The Two Visitors, Part Two
February 16, 2023
I'm so glad you loved the two visitors randomly knocking on my door in the middle of a cyclone. If you missed part one of that story, it's here.
Before I carry on, I need to tell you where Bryce was at this point. We had a national emergency going on in New Zealand, there was a cyclone raging outside and the government had told us all to stay at home.
This meant that Bryce was home. He was working in the shed in the back garden and could have come in at any moment to find these two sitting on my couch.
In addition, my son Miles (age 16) was home, upstairs in his room.
So, there we were: Me and these two strangers, with Bryce and Miles also in the house. And now we continue:
It turns out the boy visitor was from California, he had a full-on American accent. And so I tell him I have been to California, to Temecula, specifically.
Now, some of you might remember that the reason I went to Temecula was that we had a SUM conference in 2019 there. It was where Lynn was living at the time.
"I used to go to church in Temecula," says the boy. Temecula is some 10,500 km from where he and I are sitting at that moment.
I look down at his hands and see that some of his fingernails are painted gold. Was he an angel? It was just so crazy.
I don't actually think he was an angel as I got his phone number later, but he might as well have been.
He continued --
"I went to a church called Providence Church," he said. "In Temecula. It's a Presbyterian church."
Hmm, I went. I didn't even register that properly.
After talking for quite some time, I said "Shall we pray for each other? I would LOVE to pray for you!"
Yes, yes, they were keen. And at this point I can say that if Bryce had walked in on me praying with two strangers in the living room he would have found that really weird. But for some reason I was ignoring that.
So we pray. You know, often when praying with others there's a pressure to speak too quickly but on this occasion it wasn't like that. We took it in turns to focus on each of the three of us. We lingered, sat in silence, lifted the person to God and listened for his heart. Then we spoke for five or ten minutes what we felt God was saying.
As the boy and the girl together prayed for me, they prophesied over me. They got visions and words for me. God, where did you get these two????
I'll share that part in my next post. But first I need to come back to this: Temecula.
After two and half hours the visitors left. Bryce was still in the shed having missed all the action. Miles was still upstairs. Once they'd gone, it occurred to me to look up the church the boy had mentioned, Providence Church. As I typed it into my phone up popped a road called Pauba Road. 'Oh!' I thought. 'That's where we had the SUM Summit!'
And THEN, my friends, my eyes nearly popped out of my head at what I saw next: Providence Church meets in Linfield School, which is the very school that we had our last SUM conference in.
WHAT???
Take a moment for that to sink in, and I'll recap:
I was feeling spiritually lacklustre. A random visitor turns up at my house in a cyclone. He has gold nailpolish on. He proceeds to tell me he used to go to church in Linfield School, and I find out that's where we held our last SUM conference. All of a sudden I can tell you I am no longer lack-lustre. God is here.
My friends, that story is a gift for us. God wants us to know he's in our community, he was all over that last conference in 2019, he is all over our upcoming one in September, and he adores us, his SUM Nation.
Honestly, I feel like blowing trumpets, but instead I celebrate by sharing a little picture of SUMites sitting in the sunshine at Linfield School, on that day way over in Temecula in 2019.
As for what those two visitors prophesied over me, oh wow that's a whole other bottle of wine. Stay tuned for that on Monday.
God is real. God is good.
Ann