Miracles in the Mountains: Healing the Orphaned and Broken with Bethany Frazer

Introduction and Bethany's Mission 0:00

Thank you. Well, hello everyone. Welcome back to Take Back My Brain. Today we are stepping into some faith and healing and fierce, fierce love. So I am joined by the incredible Bethany Frazier of What Matters Ministries and pastor at Casa Angelina Orphanage in Guatemala. Bethany has devoted her life to rescuing, restoring, and raising up children who have survived unspeakable trauma. And she's seen God move in amazing ways that will leave you breathless. So today she's gonna share her story, her mission, and the healing love of our first love, Jesus.

So Bethany, thank you for being on the podcast. I am so excited you are here. Thank you so much, Lori, for having me. This is a privilege and to speak to all your audience, say hello to everybody. And just to say, I love what you just said, that He's our first love, because when God is the first love in your life, you give Him access to all the parts of you. And when you give Him access to all the parts of you, He can heal you. And everything in life, literally, in this world is something where it requires something from you.

And there's so much giving we do on a daily basis to our family, to our friends, at our work and job, wherever you go. And it's incredible how many ways there are that we have to give. And yet the restoring of our soul is what the Holy Spirit does the best, what God does the best in our life. And if we don't have enough of that time, then we can give out of an empty place and then we feel. brokenness come back again. And so I just love that you said that just to start already this time that we're talking and thank you again for having me.

it's so great to have you on today. I have to know what's for and those of you who don't know, which most of you don't, my assistant Ginger is actually down with Bethany right now at the orphanage. And so she's the one who kind of connected us together. So I have to know. I don't know much about your ministry. So tell us what is what matters ministry and how this all began for you. Okay, so What Matters Ministries and Missions is a nonprofit, a 501c3, located in the United States of America. And it's a ministry that my parents founded a long time ago.

My parents have been in ministry now 41 years. So they founded this ministry a long time ago and it started just with them traveling and preaching. And as that grew, they literally miraculously, it was like a miracle story, got a trailer home. moved with us myself and my youngest sister was just a little baby and then more babies came along the way. But just traveling around the United States in a trailer home and preaching and ministering and that kind of thing. That then developed into them pastoring in Texas and then doing missions work out of that.

So I grew up from a very young age traveling to different countries and we would take teams from different churches or different schools, businesses, all sorts of things. They'd raise money and we would take them to contacts we had in a lot of different countries and we would build orphanages, build Bible schools, build churches, build hospitals, and leave it for the people who did the ministry there. And over the years, we really began to feel the Lord was calling us to do our own orphanage and just waited for him to really sink into our hearts where that was going to be.

And he first spoke it to my dad um and told him that he wanted him to do an orphanage in Guatemala. so we began at that time, that was 2003. And we began to look for property here in Guatemala. My husband and I were working in the office and I was working as the CFO for the ministry. And we were just working and doing and taking people places and all that. when we found this land, it was really beautiful actually because uh on that trip, my dad was alone and it was just like one hillside. There was nothing convenient about this land.

There was no paved road. There was no uh electricity even in the closest village.

How What Matters Ministries Began 4:06

There was nothing. But when he walked onto the property, he heard children singing and he heard the Lord say to him, I'm going to heal children here. And that was the beginning of it. He called me from the property. I'll never forget that phone call. And he said, I found it. This is it. And he was crying. And I said, how much does it cost? And he was like, and we didn't have a dollar for it. But within 24 hours, we had all the money and purchased the land. So that is how it began. And that was December of 2003.

Wow. That is amazing. So you know when things like happen like that, that God's gonna do some crazy stuff. yeah, he is for sure. And the ministry is, based, we have five pillars to the ministry. So we do work in the United States. We do the work we do here. Our missions branches are here in Guatemala and then also in Kenya, Africa. And so those are the main places that we work with missions internationally. But um our five pillars are rescue orphans, help widows, feed the poor, build a local church and win souls around the world.

So between those five things, that sums up really everything we do in the three main countries that we work in. We still do take teams and go to different countries and do things now and then for other ministries also that we have established, very established relationships with. I'll be traveling actually to England in December this year and doing stuff over there. So, but mainly the biggest part of our ministry is Casa Angelina here in Guatemala, where I'm talking to you from. That's amazing. So you've seen God move in incredible ways over the years.

