A Hike, A “Random” Encounter and A Prayer of Faith

.I have so many testimonies of how God has answered prayers this year and in past years, but the one that stands out most to me is a prayer I prayed while overseas. During my time as a missionary in Korea, I went to another town to hike in the mountains with a couple of friends. At some point during our excursion, I realized that I no longer had my cell phone. I was looking at it earlier, but now I couldn't find it.

By the end of our hike, I realized that it was lost somewhere in the mountains. I started to get worried, not because of the phone itself, but because its case held some very important things: the key to my apartment, my Korean alien registration card, my card to ride the subway, my debit card, and a little bit of cash. All of these were items that I needed.

Thankfully, my friends were prayer warriors who immediately sent up petitions along with mine to God asking him to restore my phone with all its contents. We had strong faith and believed that God would help me find it. Unfortunately, I left that area without my phone that day.

Yet, I prayed continually that evening that God would make up for what I had lost so that I could get home. Since I didn't have my debit card or any cash, and my subway card was also gone, I needed money to pay for the bus and the subway ride. God provided for those things that very night. I prayed about the missing apartment key as well, and God worked amazingly to get me into my apartment gain.

I kept on praying after I got home. I also asked others to pray for me. My specific prayer was that God would allow my phone to be restored to me with all its contents, and that it would arrive before another trip I was to take that coming Friday. Seeing as it was the beginning of the week and I had no idea where my phone was or how I could get it back, this was definitely a prayer of faith.

Before I went into the mission field, I had surrendered my heart to God and asked him to order my steps so that the decisions I made would be in line with his will for my life. Months prior to my hiking excursion, I was in a bus station where I'd met a young Korean lady who was witnessing for her faith. Somehow, I felt impressed to share contact information with her, and we started a dialogue via Kakao Talk, a Korean messenger app that can be used on a cell phone or on a computer to make calls or send messages. God would use this exchange between us to work a miracle.

Going back to the week after losing my phone: A couple of days later, I checked Kakao Talk on my computer and noticed that I had made a recent outgoing call to the Korean young lady that I had met in the bus station. The only thing was, I hadn't made that call because I didn't have my phone. This let me know that someone had found my phone and contacted her. So, I reached out to her via the messenger system on the computer and asked her who had called her. That's when she told me that the police had my phone because someone had turned it in. When they saw our dialogue and realized she was Korean, they had called her trying to locate me. Because she didn't know where I lived, she couldn't find me. But when I reached out to her, she was able to help me get the information I needed from the police for them to send me my phone.

God allowed my phone to be found! This was a partial answer to prayer. But the second part of my prayer was that the phone would arrive before my trip that Friday. There were only a couple of days before that could happen, and I wasn't sure if it would. But I prayed fervently and pleaded for God's mercy for this to happen.

On the morning of the trip, the phone still had not arrived. But, as the day drew on, about an hour or so before I was to leave, I was notified that I had received a package. I ran out to collect the box and opened it excitedly. To my amazement, I found not only my phone in its case, but every single item was still intact!

God heard and answered my prayers. While God’s initial answer was to wait, he exceeded my expectations in his timing when he said yes.

The Bible tells us to ask and seek for what we need. My encouragement to you is to ask God for what you need no matter how big or small. Be persistent, but always have a heart to surrender to his will. God will go above and beyond what you could ever ask or think because he truly does care for you.