Sometimes the biggest blessing we find on the field is how the people we meet encourage us. We go to share the love of Christ and leave feeling like He told us the same thing! Here's a story of encouragement in Chicago from WL Jonathan Oliveras:

This summer has been so good and God has done some amazing things in Chicago! He was able to use the teams from Texas, Missouri, and Iowa to do some awesome things and reach out to a lot of people, especially the kids in the Safe Haven program. It was really cool to see that bonds that were made between the mission teams and the Safe Haven kids and how they were in tears when they had to leave. The Safe Haven kids who once used to be closed off are now opening up their lives to the missions teams and some are even opening their hearts to Jesus which is awesome!

     Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of good stories to share about last week because the first half of the week I spent in our apartment being sick. I had some kind of really bad cold with all the symptoms in the book, but God is good and I started feeling better around Wednesday.

     One story that I would like to share is about last Friday at the laundry mat. We go to the local laundry mat every Friday around 9:30am to do our laundry, but this week we didn't get there until 12:30pm. When we were finishing up and folding our clothes I was standing next to an older black lady who noticed my t-shirt and made a comment that it was a unique shirt and that she loves collecting unique t-shirts. At that time I was looking for an opportunity to bring spiritual matters into the conversation and she set it up for me by telling me that she had just recently gone to Hawaii with her husband (who is a bowler!) and got some unique shirts there. I told her that one of my good friends  had just moved to Hawaii to minister to youth through a church. She thought that was really cool and began to talk about her own relationship with Christ! During that time I was folding a t-shirt of mine that has my friend Jonathan Pound on the front and the word "HOPE" on the back. She only saw the back and she told me she thought that was a cool shirt. Well I showed her the front and was able to tell her the story about my friend Jonathan and how he struggled with cancer for almost a year and half and passed away in March, but through all of his struggles he was able to love people more than he ever had before and God taught him so much about life that he shared with everyone he knew. After I told her about Jonathan she told me that she is a breast cancer survivor and during that whole time she had cancer she was able to rely on God for strength and was never once worried about her cancer because she knew that the Lord was going to take care of her. She reassured me that Jonathan is in a much better place than this earth and he is living with Jesus.

     Before I left she told me that she saw things in me that I couldn't see myself and that God is going to use me in some great ways. Her name was Mrs. Johnson, she was 70 years old, and was about to celebrate her and her husband's 50^th wedding anniversary. This woman encouraged my soul very much.

     Even though the beginning of my week wasn't fun when I was sick, the Lord blessed me at the end of the week with much encouragement from Mrs. Johnson. Continue to pray for our team as it is our last week in Chicago. We are going to miss this place tremendously, but we know that the Lord is going to continue to use us as we go to Alabama and we are looking forward to seeing all of our friends there!

In Him,

Jonathan Oliveras