What are some of the biggest or best moments that you can think of that there was healing, know, physical, emotional, whatever it might be that stands out to you? Okay. Okay. How many stories do you want, Lori? That's the real question. Okay. Let's, I'll just go with the first ones that are on my mind. Um, and this is probably why I believe that God is a healer is because of the first miracle that I saw when I was nine and we were in Mexico and we were praying over people in a little church. didn't speak Spanish.

And of course I was a little girl and my dad spoke Spanish and he was preaching in Spanish and it was a beautiful service, but it was a tiny like little church. And it was made of recycled sort of wood that had holes all in it and the floor was dirt and we were sitting on the dirt. And I remember that he did, I just knew he did healing because all these sick people started coming up and there was a lady who walked up and she had a humpback and she had a cane. And so she was almost literally vertical like that.

And it had been a long time. She was very, she was really, uh I think at the end, they told me she was 86 years old and she had had this for over 50 years of her life. So she's walking up to the front to pray for healing. And I had always been raised to pray and minister with my dad. So I got up and I walked up to her and I'm ready to pray for her. And of course I didn't know Spanish, so I was speaking in tongues at the time. And I just laid my hands on her back and just started speaking in tongues over her body.

And I felt, I felt while my eyes were closed, the hump go down under my hands. And when I opened my eyes, she looked at me and she stood up straight through the cane. And of course, I have no idea what she said, but it was a lot of joyous words in Spanish at that time. Of course, I speak Spanish now. But we began to jump and scream and the whole church just screamed and it was revival. That church later ended up having massive revival in the whole village and thousands of people ended up coming.

The church expanded. It was huge. But it was it was the first time I will never forget the feeling of of the hump going down under my hands. Yeah. Last week, I just had two miracles when we were just ministering. And there was a young boy who came up and his mom brought him up for prayer. And he was he had all crooked teeth and she was praying for healing in his teeth and his teeth straightened like just like that. Another man, he was totally deaf in the ear. I had 21 people that were deaf and God just opened ears one by one, by one, by one, by one.

We've seen with the beautiful children here at Casa Angelina, multiple incredible miracles. We had a girl that came here when she was three. And she had spina bifida and they had put her on a really heavy duty medication that as a three year old, I mean, she wasn't even able to play like she was so drunk. It was very, very, very difficult. And when I saw her, I heard the Holy Spirit say that he was going to heal her. And so we anointed her with oil. We prayed over her little body. And I really believe that with intense, of course, we had a lot of medical supervision and our doctors and nurses were there, but that we need to to stop the medication because she was not even able to hardly respond.

And sometimes, of course, we are in a third world country and sometimes they do use medicines that are not appropriate for the age of the person or just many different situations. And so we waited three weeks with a very careful observation and took her back to the doctor three weeks later. They did all the tests again and they could not find any signs of spina bifida in her body. And to this day now she's 17 and I mean. never had a sign of anything ever. So another one. I have many, many more, but those are a few.

my goodness. That makes my heart so happy. Makes my heart so happy. So thank you for sharing those. You have this orphanage down there. And so how do children come to you? What are their situations? So 100 % of the children that we have are through, we get them through the judges. So the judges have social workers and those social workers are sent out into the villages or into the cities.

Miracles and Healings in Ministry 9:52

And sorry, there's a little fly. And they're sent into those areas to look for any cases that have been brought before the police. So let's say that you're a neighbor, you hear children screaming next door, you go to the local police, you say, I'm here to. put in a report that I've heard this at this house. Now again, we're talking not like anything looks in the United States. It's not like houses with numbers or streets with names. It's just locations, right? So you just say that this is, heard this, it didn't sound okay.

Can you investigate? This could never be investigated or it could be investigated. And so in the cases where there is an investigation and the judge will send a social worker into the area, They see what's happening to the children and then they remove the children from the home with police there with them. And they take them to the judge and then the judge interviews the children, sees what's happening um and then calls an orphanage and puts the children in the home. are only 14 judges in the entire country of Guatemala who actually deal with children's cases, 14.

And UNICEF's last number was a little over 500,000 children still on the streets of Guatemala. So it is... there's an epidemic of children who have been badly abused, are completely abandoned, and are living and surviving on their own. And so um it's a very tragic situation. Every time we receive a child, they have been 100 % abandoned. Most of them have been either living on the street or surviving in some capacity on their own. Just two days ago, we received a little boy. His mother works in prostitution, and she's also uh an alcoholic.

