just drawn to us. So we got to pray for her and encourage her. It was such a sweet end of the trip.

Overall I would just say that I had so much fun on this trip. We only had 14 people which is way smaller than the past trips have been and that made it way easier to get to know everyone. I don’t think I have laughed that much in a really long time. On a heart level I didn’t feel like I got as much personal breakthrough as past trips but I had a really enjoyable time.

Check out this Instagram link for pictures and short movie clips!
http://instagram.com/cincymissions#