Saved from the Fire
By Andrew McChesney
One summer, a missionary family was camped with other Adventist families at a church campsite in Greece. It was a dry, hot summer, and a big forest fire broke out three or four kilometers from the campsite on a Sunday afternoon.
The adults and four missionary children watched and waited to see what would happen.
Slowly, the fire came closer and closer and was more and more dangerous. The campers had to act. They formed a circle and began to sing and pray.
As the campers sang and prayed, a wind started to blow. The wind blew the flames away from the campsite. The group sang and prayed for 20 minutes, and the wind kept blowing the fire farther and farther away. The adults grew tired. The children grew tired.
“OK, the danger is over,” someone said. The group broke up.
However, within minutes, the wind changed direction, and the fire raced back toward their campsite. “Evacuate!” someone shouted. “We have to leave now!” said another person.
Most of the campers packed and fled to the safety of the beach, about 700 meters away.
Seven men stayed at the campsite with two newly arrived firefighters.
Around midnight, the fire came within 100 meters to the fence surrounding the campsite. Flames could be seen licking the tops of pine trees. If the wind blew one burning particle inside the fence, the whole campsite could go up in flames.
The five men and two firefighters formed an emergency line, but they knew there was little that they could do. The fire crept closer and closer. The Adventists prayed.
Just when the fire came within 10 meters of the fence, a big brigade of firefighters arrived and put out the flames.
In the morning, the campers looked at the scene in astonishment. The entire area around the fence was black. Even a neighboring campsite had been burned to ashes. The Adventist campsite looked like a green oasis in the middle of a blackened wasteland. The fire burned on both sides of the camp but didn’t touch it.
“The Lord stopped the fire right at the fence,” said Father, whose full name is pastor Kim Papaioannou. “We knew it was not going to touch us, and our camp was saved.”
Andrew McChesney is the Editor of Adventist Mission.
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World Church Prayer Requests
November 24 – December 1, 2019
• PRAYER REQUEST: Pray for the Middle East and North Africa Union (MENAU), and the cities that have no Adventist presence—that God will raise up laborers for the harvest. There are 48 cities of 1 million or more people in this territory alone, some of which a Seventh-day Adventist has never set foot in.
• PRAYER REQUEST: The 10/40 window is home to 236 cities of a million or more residents. Please pray for committed missionaries willing to minister to the unreached people of these cities.
• PRAYER REQUEST: Please pray for the “Health for Every Day” radio broadcast airing in Tokyo, Japan. Ask God to guide and bless the presenters, bring listeners, and connect those listeners to local churches.
• PRAYER REQUEST: Please continue to pray for the Church in Iceland to know how to reach out to and effectively witness in their communities. Pray for the individuals who received one of the 150,000 GLOW tracts passed out by Generation.Youth.Christ. youth this past July. Pray for those who have started coming to church to continue to grow.
• PRAYER REQUEST: Pray for the General Conference session that will be held June 25th – July 4, 2020. Pray that God would prepare His church and leaders for the Holy Spirit outpouring to come.
• PRAYER REQUEST: Please pray for the coming Ten Days of Prayer, January 8-18, 2020. Please pray earnestly that many people all over the world will choose to be part of this powerful Ten Days of Prayer focusing on cultivating a deeper experience with the Lord. To learn more, visit: www.tendaysofprayer.org