Mario and I have been meeting once or twice a week for the past four months.  He’s a Peruvian with a strong work ethic and his first child on the way.  Mario is a young believer and is soaking up everything I can teach him about Jesus and this Kingdom way of life.

Unfortunately, Mario blew out his knee playing soccer and had to get knee surgery.  Their health insurance paid for the surgery, but didn’t cover his lost wages – Mario cleans commercial buildings.  So he and his wife were going to miss a full month of their mortgage and bills.

Now we had a choice… One could argue that Mario should have had enough in savings to handle this.  Or that there are other people in far worse situations we could help.  But Mario had become like a brother.  And we felt Jesus leading us to help.  So we asked our church plant if we could all listen to Jesus for a few minutes while we were together this week.  After that, each person came to me individually to donate what God had spoken to them to give.

Yesterday, I got to call Mario and tell him that our family of believers would be paying his entire mortgage payment!  We even had a little left over to help with a few bills and meals.  It was a little like witnessing the feeding of the five thousand… we are not a group with a lot of cash, but with everyone sacrificing and praying, God came through in an amazing way.

Mario was so grateful, and he told me that he “owes” us.  I told him this was not a loan and he is not expected to pay back a penny; that someday he’ll be in a position to help someone else.  He agreed to pay it forward.

This is the second time that our little group has been able to significantly help a brother or sister in need.  It feels so good to be obedient and used of God in this way.  We believe there will be many more of these stories to come!