You may have heard that there are three kinds of answers to all our prayers: “Yes,” “No,” and “Wait.” During the past few years I have learned how to always receive a yes from God. There are two kinds of prayer He will never say “No” to.
The first is our praying for help related to our spiritual life, our growth, walk, and relationship with Him. When we humbly pray for wisdom and discernment in the study of His Word, for the gift of the Holy Spirit, for His will to be done, or to make us living testimonies, there is no way God will say “No.” These requests bring us closer to Him. But let me focus on the second kind of prayer God will not give a negative answer to: asking Him to use us for the salvation of others.
How It All Started
After my baptism in 2019, I earnestly prayed the second kind of prayer. I asked God to use me to share with others the wonderful experiences I was having with Him. And God did it! Before long I was sharing hundreds of books and thousands of GLOW tracts with people I met almost every day. I was a rideshare driver, so it was kind of easy. But I wanted to do more. My thoughts turned to people like me in my home country of Venezuela, people who have the same passion but do not have the resources to do the mission. Once again I asked God if He would help me.
Venezuela has suffered in recent years. According to United Nations data, “more than 7.1 million Venezuelans have left their homeland since 2015 amid an ongoing economic and political crisis.”1 If this statistic impacts you, consider these from the Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research for the Adventist Church (ASTR) for 2020.2
My first idea was to collect or buy such books as the Bible, The Great Controversy, and Steps to Christ, as well as GLOW tracts, then send four or five big boxes to Venezuela. I planned to include some clothes, shoes, and other items I did not use anymore. I figured this would cost around $500.
In May 2021 the Sabbath School superintendent of my local church invited me to give the mission feature. Instead of reading the regular mission story, she asked me to talk about the church in my home country. At the end of my presentation, I told the church about my plans to buy literature and send them in boxes, and I asked them to pray for our brothers and sisters in Venezuela. After Sabbath School a sister approached me and told me she wanted to help. As we spoke, she wrote a check for $500. My husband, Alex, who was next to me, was surprised that someone just did that. I, on the other hand, started tearing up. How could this sister have known how much I anticipated spending? This was the first clear “Yes” from God in answer to my prayers.
People began bringing Spanish literature along with bags full of clothes to my church. Every Sabbath after service we filled our SUV to the brim with bags and boxes. My house got so messy we could barely walk around without tripping over something, and we had no space to sit in the living room. To be honest, this created a bit of anxiety for my husband, who frequently asked me how I was going to pay to ship all those boxes. I had no answers, but moment by moment I kept praying asking God to help me. I wanted to be sure He was with me. One night during our devotions, Alex read something I had never heard before: “In every difficulty He has His way prepared to bring relief. Our heavenly Father has a thousand ways to provide for us, of which we know nothing.”3 In that moment I felt relief. He will take care of this! This is just another “Yes” from Him! I thought.
The Plan Develops
By mid-June, as my vision expanded, I felt I had to ask for financial help, so I approached my church, and they started donating. I bought more GLOW tracts, a few boxes of The Desire of Ages, The Ministry of Healing, and some medical missionary supplies. How would I send so many boxes to Venezuela? I needed a plan.
Ocean shipments are cheaper than air shipments, and most of the cargo companies that ship to Venezuela are in Florida. That meant the boxes would need to ship out of Florida. But costs of domestic shipping could be more expensive than overseas shipping! To save money, we needed to take the boxes from Maryland to Florida. I thought of driving our SUV, but with 20 or 30 boxes, we would surely need a truck. Three times I made the truck reservation, and three times it mysteriously got canceled. Finally, only a couple of days before my travel date, I found a rental company that rented the truck to me for much less than my previous reservations. The total cost for six days of rental was $139 with unlimited miles—a deal that, to this day, I have not been able to find again. I have no doubt this was another positive response from God.
During those last two weeks we daily saw the hand of God in this small ministry venture. Miracle after miracle, small things I asked God for in my heart suddenly came to my hands. There is not enough room to write about it all.