So she either brought him with her on the street where he suffered all types of different abuse. And then when she tried to leave him with someone, she left him with the grandma, but the grandma has her own vices that she is also also hasn't. So she left him in a dog, I'm going to say kennel, but it's not really a kennel. It's just an area where they house about 17 dogs and that's where he slept and lived. So in one of those occasions, his eye was actually bitten out by a dog. So we just received him two days ago and I see him and he's like, I mean, he's missing an eye.

He's got all sorts of skin diseases, rashes. I mean, he's been living with animals who have fleas, who have bite him. It's been a really horrible situation and we just got him two days ago. So the first thing we do when a child comes into Casangelina is we have our own medical clinic here as well. And so we do a whole scan of everything, know, blood work, uh urine, feces. do, we check. with an ultrasound, all their organs. We do everything. We got this beautiful two little sisters. was six and one was eight.

And I noticed when they came in that the six-year-old was just walking strangely. This could be because of abuse they've suffered. This could be an accident that happened. We never know. But we have an amazing uh x-ray machine as well. And so we did an x-ray of her legs and found that her femur was actually broken in two. And she was walking on it still or trying to walk on it. And she had fallen and had a really bad accident and had told her mother about it. But her mother was involved in a lot of her own em situations.

And so she never helped her. And when we got we were getting her casted and the cast put on her legs, she was crying with joy the whole time. She just kept saying, I'm not going to feel pain anymore. I'm not going to feel pain anymore. And it just broke my heart thinking. And every time a child comes, they because they've been in survival mode, they're not complainers, you know, they come and they might have a tooth falling out, they may have extreme pain in the area and they haven't told anyone about it.

So the first thing we do is do a full medical checkup on everybody to see what it is that really is going on in their bodies and how we can help. Wow, that's amazing. So most of these kids, their parents are still, are they still alive? They just happen to be in situations where they can't care for these kids. would say, I'm going to say a person. children is a uh lot. It is a lot. But a lot of the reason of that is because you have women who, a lot of people, they don't get married. So they just, they, you know, make a unit, a partnership together.

They have children. He leaves her. The next man doesn't want those children. So she leaves them on the street and she makes another family basically with him. If he leaves, she leaves them on the street and she makes a new family with the next one. That is the most common thing that happens here. And that's why there are so many children that are not in families. And so the children that we have, we usually take children anywhere from brand new babies that have been left on steps. And that is a very common occurrence here.

About a month ago, we had a little baby brought to us that was abandoned at a fire station. And so we brought him in and raised him and all that. And then eventually they found someone that was family. And so they did send him to them. But it just depends on the situation. So most of our kids are permanent, meaning that they have no family members that can take care of them. That's either because they don't have any parents that are living or don't have anyone that is actually able to take care of them, hasn't abused them already.

90 % of our children have been severely sexually abused as well. So it's a mix of all that. So some of them might have parents, but they might be their abusers and therefore they're not allowed to live with them. Right, so how long do you keep the children? Are they up for adoption? How does that work? We are the only orphanage in Guatemala who doesn't age out children. So once they turn 18, they don't have to leave. We actually are a high education orphanage. So all the children, once they graduate, what would be the equivalent of high school, they also go on to university then or to trade school.

So we offer that to all of the children if they want it. And if they don't, they don't have to do it. They can get a job and live life and do whatever they like to do. But if they want to do it. we offer that to them. So we have 43 in university right now, and those are universities all over Guatemala. We did have one that actually was invited to study in Spain and went to Madrid for a year, and that was an amazing experience for her. so many different situations, but we have all different ages because of that reason.

So they don't age out. 175 at the moment. Wow. Oh, that's incredible. 176 with a little boy who came two days ago. So yes, and those are all different ages. And again, it's just really miraculous. We're still young enough because we did buy the land, like I mentioned, in December of 2003, but we didn't get children until mid to the end of 2005, just because of the fact that we had to do all the paperwork and become certified as an orphanage and all those kinds of things, build the first house, all of that.

And so we're still young enough that our children, haven't had anyone yet that's graduated college and gone on to do something with that yet. But in the next like two years, I do have multiple that are gonna do that.

How Children Arrive at Casa Angelina 16:58

So are you excited? my goodness. I'm planning the biggest party you can ever imagine. We're gonna celebrate them huge. It's gonna be huge. Because it's so inspirational to the other children. So none of the children that we have have ever. had family that graduated high school or finished school ever. So they're the first generation to ever do that. And the first generation in most of their families, over 90 % of the children are the first to ever read or write in their families. So it's just incredible.

