I visited Nicaragua in 2009 with a team. Limonal was a village in desperate condition. Nestled beside a cemetery and a garbage dump, the water was filthy, everyone was sick, the children were undernourished, housing was inadequate, unemployment was rampant and hope was hard to find.

“One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. People had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick.” – Luke 5:17

We went to serve with my friend Osvaldo.

The people were really poor. Lots of “houses” like this.

They lived off the garbage dump…

…pulling out the recyclables.

We helped him feed the kids.

We prayed for the sick.

They didn’t have enough translators, but I found this 16 year old girl who knew English.

I don’t know another way to describe it other than the power of the Lord was with me to heal the sick. I’ve prayed for lots of sick people. I think less than half get healed. But on this day, in that place, with those people, everyone was getting healed.

After praying for maybe 60 people, I asked my translator if she’d like to pray for people to be healed in Jesus’ name. She explained that she’s not a Christian. I said, Jesus is doing the healing, as you’ve seen; you can just ask him. So then she prayed for the next few dozen people who were healed.

It really is not about us. It’s just Jesus. But we get to pray.