We had planned to travel from Baltimore, Maryland, to Hialeah, Florida, on Saturday night, July 31, 2021. I had no idea what the total expenses would be. I wasn’t sure if we would have enough money to pay for fuel and the shipping expenses. Meanwhile, it seemed that the more boxes I packed, the more things there remained to pack. I wasn’t even sure if everything was going to fit in the truck! Alex kept asking me if I had collected all the money needed to cover all the expenses. My answer was “God will provide.” In my heart I had two more requests: one was that I wanted more books and Bibles, and the other was that none of the boxes would be returned to Baltimore, that I would get enough money to send all the boxes to Venezuela.
God Provides
One day at the beginning of the last week before our trip, I received a call from an unknown number. I did not answer. But while driving back home from work, I felt impressed to call the number back. When I told the man that I had missed a call from him, he replied that he had not made the call and that his phone had probably dialed by accident. I replied, “Maybe God wanted us to greet each other,” and prepared to say goodbye. Just before hanging up, he asked me my name, and when I answered, he asked me if I was from Venezuela. This surprised me, but I thought maybe he had noticed my accent, since we were speaking in Spanish. What surprised me even more was that he asked me if I was the person collecting literature to send to Venezuela. “OK, wait a minute. Who are you?” I asked him.
“Our heavenly Father has a thousand ways to provide for us of which we know nothing.”4 This wonderful promise was being fulfilled in my life at that very moment. The gentleman I was speaking with was a member of a Hispanic Adventist church more than an hour from my house. Yet somehow God was using a person I had never met before to give another “Yes” to my prayers.
“Do you need more of The Great Controversy or Steps to Christ books?” he asked me.
“Oh, sure! And thank you!” I replied.
“How many?”
Without really thinking, I answered: “As many as you can give.”
He asked me if I had enough room in the truck and how I would pay for the shipping. I replied with the same thing I kept saying to my husband: “God will provide.” We agreed that on Thursday he would come to my house to bring me the books. This was another blessing. God knew I didn’t have time that week to go pick up the books. That Thursday afternoon this brother dropped off boxes with about 300 Bibles, 900 of The Great Controversy, and 1,200 Steps to Christ.
There was no room inside my house for even one more box, so we left these boxes outside on the balcony. I invited the kind man in for some water, and with difficulty we walked through the mess. As I served him the water, he asked me again if I had the money to pay for the whole shipment. I told him that I wasn’t sure how much money we would need, but that I was sure God would provide. He pulled out an envelope and handed it to me. I could not believe it! This stranger called me on my phone by “mistake,” and suddenly it turned out that he knew about me and what I was doing. He not only offered me books and Bibles, but brought them to my house himself, and gave me cash to help with the shipping expenses.
In Florida I spent two days at the shipping company sorting out shipping details as the boxes were to be distributed to 16 different states in Venezuela. I had not counted the total number of boxes until they were all invoiced. When it was done, a total of 82 boxes were to be shipped. Throughout the process I was a little afraid that the money was not going to be enough. As I was organizing the distribution of the boxes, I begged God that I would neither have money left over nor fall short of money. When I asked the owner of the shipping company for the total, he told me it was $1,999.90. I will never forget this amount, because inside the envelope that the kind brother had given me at my house was $2,000. I could not believe it!
God Wants to Say “Yes”!
In my daily prayers I always ask God to help me help others. During the first year of this ministry, we sent 203 hymnals, 330 packs of GLOW tracts, more than 2,500 Bibles, more than 10,000 Great Controversy books, more than 20,000 other writings of Ellen White, about 70,000 El Centinela magazines, 164,000 postcards with the Ten Commandments, and other different pieces of literature. In just one year we shipped a total of 467 boxes. Today we have reached 21 of the 23 states in my home country and the city of Caracas, and more than 500 Adventists have received support for their missionary work. I pray every day for the extraordinary privilege God has given me to work on behalf of those who also have a passion to bring the gospel to those in need. Now I understand better the meaning of James 4:3: “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives” (NIV). This is how God always says “Yes” to me, and I know He wants to say “Yes” to you.
1 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-63279800; see also https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/venezuela-emergency.html (accessed Apr. 12, 2023).
2 2021 Annual Statistical Report, New Series, vol. 3, Report of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists’ 2020 Statistics, pp. 21, 22, 43, https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Statistics/ASR/ASR2021.pdf.
3 Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898, 1940), p. 330.
4 Ellen G. White, The Ministry of Healing (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1905), p. 481.
