Bonfire Baptisms!

Deborah and I invited some girls over for a bonfire and it was mostly my friends with the addition of Inessa (first year grad from KMSM), and a friend she was bringing, Lulu visiting from New Jersey. Chloé texted me that a woman named Sarah was coming. After Chloé met her for dinner first, she texted me, “girl—sarah is hungryyyyyyyyy for Jesus. can’t wait for her to meet you.” I was hoping something would spark for her & told the first girls about her coming!

Everyone arrived at once, and it got a little chaotic and very loud with everybody talking at the same time, which shifted the 10 of us into individual pockets of conversations instead of a group. After a while, I knew that if the night was going to go towards deeper things, I needed to get everyone to flow in the same direction.

I asked Stacy to share testimony, and then Sandy added that she had one. She was sharing a story of her sister getting healed and it greatly impacting her nephew in such a way that he was saying that he now believes in the Holy Spirit. Knowing Sarah probably had no clue what that meant but not wanting to put her on the spot, I turned to Lulu and said, “I don’t know your background, do you know much about the Holy Spirit?” Lulu said she went to Coptic orthodox church back at home. That gave me more insight on where she was at, and I explained how many protestant Christians were so afraid of miracles being faked, that they decided on a doctrine that miracles don’t happen anymore… that the Holy Spirit doesn’t move like the book of Acts anymore.

Chloé piped up that Sarah had a question, and she asked, “How can someone decide to follow Jesus?” It was such a pure, beautiful question. After an explanation, I asked her if she had ever decided to surrender to Jesus and follow his lead, giving up control of her life to him. She shared about her journey of spiritual hunger over the last year and how this move was out of a desire to follow Jesus. God led her here & she was going all in.

There were a couple other conversations that sparked from this about how you hear God and what following him looks like, including repentance and forgiveness. The passage from Acts 19 came to mind, where Paul goes to Ephesus and finds disciples there, but they have not been baptized with the Holy Spirit yet. As Sarah talked, it was clear that while she had committed to Jesus, she hadn’t had that sort of an encounter yet. I explained that while she had decided to follow Jesus at some point, the way that we are empowered by God, especially to make godly decisions (including prayer for miracles) is through the Holy Spirit. I asked her if we could pray for her for the baptism of the Holy Spirit after explaining what it meant, and she was eager. As we gathered around her to pray, I had a feeling that we first needed to water baptize her.

Explaining what water baptism was, I gave Sarah the option of doing it in the bathtub – she was excited, so there was a scramble to prepare! Everyone was giddy with excitement!

I took Sarah aside and asked her to take a second and ask the Lord if there was anything in her heart she needed to repent of, forgive, or choose to receive forgiveness for. I did a “repeat after me” style prayer with her, laying down shame & walking away from it. Then she was ready! We all gathered into our small hall bathroom, everyone hushed with eager anticipation. It felt beautifully holy.

Deborah had a word of knowledge that Lulu wanted to be baptized & oh the joy that overflowed when Lulu said yes! Apparently, she even told Sandy outside that she wanted to be baptized, too!! We found more fresh towels, got her a change of clothes to be baptized in, and we repeated the whole process!

This time, I engaged Sarah as our new expert on baptism to join Lulu, Inessa and I in praying. I asked Inessa if she wanted to baptize Lulu because she was her friend with the most influence over her in the circle. (I’ve done the same thing with Chloé, but she felt it should be me. This one was different, though.) The four of us held hands, and I invited the Lord to convict Lulu of anything that needed repentance or forgiveness before baptism. She confessed something, and we brought it to the Lord. Then it was time! I knelt with Inessa and gave her the words a little at a time to say, demonstrating how to have someone plugged their nose and lock their elbow so you were able to get them down and back up. Lulu was much taller, so I sort of had to work to get water to cover her face, but she was fully immersed by the end of it!

Afterwards, we had a time of prayer over both of them. One of my favorite parts was how Sarah got empowered to pray for others and hear from God right away! She got a word of encouragement from the Lord from Lulu and prayed it out. It was so beautiful to watch so much practice and activation happening! Such an exciting night!

We went to bed talking about the prophetic words for our region that this was a fulfillment of! It felt like a fulfillment of the recent words for KM, too: fires sparking in homes. People coming from other countries and states to be lit on fire and return home, spreading the flame. Have your way, Lord!