Matt Leistra

During our trip to New Orleans, I saw God work in many ways, but one very tangible effect of his work showed itself on Wednesday while my team was at lunch. Earlier in the morning, we had gone on a prayer walk through a lower income neighborhood. After we finished that, my team decided to go out for lunch to a local restaurant. Soon after we arrived, it started to pour. Usually, during a rainstorm, it pours for about 1 or 2 minutes and then tapers off. This time however, it didn’t taper off but kept on pouring. In the afternoon we were scheduled to hand out bottles of water in a park down by the Mississippi river. When we had finished our lunch and were ready to go, it was unfortunately, still raining. Our adult leader called back to homebase to try to find out what we should do. The answer we received was so simple and obvious and yet made perfect sense. The answer we received was to pray, and that is exactly what we did. We then proceeded to sit on the sidewalk outside the restaurant and simply pray. We didn’t think about what the people walking by thought of us, we were only asking God what his will for us was. After we prayed, we realized that it was God’s will for us to do to the riverwalk regardless of the weather. No sooner had we left the restaurant, then the rain completely stopped, leaving a cloudless, sunny sky in its wake. We continued on to the riverwalk and ended up spending three hours simply talking to the people we met and handing out water. On ething that will really stay with me from this experience, is the simplicity of the answer we received to our problem: pray. We should always turn to prayer with whatever problem we have, no matter how insignificant we think it is. If we don’t pray, we may miss what God’s will for us is which is exactly what the devil wants.