My heart was ready for this trip. This was the best missions trip that I have ever led and even better than that, this was the best missions trip I have ever been a part of. This was mostly due in part because I spent countless hours allowing Jesus to prepare my heart for service. I also led a group, our missions team, who had done the same. These teens and adults were ready. We stepped off the plane in Nassau, primed and ready to see the hand of God. God did not disappoint.
While in Nassau, I personally recorded eight direct answers to prayer. We witnessed healings, salvations and miracles. I don't have time to share details about each experience, but I want to share one with you in this post. It has become known as the anointed quarter.
The day we arrived in Nassau, I went grocery shopping with two of our youth coaches while the rest of our group settled into our church accommodations. We shopped for over an hour and filled four shopping carts with food. It took probably twenty minutes for the cashier to scan everything into her computer. Our total came to $950. I didn’t think anything of the payment because I had already gone down to our bank in town to let them know I would need to use the card on our missions trip to Nassau. Well, she scanned my card and it didn’t go through. I said, try it again. Nothing. Then I gave her my two personal credit cards, still nothing. Denied. I thought, oh great, how are we going to pay for this?
While my youth coaches waited with our four shopping carts inside the store, I went to find my friend, the youth pastor of the church where we were serving. I found him outside another store with a couple buddies. I explained the situation to him. He allowed me to borrow his phone to call my credit card company back in the United States. I couldn’t make the call from my phone because it would have cost me a small fortune in roaming charges. When the phone call connected I was put on hold for five minutes before a representative got on the phone. Well, as soon as I start giving her my information, my friend's phone battery died. Oh great!
In light of this, we were reminded of God's sovereignty, so, we stopped and prayed and asked God to take over. Then my friend gives me a quarter to use the pay-phone outside the grocery store. I was able to get through and find out that the wait was now seven minutes to get through to an agent. Well, the problem was that for every quarter you put in, you only get about thirty seconds of phone time to the United States. My friend had three quarters in his pocket and then sent his friends to find more. Two minutes into the phone call, my friend put a quarter in that added time and then popped out of the bottom of the phone, as if to return the quarter to us. He used the same quarter ten times, each time accumulating time. We had an anointed quarter.
I can only describe this as an act of God. My friend told me he has never seen a quarter do that in a pay-phone ever before. Praise the Lord! I ended up getting through to my credit card company, and we only had to add a few more quarters to enable me to finish my phone call. The friendly agent on the other end freed up my credit card for purchases in Nassau and my credit card was accepted for the groceries.
Through this experience, God reminded me that He is in complete control no matter what the circumstance. When my credit card didn't go through, I was already thinking ahead to the possibilities of not making that purchase to feed our team for the week or considering other ways to make the purchase. The right thing to do was what we ended up doing and that was to stop and pray. All I needed to do was to trust God. When we prayed, we invited the God of the universe into our situation. He had complete control all along. He delivered a timely miracle that I will never forget.
Matthew 6:33 says, "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you."
