Good Evening, Family!🥄
This week, we praise God for:
💟 Karina is grateful for all of our prayers for Alejandro. One big and welcome change of this deployment is that they are able to pull into port for the time being. They are all grateful. Please keep praying for their protection. ⚓️
💟 Damaris is grateful that a year after the start of Covid and a year after her diagnosis and subsequent illness, she is alive and well, and so is her family and church family.
💟 Vasthi also thanks God for His mercy and protection over each of us.
💟 María is grateful for answered prayer for allowing her to work from home on Fridays, and she's also grateful for God health.
We are also praying for:
🛐 Bianca, Vishal and Sebastian Suri. May the Lord shower their beautiful family with blessings from above.
🛐 Our sister, Evelyn, as she recovers from Monday's surgery. Surgery went well, praise God. Let's continue to pray for our Healer to grant fer a full recovery.
🛐 Traveling mercies for Kristina, Andy and Seth as they make their way back from their anniversary trip. We thank God for granting them another year together as husband and wife, and mommy and daddy to Seth
🛐 Maria's friends, Karen and Todd. They have both contacted Covid and need our prayers.
🛐 Jeanette's in-laws (Carlitos' family) as they are also dealing with Covid. Pray for healing and restoration.
🛐 Maria, who has been suffering from Tinnitus in her ear. She’s asking for prayer as she is going to see a specialist. Let’s ask for wisdom and for the doctor to offer her much-needed relief and healing.
🛐 Alex's neighbor, Angie, who has contracted Covid. May the Lord protect her and keep her from serious illness.
🛐 A dear friend of Doris’, whose entire family is dealing with Covid and underlying conditions. May the Lord protect them and heal them.
🛐 Doris, and her daughters, Jackie, Amanda and their children, Skylar, Heaven Lee, Dorian, Zaire and Amir. May God keep working miracles in their lives.
🛐 Karina, to be led by God regarding her return to in-person school. May it be God’s will.
🛐 Nelly’s neighbor, Provi. She is a cancer survivor and just spent several weeks in the hospital for heart issues. She lives alone and shouldn't be unsupervised at this stage. Please pray that God will work this situation out for her and give her strength.
🛐 Carole is requesting we keep her friend, Alissia, in our prayers. She is a single mother of 2 who needs our prayers as sure has tested positive for Covid and is not doing well. May the Lord intervene on her behalf and restore her to good health.
🛐 John Vega, whose iect Seth in enverything he does and everywhere he goes!
🛐 Karina asked that we keep prayoing for Tamara, that she will be able convinced that God has great plans for her...greater than she can ask or imagine!
🛐 Anna Ortiz. Kristina provided us this update: They found another lump behind her neck and she's now receiving treatment for that as well. Despite it all she's in good spirits and thankful for the prayers.
Tonight's Devotional 🔥was submitted by Cece, and this is her first devotional. Thank you, Cece! 💝
"Whoever brings blessing will himself be blessed, and one who waters will himself be refreshed." Proverbs 11:25
A man once had a dream that forever influenced his life and the way he saw his calling to love his fellow human.
In the dream, the man approached God and told Him that he often wondered what heaven and hell were really like.
He said to the Lord, "Could you show me what they are each like?"
God showed the man two doors. Inside the first one, in the middle of the room, was a large round table with a large pot of vegetable stew. It smelled delicious and made the man’s mouth water, but the people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful, but because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths, no matter how hard they tried.
The man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering. God said, “You have now seen Hell. Let us continue.”
Behind the second door, the room appeared exactly the same. There was the large round table with the large pot of wonderful vegetable stew that made the man’s mouth water. The people had the same long-handled spoons, but they were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking. The man was bewildered.
The man turned to God in confusion and stated, “I don’t understand.”
God responsed with the wisdom only He is known for. "It is simple," He said, Love was the missing and required skill in hell. These people learned that skill early on and figured out that while they could not feed themselves, they could feed one another. In blessing others, they opened the door to being blessed themselves. Unlike the greedy in hell, they thought of others instead of just themselves and were refreshed, fed and strengthened. You have now seen HEAVEN."
Sometimes, thinking solely of our personal gratification, we tend to forget how we were created by God to be interdependent with, and a blessing to, others.
As this parable makes clear, by thinking only of ourselves, we not only squander the opportunity to help others overcome their suffering, but we’re also harming ourselves, since we miss the blessing that can only be experienced by blessing others.
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