Testimonies

In this podcast episode, Alga shares her testimony of restoration and growth after surgery and recovery. She talks about the importance of adjusting her attitude and rediscovering herself. She also shares how God provided for her during a trip to visit family. Kyle and Melody Webb share their journey of leaving their teaching job and returning to Honduras to work with the Matikas. They faced challenges and fundraising difficulties but ultimately saw God's faithfulness. They also announce that they are expecting a baby. Sue shares his experience with sensory processing disorder and how it has affected their marriage, but they have learned to work through it with God's help. They share their joy in the fulfillment of God's promises and the growth of their family. Another member of the fellowship shares her experiences of healing, promotion at work, and learning to trust God's plans. They emphasize the presence of God with them throughout the year, even in difficult times. They faced loss Welcome to CCI Fellowship's podcast thank you for joining us at CCI Fellowship we are reaching God, reaching each other, and reaching our community. We pray that this week's message challenges you in your walk with the Lord, causes you to grow in your faith, and encourages you in your love for the Word of God. Come on up, Melody, as we begin with Alga's testimony. Last year for me was a year of restoration in many areas of my life. After my surgery and recovery in October of 2023, I slowly began a journey of recovering what was my physical state, but also understanding and comprehending the effects medications had on me, but also my attitude towards other external situations that surrounded me. My attitude needed an adjustment. Through the year there were ups and downs, issues with my work, etc. However, through different conversations with people the Lord placed in my path, I recognized that I hadn't felt true to myself in a while. I realized at some point I stopped dreaming and was almost stuck in cyclical action. I had the opportunity to travel to visit family in Portland and Hawaii in October and November of this year. God provided for my ticket and beyond when traveling seemed financially impossible to me. It was a relaxed time and the trip allowed me to evaluate and realize other changes I need to make, but not in a way where I feel pressure to make them. God is good and gracious, and I can summarize with Romans 12-2, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will. As you know, we are Kyle and Melody Webb, and we have been here in Honduras and at CCI for quite a while. In fact, Melody as well as Christabel were one of the first people here and the longest members of CCI's fellowship that we have here today. With that said, you may or may not know that we both met at Academia Los Pinares while working there, and that in September of 2022, we both kind of looked to each other and were like, I think this is it. I think this is going to be the final year that we are at Pinares, which is kind of strange because that was the very beginning of the school year, and we both knew separately that it was going to be our last year, and it's not the normal time when we would be evaluating whether we were coming back or not. So we knew that it was God, and so I started looking. I started looking all over the world at what I might be doing in education. So I started looking in Korea, I started looking in Germany, looking at all these different places, looking in the U.S., looking in Canada, looking back in Hawaii where I'm from. But everywhere I looked, although there were positions that I was qualified for and that were, you know, like education, huge pool, like there's a lot of need, nothing really jumped out. Now, Melody kept saying, well, we know that God is pulling us out of Pinares, but he didn't say that we were supposed to leave Honduras, and I was like, that's silly. Why would God pull us out of the best Christian school in Honduras? Sorry if you went to another one, but that's the best one. But, you know, why would he be pulling us out of that and having us come back to what I would consider a subpar? You know, like if we have the best, why would he bring us something different? And so, long story short, God did need us to come back, and he led us to come back and work with the Matikas. Now, what that meant was that we were leaving everything. We had to start from square one again. We had nothing. The school provided everything for us, and we had to go fundraise for a long time, and there was this one moment in our fundraising where we were stuck. We were stuck at about 30 percent, and we were like, what are we going to do? And we're like, well, we know God is calling us to this, and then I started getting offers of doing other things, and we're like, no, that's not what God called us to do. And so, long story short, is that God provided above and beyond. He got us through that. He showed up, and time and time again, when we were discouraged, he shows up, gives us some encouragement, and right now, we are back. We're back doing what God's called us to do, and we were not situated here like we were at Penares. We're actually, like, blessed even more. And so, God has shown up. If you want to hear more about it, go ahead and talk to us after. We'll give you more details. So, we're going to share this three minutes. We'll see how this goes. I wrote things down so I don't ramble. So, if you don't know, I'm pregnant. We're going to have a baby in March, and while every baby is obviously a miracle, and every story is unique, we wanted to