Thursday 27 January 2011

So many Plaits!!!

It seemed a very different experience Treasure Hunting today, not sure if it was just because it was freezing and nobody wanted to stop, or just that God was showing us new things!

One of my clues was Cowboy Hat! I really didn't think we would find it and just thought I had gone a bit loopy! But as we stood outside the Travel Agents and contemplated whether we should talk to the man in the green coat next to us, a man went steaming past us with a cowboy hat on !!!!  We had to run after him as he was going so fast, but we caught up with him in the end and he stopped to chat.  Lizzie and I both had Steve on our maps and he had known a Steve who had committed suicide a few years ago,  but nothing else matched up with him particularly so we offered to pray for him and he accepted, but then his bus appeared and he was gone! I was still amazed by the hat though!! A great clue - thank you Father!

Lizzie and I also both had plaits on our maps, Lizzie felt they would be red and I had blonde but both of them plaits.  When we first started Treasure Hunting Lizzie had had Plaits a couple of times and we had never found them on either occasion so we were both a bit dubious about putting them down again but never the less we did and after much searching and thinking we would never find this illusive hairstyle, along walked a girl with blondish hair with red highlights and low and behold a PLAIT!!! She and her friend were going at some pace again but we began to go after her and as we did another girl walked past us with two brown plaits! We were so amazed that we went to follow after her, but changed our minds and went back to the first girl but they were then busy trying on Boots in the warm, we lingered for a while but it didn't look like they were coming out.  We went back to where we had seen both girls and as we looked there was yet another girl with Plaits!  But again she was walking so quick and went into a shop and was intently looking at clothes.  Again we lingered but she wasn't leaving the shop so we went back again to 'Plait Corner' and as we looked, we nearly fell over, there was yet another girl with plaits coming towards us.  I cant remember why we didn't stop this 'plait' lady, maybe shock :-).  It was like a Plait blessing from God, I expect he was laughing in heaven as our amazement grew at each person! Perseverance really does pay off!

We stopped a couple of people who didn't seem to be on the maps, one man who, thinking about it now, had on a green jacket.  We asked him if there was anything we could pray about for him and he told us that he had a prosthetic leg and the bit of his leg which went into it was very sore, it was at the knee.  He was really pleased that we prayed for him and he said that he knew it would get better now.  I was really thrilled to talk to him as one of my dreams is to see a leg grow out from a stump. I didnt feel that I could offer to pray for that quite yet, but there will come a day and this just felt like God giving me a gentle nudge and a smile of encouragement.

The other lady we stopped who wasn't on our maps was a lady in a wheelchair, we offered to pray for her and she said that we could but it would probably do us more good than her and she sped off. Lizzie had begun to ask her before she left why it was she was in the wheelchair and she shouted over her shoulder 'Polio!'.  Lizzie looked shocked as she was going to put Polio down on her map but had thought that nobody had Polio these days so hadn't written it down!  What a shame - but a lesson learnt for us.  Always write things down, even if they are as odd as Mr Bloddy, and Sherlock Holmes which we didn't find today - there's always next time!

Oh yes and I saw yet another girl with Plaits on the way home! Amazing!!

Look who we found!!!

I had often wondered whether we would find Treasure and it would be somebody that I knew, well it happened the other day! My friend and I were round the back of WH Smiths next to the big Columns there, when out of a coffee shop came a couple from our church! We went up to say hello and I was joking about them being treasure, but as we looked we realised that they were actually Treasure.  The man was carrying a Green Bag, they were by the Columns and by a jewellery shop which had Diamonds in it!  One of my friends Ailments was Mental Illness but as we talked she said that actually she had seen a brain and something wrong with the brain so had assumed it was mental illness, but it wasn't.  The Treasure we had found had recently had a stroke and still has a brain clot in his brain which is inoperable.  He said that his life had come to a stand still as he isnt able to drive and he is worried that it the clot move again and cause another stroke.  So we offered to pray for him which he readily accepted.  I have prayed for him a couple of times before and I quite clearly see the clot breaking down little by little as it is bombarded with prayer, so I was happy to give it another good hammering! He gets tested in the middle of February so we wait to hear what the Docs say.  The lovely thing about this Treasure was that all the clues were on my friends map who didnt know this couple at all, so it was really encouraging for her and for the Treasure.

We spent a lot of time looking for purple shoes and really didn't think we were going to find them at all when all of a sudden a girl in the purplest shoes ever walked past us.  I didn't hesitate and approached her straight away.  She was with her Gran whose name was Sandra (another name - yippeeeeeee), and she was suffering with weakness due to just finishing chemotherapy for breast cancer.  We offered to pray and she jumped at the chance, she was getting her results early February and wanted them to be clear.  So we prayed against the cancer and for strength to return to her body after the Chemo.  Her Granddaughter was really pleased that the clue that we had stopped them for had been her purple shoes as it was her Gran, who we had just prayed for, who had bought her the shoes - she was really touched!

