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Sergio’s Story
11/2/96
At the Buenos Aires airport, on the way home from Argentina, we stood at the airline ticket counter and chatted with the agent who was waiting to open the station. The agent told us that his name was Sergio, and that he was twenty-five years old. He said his family had moved to Argentina from New York when he was eleven, during the Falkland Islands war. Sergio spoke to us of his anger, bitterness and unforgiveness towards the Argentine people who had persecuted him at the time because the United States President had given arms to the British.
We told Sergio that we had come to Argentina for a conference on prayer evangelism. Then he opened the ticket counter, checked us through, and we said goodbye.
After going through immigration, we went to our gate area. Since we had about a two hour wait for our flight, we decided to get a bite to eat and do some journaling. As we were talking about what we had heard and learned at the conference, the Holy Spirit brought to our attention that He had made a divine appointment and we had missed the opportunity to pray with Sergio. We felt sad that we had been thinking only of ourselves, so we went to prayer together, asked God to forgive us, and prayed for Sergio. Jerry also asked the Lord for another chance.
We were flying home on “stand-by” tickets and there were only two flights each evening to Miami. After we didn’t get on the first flight, we prayed and told the Lord that we knew we were in His hands and He was in control.
All of a sudden Jerry looked over at the gate entrance and who do you think had just come on duty there? Sergio!
Jerry walked up to Sergio and tapped him on the shoulder; Sergio turned and smiled. When Jerry asked Sergio if he could step aside for a minute, he said, “Sure.” When Lenore joined them, Jerry asked Sergio to forgive us for not praying for him earlier. Of course Sergio graciously replied that Jerry didn’t need to ask his forgiveness, but Jerry assured Sergio that we did, and asked if we could pray for him then. He said, “Yes.”
Jerry asked the Lord to pull all the bitterness and anger out of Sergio and do a mighty work of healing and reconciliation in him. Jerry also prayed that Jesus would come into Sergio’s life, and that He would send believers to him who would love him in Christ. He told Sergio that God had great plans for him and asked God to especially bless him; Sergio thanked us, smiling. We returned to our seats full of the joy and exhilaration of the Holy Spirit, thanking God for the second chance, and for the opportunity to put into practice, before we left Argentina, what we had just learned about prayer evangelism. Hallelujah!
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