share ours. I've always had a desire to be a mom, and I felt God had given me some specific words and promises about future children, but there were several situations over the last few years that made me almost give up on believing that it was possible for us. The first was my own health. I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome in 2022, which obviously highly affects fertility, but God healed that on a journey of a longer story, but that was one of the reasons why I almost gave up on this promise. But the other reason was that we were facing some really difficult situations in the first two years of our marriage, which not only seemed to be prolonging the possibility of children, but also actually brought me to the point where I wasn't sure if our marriage would last. We seemed to be having a harder time connecting and communicating than the normal struggles of marriage, and I was feeling really lonely and frustrated and at a loss of what to do. So, Sue is going to share the next part. Well, I didn't realize that having a wife would be so annoying. No offense. And I learned lots of things. She's always there. Always there. I don't know if you feel that, or is it just me? Obviously I do love her, don't worry. I also learned that I can smell everything. Sounds weird to say that, and I can hear everything all the time, and I can't sit facing a window. It really hurts my eyes. And also, most people, in their spectrum of feeling, they can go to minus 10 or plus 10. I only go to plus 2 or minus 2. Other people go to plus 15 and minus 15. But it turns out I have this thing called sensory processing disorder. So, I just process things totally different. Another thing called ASD. So, whereas most people work like an Android phone, I work like an iPhone. So, they do the same thing, but obviously I do it better. Just the way that my brain works is completely different. And so, we've been learning how to work through that. You might imagine how that can affect a relationship and a marriage. And so, God has helped us work through that. So, in our 10 seconds that I have, at the beginning of this year, the declaration was that the fruit that had been forgotten would come to fulfillment this season. And I really felt that God was saying that that was for us. And actually on Easter, God kind of appeared to us in a very miraculous thing and basically said, And He did it. By the end of the year, here we are and we're very excited to keep growing our family with all of you guys. So, Amen. Okay. I'm going to share how God has been faithful in my life in this year. It wasn't easy for me at all. There were moments of suffering, challenges, and even forgiveness that I had to work through. But looking back, I see how God was teaching me to let go of what wasn't from Him and shaping me to trust His promises more deeply. Earlier this year, a lesion was discovered and I had to go through a minor surgery. The doctor suspected it to be something more serious, but God in His mercy showed up. The results came back less severe than expected and He also provided for all the costs of the procedure. Today, I am completely healed, a testimony of His provision and His healing power. Later in the year, something else unexpected happened. I was promoted at work, so God added blessings to my life in ways I could not ever imagine and even in a season of difficulty. So through it all, I've learned that God's plans are always good, even when the process is painful. The same God who healed me and opened doors for me will do the same for you. So whether you're in a season of abundance or in a season of struggle, keep trusting Him. He will not leave you where you are. He is pruning, shaping, and blessing you in His perfect time. I also wrote it down. During these times, typically we hear, Emmanuel, God is with us. Whether we get it from Isaiah 7.14 or from the Bible, God is with us. Whether we get it from Isaiah 7.14 or from Matthew 1.23, we know that Christ was born and that His name is Emmanuel, which means God is with us. And He definitely has been there for us, with us, through this year. We began this year still grieving loss, and we got the news that we had to move on the same week that I had eye surgery. We cling to the truth that God is who He is and that we were where He wanted us to be. Sometimes it was hard seeing things just come out of nowhere, piling one on top of the other. But we continued. In April, I got the worst call that a mom can get. At 9 a.m., a voice telling me, do not panic, your son needs an ambulance. And there we went, a broken femur. Physical therapy and doctor visits doubled, not only for me, but now for my son. May was hit with a call asking me to visit my job site the next day, driving to San Pedro Sula knowing that I was going to be let go and that my whole department was fired. I kept praying what my husband prayed over me as I left the house that morning. The Lord gave it away, the Lord take it away, may the name of the Lord be praised. This year, we have suffered loss, the loss of someone very dear to us as a family. And then, we get hit with soul surgery. One of the hardest things that I had to face was signing paperwork not knowing what was happening with my husband. December hit us hard again. My father fell from a third story floor, but he's here to tell the story. But through this year, we have learned that this is not tragedy. Nothing that happened was tragedy. In the Hebrew culture, tragedy doesn't exist. There is a word, asan, that means mishap, disaster, or calamity, but not tragedy in the sense that we know it. But