Yeah. So being in this third world country and doing that for all of these children, do you see that ripple effect going out or is it kind of just confined into your... No, absolutely. It's going out. It's all for going out. All of them, you know, when the children come, their hands are empty and they all they need so much because everything they should have had had been taken away from them. Right. But when they come to Casangelina, God fills their hands. And when he fills us with something, we have to give it, which I imagine I don't know your story, Lori, either, but I imagine something happened in your life.

And you said, I have to help people with what I now know. And that's what happens is God fills our hands and then we go, who can I give this to that I can also share this with? One of the ways that Casa Angelina does that now and that the children help us with while they're here at Casa Angelina is with our widows program. So we go into the villages up to an hour distance away in the circumference of about an hour away from Casa Angelina. And we go into those villages, talk to the mayors of the village, talk to the people in the village and learn where there are widows and widowers that have no family and no one taking care of them.

And I mean, these are ladies and gentlemen who live in homes made out of trash, who live in homes made out of sticks, out of mud, dried mud. They live out of what they call lamina here, which is just like sheet metal. uh Just homes that are not really homes. Dried corn stocks is one of the most common type of home. And then they're living in that type of a house and they don't have food to eat every day. And we come in and we build them a home and we adopt them. into the Casa Angelina family and we give them food and medical care until they transition and go to heaven.

I don't know if we have time for this if I tell you one more story. too, go ahead. Okay, so the very first widow that we, this is a beautiful story of how it went from this point on to now we've built 178 homes, 179 counting tomorrow once I dedicate the next home that's coming up tomorrow that the team is building. when we were walking through this village that we're in now, where Casa Angelina is in, looking for our very first widow. And we walk around the corner and my dad was first in the line and he walks around the corner and this lady comes out with her hands raised like this running towards us.

And she says, you're here to help me. You're here to help me. And we were like, who is this lady? And she said, my name is Ilaria. And she said, three days ago, I had nothing to eat and I saw you in a vision. And God said, these people are coming to build your home and you'll never lack food again. And that was our very first widow. she hadn't, I mean, she would have, we didn't tell anyone we were going out. We didn't know three days ago we were going to go walking through the village. And yet we found her and she started it.

And she went to heaven at the age of 98 and was a person that greatly impacted my life and everyone who met her, honestly, and all of Casa Angelina. And I took so many teams to meet her because I was like, you need to see this woman because she is a woman of faith. And she is not famous on earth and many people, it's not like she can say thousands of people have seen me or heard my story. But I have probably never in my life met anyone who loved Jesus more or waited for him longer to answer prayers than her without losing her faith.

And it just makes me, she always made me think about Abraham and how he waited so long for a promise. But yet the word says that he never doubted that it would happen. He didn't consider the deadness of his body or the deadness of Sarah's womb, the word says, but that he always believed in faith that it would happen. And because he believed that, it happened. And I think it's an incredible lesson to anyone who is, especially anyone who's sick or suffering any kind of ailment in their body or any kind of mental sickness or anything that is just not right in your body to hold out for that promise that that God who created you, who knows you better than anyone else, has a perfect plan for you.

And that there are things that we can do, right, to help and to heal and to do all of that because it's a very toxic world in so many ways. God wants to partner with your efforts and your work and what you're doing and bring something supernatural to that as well. And I think that's a beautiful thing. It is a beautiful thing. Working in all of this and seeing all of the tragedy, the trauma, you know, everything, how has that affected you, your faith and how you just look at life? The first six months that I lived here, I cried every day because it was so overwhelming, like how much trauma there was with the children.

Every time you meet this beautiful little human being and you hear their story, it's like, single time, you know, it takes you back again, like how people could hurt them in that way. And every time I would travel out into the village, I would just be like, there's so much need. see so much need. There's so much need everywhere. overwhelming. I just, the Lord had to speak to me because I was like, this isn't right that every day I'm just a wreck. Like I'm not going be able to do anything and I need to do a lot here.

Caring for Children and Education 22:48

And he just spoke to me and said, do whatever I put in your hands. And if I put it in your hands, I will also give you the strength and capacity to do it. So I just started saying, OK, what's in my hands today right now, whether it's this child, this life, this widow, this situation, this building, this project, whatever it is that's in my hand right now, I just have to do that the best that I can. And God expanded and has continued to expand the ministry so much. But it took away the anxiety, I guess you could say, that could come with seeing so much and knowing you don't have what it takes to answer all the needs.

