Uva

God's timing is always perfect.  Thilo, Bre and I had spent the last hour discussing the ministry of der Garten - (our sort of cafe room).  Bre was feeling extremely sad because our vision had been that we would meet people on the street and then der Garten would be a "safe" place where they could come to talk and ask questions.  So far, we have not seen this vision come to pass.  We were trying to encourage one another in the Lord and at the same time remain open to what God's plans are for der Garten as opposed to our own ideas.

Thilo went home because he is sick with an ear infection and on a whim, Bre and I decided to put the Jesus movie on (instead of our usual worship music).  We put it on in Deutsch and I was just preparing to settle into an evening of email & Facebook when who should walk into der Garten, but Uva - the man we had just prayed for at our Friday night street - Heilung.

As I prepared him a cup of coffee, he came over to the counter and I asked him if he had read the book of John like I had suggested. 

He said, "Yes, I read the whole thing."

"How did it make you feel upon reading it?"  I asked.

"I felt nothing.  But it is difficult to put into English what I feel."

"Well, as soon as I finish this coffee, how about if we sit on the couch with Bre and she can translate and we can talk in Deutsch &English."

As we settled down with our tea and coffee, the first thing that Uva said was, "I really want to meet someone who has the Holy Spirit."

I said, "Wait no longer, the Holy Spirit is living inside of me and inside of Bre!  So you see this with 2 people who sit before you."   

He smiled at this (which was nice to see because he has a permanent look of pain in his eyes).  Then he went on to say that he had tried in the past to know Jesus and to be "good enough" but nothing had ever happened.

So, we were given the opportunity to explain the whole gospel to him, in as simple a language as we could.  I explained the reason for Jesus coming to the earth:  that He died to take the punishment for our sins and that we can never be good enough for the holiness of God and therefore need Jesus to come into our lives to be our Savior.  

Uva had a hard time understanding this free gift of God.  He kept thinking that he had to do good works to come to God and he tried to tell us what a good person he had tried to be while at the same time confessing all of his known sins to us.  Bre explained a lot to him in German and if I talked slowly, he was able to understand all of my English and he did most of his talking in English.  In the end, he said he needed more time to process all that we had told him, and Bre told him that this was okay.  We tried to stress that the Lord does not invade a life without the person's permission and that he needed to make the first step to open His heart to Jesus.

We then prayed for him again.  He sat between us on the couch and seemed dead inside while we prayed,  (as opposed to when we prayed for him on the street and his whole body seemed to shake and he started crying).  We prayed for his finances as his electricity has been shut off.  It is extremely cold in Berlin right now and he has no lights or heat.  He told us that he is a drug addict, and now on methadone which explains his hollow, pained look that he carries.

Then we fed him some of the apple crumble that I had just made and we all watched the Jesus movie, along with 2 other people who had come into der Garten.  I sensed that he needed a VISUAL of Jesus as well as the reading that he was doing.  As I sat there, I was so amazed at how the Holy Spirit leads and moves us without our even realizing!  I thought it was me who decided to put the Jesus movie on, but it was Him, leading through me. 

At the end of the night, Bre and I greatly rejoiced that at this point in time, the Holy Spirit had sent someone for us to minister to in der Garten.  

der Garten