through this, we know that we have to have God with us. We saw him finding a house when we shouldn't have. We saw him in the surgeries with successful outcomes when they were telling me that my husband was dying. We saw it in the feet of my son that's right here who's walking and has nothing taken away from him. He doesn't have a limp and he's walking normally. We saw it in the impossible when the world said that it was not possible. I see it every day being able to see when the doctor told me I was not going to be able to see anymore. I see it that everything that was meant to be a tragedy is something that God has restituted for us. Now, I have a job that I know is for God's purpose in my life, and it's something that has reignited my son's dream and a prayer that he started when he was eight years old. Our family is all serving the Lord. That in itself is counting more than I can say. We have seen God's miracles, signs, and wonders. From the outside, when I start telling the story, you can say, check please, their finances were touched, their jobs were touched, their health was touched, their emotions were touched, but God has touched us. God has been with us this week, and he's never going to leave us. This year, in January 12th, Javier and I found out that I was pregnant. We were beyond happy because in 2023, God already had put in our hearts the desire of a second child. So, with all the joy and excitement, we went to our first medical appointment to see, for the very first time, our new baby. The doctor started asking some basic questions to know the possible date of conception so he can calculate his age so far. About this fact, we didn't have any doubts because having a one-year-old baby didn't give us that much opportunities to give a wrong date, if you know what I mean. So, when the doctor started to check the gestational facts and take measurements of it, he started concerning because it didn't fit with the measurements it was supposed to have according to time and the date we gave him. He looked and reviewed many times the chart that tells how many weeks the embryo has depending on his measurements and continually told us it doesn't fit at all. So, we asked, what does that mean? He responded, possibly it's not developing well. You can all imagine what crossed our minds in that moment. Are we going to have a last? Is he going to have special needs? God, what is going to happen? So, with a sad but also cold expression on his face, the doctor told us, you should return in 10 days to see if it is growing more. We went out of the clinic, scared, concerned, and sad, remembering, and I remember coming into my car and start crying but also praying for my baby. For you formed my inner parts, you covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skillfully writing the lowest part of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed, and in your book they all were written, the day's passion for me, when as yet there were none of them. Psalm 139. So, every time a bad thought came to my mind, I prayed again and repeated this verse. On that weekend, we received our prophetic declaration for this year, and that declaration said, The anointing of Joseph within me will ensure that my fruits are not left undeveloped, absorbed, or consumed by the worm. My fruit will reach the optimum point of ripeness, and each month of this year will not end scarcely but in abundant and generous harvest. So, now we are here with Rodrigo, right? And he's all we ask for. He's the perfect add to our family now. Well, I have three minutes, but I want to start asking you this question. Have you ever been afraid of something? This year, I had to face many fears, and the number one was the fear of losing another baby, because last year we lost a baby. And we found out we were pregnant June 4th this year, but I didn't feel that fear. I knew the promises God had given us in the previous days. Mother's Day, I remember God telling me, You're going to have a baby girl through this boy. He said, Mommy, where is my sister going to sleep? And he was so sure about what he was asking that I was like, What? And when we came to church, Pastor Saul was preaching about Timothy's mom, Eunice, and God told me, That's going to be your baby's name. And then Annie came and said, God told me to tell you that you're going to have a baby girl. So we knew we were going to have a baby girl called Eunice, and there she is. And exactly two months later, I was facing another of my greatest fears with a diagnosis of cancer for my mom. And I asked God, I want to know why is this happening so that I can pray about it. And he said, Okay, I'm going to heal your mom, but I'm going to make you go through this so you can see my power. And three weeks ago, we went to the oncologist and he said, Doña Hilma, I don't see any more cancer cells in this MRI. You are going to have to go through radiotherapy because there are cancer cells that are not visible to the human eye. And this is a complementary treatment, but you are healed. And you know, I knew what God had told me about healing my mom, giving us a baby girl. And well, he brought me to face my greatest fears, and I can tell you, he can do that for you. So no matter what 2025 brings, just know that God is able. Amen. Hey Church, my name is Annie and I wanted to share my testimony with you guys. So since I was a little kid, there was this evil spirit that would torment me at night. It would hold me down. I would feel how it would go through me or how it would just wake me up when I was right about to fall asleep. At the very worst of