And, you know, God does know all the needs and yet he's still patient and long suffering and merciful and kind. And so I thought, okay, if he knows everything, it's all right. He knows everything. There is somebody who knows it all. And so I can be more at peace. And that really helped me for these 15 years that I've been here. And I traveled back and forth at the beginning when we first started Cross Angelina and then moved here 15 years ago. That's amazing, Bethany. I mean, so often I love how you say that.

What was that woman's name that died at 98? I'd like to say she just waited and she was expectant and she never was stagnant in her faith, right? Yeah. I think in the United States, we're so like we want it now, now, now, now. And if it doesn't happen, you know, then there must be something that we're doing wrong. My prayers aren't effective or God isn't hearing me or I don't have enough faith. you know, all those kind of things. And I imagine the woman who was bent over where you put your hands on her, how long she had waited, said 50 years, 50 years.

And to all of a sudden be free from that. just get so impatient with God. And I'm assuming that you've learned a lot of patience being down there. Yeah, yeah, I would definitely say waiting is not like anybody's strong suit at the beginning of their life, probably. don't want to wait for anything either. Babies don't want to wait for anything. That's why your baby cries. You know, we start out very impatient, honestly. And I think that is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives to make us patient and willing to wait for the promise.

Everybody in the Bible had to wait for a promise. m And you talk about the healings and we talk about, you know, when you see Jesus is ministering, you study his ministry and you think about the man at the pool of Bethesda or there's so many different stories. They all were waiting like, you know, blind bottom man. Everybody was waiting. They had been that way for a while and then and then Jesus passed by. And this is the amazing thing about about inviting Jesus into your life, because when Jesus enters your life and we give room for Jesus in our life.

those miracles begin to work in our life. And so all these stories we have of healings, it's because Jesus came into their, he was now a part of their reality.

Widows Ministry and the First Widow 25:48

And when Jesus walks into the room or when Jesus walks into your heart or Jesus walks into your home, things are going to change and they're going to reflect him more. And so stuff starts to just begin to switch around and things that were impossible before become possible again. And so I think you know, such a beautiful, beautiful part of Casa Angelina and the waiting journey that we have is just that we're always waiting with expectancy. And that's what I call faith is it's waiting in a position where you're leaning forward when you're like, okay, Jesus, if you're here or what you want, what do want me to do?

What do want me to say? How do you want me to handle this in my life and my family with my children, with my coworkers at my church, you know, with my sisters, brothers, mother, father, how do you want me to handle this? What do want me to do? There's a willingness to wait and then there's a leaning in expectancy and faith saying, I know you can do it. Even if I have to wait, I know you can do it. And definitely a patience I've had to learn. And I always pray for more patience so that I don't make hurry decisions or I don't run forward on something if it's not the right timing, because you want the timing of the Lord in what you're doing, especially when there are so many people here that look to me for an answer for something.

I just want to know that the timing is right. And so I definitely have, I'm okay. I think one of the things I've had to learn is being okay with saying no to things that even seem like opportunities when it doesn't feel like there's not peace around it. I'm like, maybe that's an opportunity for the future. I don't know. It doesn't feel right right now. And being okay with that too, because, and then all of those things that I've ever had to say that to have always come back around literally like triple better than they would have been if I had done it at the start.

So. It's just, you know, patience and waiting. Absolutely, Lori, or something that I have to practice daily. m I can have all of us, all of us for sure. So we talked about two of your pillars, the orphans, the widows, and then what are your other three pillars? Feeding the poor, building the local church and winning souls around the world. So feeding the poor, we do that here, obviously in many capacities. We also, the kids also go into the villages. We do feeding programs in the villages where our teenagers and our like basically 10 year olds and up will go into the villages and they offer to cut hair for the kids.

They offer to pray for people. They take food to people. It's all of that, but also extension of our ministry. What we do in Kenya and Africa is we have a very large feeding center in the middle of the slums of Nkuru, Kenya. And we're feeding every day, we feed approximately 1600 children a day. And then we also open the center for all these children to come. And the center has been really small. We just built a new building there actually that got finished last month. But just through the one center we have, there's about 200 children that stay there every single day just to get off of the streets.

And then a lot of other ones who go to school. It's actually free to go to school in Kenya if you have a uniform, but you can't. eat lunch at lunchtime. So these kids come from the slums and they have uniforms that have been passed down that they found in the trash dumps and they're able to go somewhere to get off of the street because there's a lot of drugs and a lot of crime in the streets. So they go to school and then we build kitchens, what we call what matters kitchens in those schools. So the children before we come, because they can't afford to pay for anything, they don't eat lunch.