Monday 24 January 2011

Wahoooooo we got a name! (and Wolf Jacket AGAIN!)

I have been praying recently for more specific clues and for them being spot on so that the person cannot deny that it is them and that God has spoken.  I went out a few days ago with lizzie and I had the name Jackie on my map, we also had white trousers, and pink scarf.  We were walking up the High Street and I looked behind me and there were two ladies walking towards us, one with white trousers and the other with a pink scarf! We stopped them and explained what we were doing and when they looked at the maps they both gasped as Jackie was the lady with the pink scarf.  She then looked at the Ailments and she was having problems with Toothache.  I was able to tell her about two people in our church who had been prayed for with toothache and both had been healed.  Sadly she declined prayer and went off with her toothache - but I was still thrilled to have got the name and all the other clues as well!

One of the most interesting Treasures on that day was a person wearing combat trousers, a baseball cap (I had blue, but his was black but we wont worry about that!) and, can you believe it, a wolf jacket again!  Now the Wolf Jacket wasn't on our maps but it was a clue that we had about a month ago and never found and on our last Treasure Hunt, Lizzie and I had an amazing encounter with a lady with a Wolf Jacket on (we think we may have the Wolf Jacket anointing!)  We thought we were approaching a man, but when we got up to him we found this wasn't quite the case.  He was fully made up and wearing diamond jewellery, I then recognised him as a man I had seen a few times walking around town in women's clothes. I completely amazed myself as I didn't bat an eyelid at all - and I felt completely accepting off him! He looked at our lists and said sort of apologetically that he was Trans Gender and that he was going through a sex change - we said that it wasn't a problem and asked him to look at the ailments. The lady told us that she had fallen over in the snow and chipped the bone in her knee.  We offered to pray and she accepted.  She wasn't healed at that point but we were able to have a conversation with her about her beliefs and her life and it was an amazing encounter.  It turned out that she read the bible and would like to go to church but due to work wasn't really able to and that she believed in God.  We told her how much God really loved her and after a while she went on her way, I don't know what will come of that for her, but it was amazing and she went away feeling accepted and loved by God. 

Monday 17 January 2011

'Its the Wolf jacket!'

A while ago, Lizzie and I were out Treasure Hunting and we both had two very similar clues. One was somebody wearing a jacket with a horse on it and mine was somebody wearing one of those fleecy jackets with wolves on it. We both felt very strongly about them and they were also the last clues we both wrote down, but we didn't find either clue on that day and we were a little perplexed about it at the time!

We forgot about it as each Treasure Hunt is new and different, but whilst out this week we were walking along looking for clues when I said 'Look at that lady with the fleecy jacket with dogs on, its a shame it isn't wolves!' and at that instant Lizzie pointed right next to the lady and said 'What! Like that one!' Walking in front of us was a lady with the exact same jacket on that I had seen a few weeks before, so we quickly decided to stop her. We later realised that she was outside WH Smith which was a clue for this hunt. She was moving at some speed but we caught up with her and explained the best we could that she was a clue from a previous Treasure Hunt and could we pray for her about anything. She said that she had heart problems and had been depressed for a couple of years. She told us about her heart (it is always good to find out exactly what is wrong, so you can speak specifically to it). Amazingly, her heart problem was exactly the same as somebody elses in our church who had been prayed for that Sunday, and when he went for the tests the next day he had no signs of any problems at all and was completely healed! So I was able to testify to her about this and build her faith and then we prayed! Both conditions would be difficult to tell right away if things had changed but she had tears in her eyes as she thanked us for praying for her and she was obviously touched by God. We may never know what happened, but she was God's Treasure and he showed his love for her on that rainy day outside WH Smiths in her Wolf jacket!

We stopped quite a few people that day and they were all amazing and special, but the other one which stands out was a Big Issue Seller who was wearing a High Vis Waistcoat, stood outside Boots, When he looked at our maps and we started to go through the names the connections were incredible - Shelly was his Sister, Heather was his Aunt, Fiona was another Aunt, Keith was his Uncle and married to Fiona, Ryan was the son of Keith and Fiona, and Josie was a worker at his Hostel! It was nearly every name on the list! Then he looked at the ailments and he had a cough, Sinus problems, and problems with his eyes! We told him that he was definitely God's Treasure and asked if we could pray for him and he said yes. We prayed for him but were so blown away by all the clues matching up that neither of us remembered to ask how he was feeling afterwards - whoops, good job we have a billion chances with our Father!