Treasure Hunt!

Went on my first "Treasure Hunt" last night. Now, you may be thinking of chests of jewels or other surprises but this is something entirely different. The treasure we are searching for is people. People who need to know they are God's treasure. We get together with a group and pray and worship a while. Then we split up into small teams and fill out a clue sheet, we pray for clues to the people God wants to touch, locations, people's appearance, names, things they may need prayer for etc. Once we have a number of clues we set out to search for them.

Here's an example from last night:

We went to a particular street corner that was on our list and started walking from there. We came upon a young man leaning against a brick wall (on our list) who was wearing a red shirt (also on the list) and had red hair (also on the list). We explained the treasure hunt, showed him our clues and told him he was God's treasure. We asked him if he needed prayer for anything, he said no he was happy and had a good life. Then he said he really could use a new job. We talked with him a while (I should say, Bear talked with him, the rest of us being entirely too quiet) and he said he grew up in a Christian family but finally decided he couldn't believe something just because his parents did. He told them he was leaving their religion and if they really believed what they said they did they'd better start walking it out. To his dismay his parents "walk" changed dramatically after that, for the better. He was searching for the truth, saying he didn't know what to believe. We told him we'd pray for a new job by next week, which he said would completely freak him out if it happened. We said, that's the idea! :)

Down another street we found two girls sitting on a bench, one of them had a pink tote bag which was one of our clues, so we stopped to talk to them. We told them about the treasure hunt and that they were God's treasure. They said, well that's sweet. Then we started reading the list of prayer needs, the first one was a knee problem and the first girl said, hey i have a knee problem. The second girl responded to another need on the list so we prayed for them both. The girl with the knee problem couldn't straighten her knee all the way. After we prayed for her she could straighten it further than before. They, also, had left their parents church because "we didn't believe some of the stuff they were teaching".

We next went to Rite Aid, which was another location on our list as was a name tag with the name Jennifer. We greeted the girl behind the counter as we came in and she mouthed that she had lost her voice. We went over to talk to her. She could whisper a little and told us she had woken up with a sore throat and at 6 pm (it was 9 pm) had completely lost her voice and her throat was hurting really bad. We asked her name (her name tag was under her sweatshirt), it was Jennifer :) We prayed for her and she started to cry. Then she had a couple customers so we waited. When we talked to her again she was starting to get her voice back, we told her about the treasure hunt and told us she goes to a church in town. We asked how her throat was and she said it was about 50 percent better. We prayed again and by the time we left she was talking in a normal voice and her throat was about 80 percent better. Yay, God!

So, super fun stuff! It's so great to see people getting healed. So great to see them light up, usually with surprise, to be told they are the treasure we are looking for. All around good fun :)