Team: Forming

In steps Emily Ingole...

We were staying at Mike and Becky Ingole's house (where we had stayed on the way to MN, too; such awesome people!), but their only child lived two hours away in Columbus and worked as a nurse. I had never met her before, nor did I know she was even uncertain about coming to the conference (no wonder I had prayed so earnestly before we left Olean, that I would meet this person; but I'm getting ahead of myself, eh?), but come she finally did. And, oddly enough, I recognized her. Though, like I said, I had never met her, and any pictures I had seen of her hardly did her justice (she's much better looking in real life!), I somehow knew instantly she was Becky's daughter. But I also knew something else which only became tangible later as we were hanging out around the diner table back at the house; for some strange reason I kept wanting to encourage her to go to the Philippines with us!

Yes, apparently when I leave something to God in prayer when I'm in one state in the US, and then go to another state, I forget it completely! I could not seem to put two and two together; in fact, I forgot both prayers completely for over a week afterward!

So, like I said before, we had awesome services in OH. During breaks in the services and late nights/meals at the Ingole's house I met several people from the church--one was Michelle Harter, but that's later--and then Emily Ingole came to one of the last services. And of course, she was then at her parents' house for diner...Becky had shared with me that she had told Emily my testimony of how God had healed me from the wheelchair, but that she would probably love to hear the more detailed version from me. So during one of our first meetings, that's pretty much what I did: shared my testimony and life with her. But later, as we were sitting around the table, and most of the group had left and headed home, I turned to her and Tim and all I wanted to do was encourage her to go the Philippines. It kept popping into my head while I was sharing my testimony of what we were doing next, and yet again it was there. So finally, I figured it wouldn't hurt to say a little something.

"You know, I wish you could come with us to the Philippines!" Right after I said it, I thought of the conversation I'd had with Deb before about how careful she was who went on trips with her. And now I had just suggested that someone I had barely known for a couple hours should come! Oi! I was in so much trouble...that is until I realized Emily had just brushed it off as a "maybe someday," thing...I thought I was saved, but I could not get the idea out of my head. And I believe I must have annoyed Emily over the next week and then some about it. I never really thought she would, but yet I could not get the idea out of my head that she should! (I think I was just as annoyed with myself as she was with me by the weekend of Deb's conference at her home church in Salamanca.)

During the last day or two in OH, I had mentioned to a new young friend I had met there that it would be cool if she could come to Deb's conference. But in the end, when the end of the week rolled around and people were arriving for Salamanca's women's conference, only Becky and Emily Ingole ended up coming from OH. Which was great, because then they both got to stay here at the house with us, and I had wanted Emily to come so I could get to know her better (again, another time she didn't want to come to a conference but God gave her the boot, in a matter of speaking, and she came!).

Well, once again, I was bugging her about the Philippines. That is until one morning, when I was in the shower. I realized how annoying I had to be to her (I was so annoyed with myself, she must have felt crazy!) and was talking it out with God in the shower. And this is when I finally remember the prayer I had last prayed before going to OH: the one about the sixth person. And in a non-audible way, it was like God said, "Remember that dream you had? Which bugged you because you could not remember the name of the sixth person?" Of course as soon as I said yes, it was like my brain clicked. And I remembered all the times I heard Becky speak of her daughter—even during a brief meeting several years before as Deb and her were driving through my old hometown—and I laughed! The name had been Emily Ingole, of course.

Well, I decided to take it easy and not bug her so much about going. I knew she was supposed to go, so I just figured God would have to tell her; I had bugged her so much, I knew she wouldn't know it if I suddenly got serious about it...Wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what God did in the next service!

That evening, as a small group of us were sitting in the living room talking into the early morning hours, she not only shared her testimony and life with us, but she told us what God had just told her earlier that day...Well you bet that early the next morning Deb got the ball rolling. And, though over the next couple days there were glitches in getting her tickets (in the middle of that we had another awesome women's conference in NH), in the end there were six of us, all going off to the Philippines.

Yes, a team of SIX...God heard, and answered—yet again!