it, I was sleeping between two to three hours a day. It was really bad. Eventually, God saved me and I'm in quiet time with him. And I tell him, God, I trust you with everything. And he very lovingly tells me, no, you don't. And I was like, what do you mean? And he told me, you trust your night light and your phone to take better care of you at night than me. And what he meant by that is that I had figured out that if I had something saying on my phone and if I had my night light on throughout the whole night, the evil spirit wouldn't be as intense. It would bother me, but it wasn't as intense. I knew what he was asking of me and I'm not going to lie, I ignored him for a couple of days, but he kept bringing it up and I was like, okay, we're doing this. So I went to bed and I was very confident. I was very confident. I had written down a bunch of Bible verses about God's protection and our sovereignty in Christ. And I had read them all before going to bed and I turned everything off. And that thing went crazy. It was horrible. I didn't last more than ten minutes with the lights off. I failed. And I felt really bad about it because I was like, I don't know why I can't trust you, but I know that you asked this of me. So I tried the next day and the next day and the next day. By the seventh night, I was very frustrated with myself because I was like, why can't I just trust that you're going to take care of whatever is bothering me at night? And I said to God, God, I know that you asked this of me. I know that you're in control. I don't know why it has not happened yet, but I am going to thank you for the things that you have already done in my life. So I started listing all the things that he had already done. And I woke up the next day. I didn't even realize when I fell asleep and I just started crying out of excitement because it had been the first night in as long as I could remember that I had been able to sleep for more than an hour without any interruption. I had slept for over eight hours. And to me, that was like unbelievable. And since that day, God delivered me from that evil spirit that bothered me at night. I love you, church. God bless you. Bye. Well, praise God. Some of these testimonies are not what we would consider light things. God has done some amazing, incredible things in our lives. Just a couple of days ago, we were in a situation on the highway that could have resulted in us not being here. And God was with us and protected us. And the verse that came to mind this morning as I was praying, and I find it fitting as the worship team comes up, I find it fitting as a way to sum up all of these testimonies, is found in 2 Corinthians 4. In verse 16, it says, Therefore, we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we do not look at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen. For the things that are seen are temporary and the things that are not seen are eternal. This momentary light affliction, what we consider so terrible and so grave and so heavy in relationship to the glory of God that is revealed in us. And that's why we wanted to have these testimonies shared. So that we see not the heaviness of the things that we go through, but the incredible glory of God manifested through His answering the prayers that we pray, the concerns that we have. Even many times when we haven't been thinking about it, God moves. Many times when we come to Him with our prayers and with our problems and with the things that we face, He's already got an answer set aside for it. And He knows the time that He's going to manifest that answer. But our light afflictions can't be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us at His coming. So don't walk by what you see. Don't walk by your circumstances. Don't be jailed by the circumstances of life. Don't be hindered by the things that you see. Walk by faith, which is walking according to the things that we don't see. Because He is always with us, ever there to protect us, ever there to provide for us. He is there to prove Himself faithful, because He can't deny His word. If He said, I'll never leave you nor forsake you, that's a promise. That's His word. If He said, by the stripes that Jesus bore on His back, you're healed, then that's a promise. That's there. If He says in Psalm 91 that He'll give His angels charge over us and protect us, that means His angels will be there to protect us. We've definitely seen that this weekend. So encourage yourself in the Lord. The verse that Kyle read at the beginning, that they will say, surely God is among you. You can see that surely God is among us. And I know that each one of us over this past year can stand up here with a testimony of what God has done and how God has provided. And though some of you may be still waiting for that provision, some of you may still be waiting for those prayers to be answered, for resolutions to come, know that God is not bound by calendar year. He is bound by His plans and He is bound by His word and He will bring it to pass. Just keep the faith, keep your eyes on Him. Amen. Thank you for listening to this week's podcast. If you are ever in the Tegucigalpa area and looking for an English-speaking congregation, please join us on Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. in the main auditorium of Iglesia CCI in Colonial Trepichi, just off Boulevard Sollapa near Una. If you would like prayer or more information about our church, contact us at fellowship.cci at gmail.com. That's fellowship.cci at gmail.com. Or follow us on social media. We hope to see you or hear from you soon. Blessings.