So a lot of these schools have children fainting often. during recess. Recesses are like silent. They're like quiet places because the kids don't have energy to play. So we build a kitchen and we feed all these children. So at one school alone, we feed 800 children lunch every day and it's the only meal that they eat. But now they're able to start doing testing again in the school and they're taking exams, which allows them to go to college afterwards. We have 17 in college in Kenya for the very first year ever, which is amazing.

So that's part of the feeding the The poor portion, we have a church here that we run outside of Casta Angelina. We have a church in Kenya that's open to all the slums. And so, my gosh, there's so many miracles. can tell you so many testimonies just from that one. And I go there usually once a year and everything else I do like this, video calls and stuff like that, and talk with them weekly. And I have video cameras there actually so I can see the projects and the kids and everything as well. um But we also, my dad, Ivan Tate is my father and he travels and ministers in local churches in the United States.

I would say out of the 52 weeks of the year, he probably travels 48 weeks of the year. So he's in a different church every weekend. And I travel back about 10 times a year as well, just to do that on weekends and preach in different churches and winning souls is part of that. that's building the local church because honestly, we are the body of Christ.

Faith, Patience, and Waiting on God 30:36

Like all of us represent the body of Christ. And so. investing into churches and ministering to people and loving on people and also telling people about this. I remember when I was very young, my dad said, Bethany, you don't want to get to heaven and not know the name of an orphan and not know the name of a widow. When God said in James one twenty seven, that pure and undefiled religion is this to care for orphans and widows in their need and to keep yourself unspotted from the world. And he was like, do not get to heaven.

And whatever you do in life, whatever you decide to do, don't get to heaven and not know the name of an orphan or a widow when that's what the Lord said matters so much to him. And I just, that stuck with me majorly. And of course it's what I do. I know a lot of names of orphans and widows now, but I love connecting people to orphans and widows and the poor because I feel like it's not your fault. Wherever you were born is where you're born. You may be born in the most affluent area in the United States of America or in a first world country.

It's not like that's a crime. That's a blessing. That can be a wonderful thing in your life. But you still need to know the name of an orphan and a widow. And you need to be helping those who cannot pay you back because it keeps us, we believe it keeps us unspotted from the world. It cleans the soul. So it's something that when nobody gives you back something, you go, well, check my motives again. Does it matter to me that they give me back when I give them? Or am I just giving because that's the heart of Jesus was to give?

So, yeah. I mean, how do people find you? How do they give? How do they connect with your ministry? Yeah, they can check us out online if they want to on our website, is www.whatmattersmm.org. Whatmattersmm.org. And the MM is for Ministries and Missions. So yeah, we would love to answer any questions. There's phone numbers on there. There's videos on there. They can go to YouTube also and go to the What Matters Ministries and Missions page. You'll see videos of Casa Angelina. They can also look for Casa Angelina on the internet.

They'll see videos that'll come up. and they can see what we're doing through those videos, hear testimonies of children, all sorts of different things. I, wow. It's amazing. I could listen to you tell stories all day for one, because people need to hear those miracle stories. They need to know that God is still moving. Because I think here in the United States, we forget that he's moving. We don't see it in the local church. So much stagnancy is around us. But there's still a lot of revival and stuff going on too.

So thank you. Can you leave us with one final story? Yes, for sure. my goodness, one final story. OK, so we uh have a little boy. just saw him in the street. So he's the first one that's on my mind right now walking in the street. But his name is Mateo. And I just shared this testimony, I think the day before yesterday. But he came at the age of five and he was totally mute. He had never spoken in his life. He came with his sister, Valeska. And when I met them at the gate and he walked in the gate, I just really felt like the Lord spoke to me and said he was going to open his mouth to speak.

for the glory of God. And so I took his little hand and while they were filling out paperwork, I began to just walk with him and pray over him. And we did a few laps of Casa Angelina and we have a beautiful soccer field that the Lord provided for the children. And we were walking around the soccer field a couple of laps and I just heard in my spirit that it was done. So we stopped, we walked back to the front gate and when we went into the door, his sister handed him a cup of juice and he reached out for the juice and he said, gracias.

And it was the first word that he ever spoke. And it began a torrent of words. And he now talks all the time and he's in school and he's learning English and he's trying to speak English with people. And he's just such a beautiful example. And I always tell him that he is a miracle. And I tell him in English and Spanish and he tells me back, I am a miracle in English and Spanish.

Feeding the Poor and Ministry in Kenya 34:18

And I just think about that first word I heard that it was for the glory of God. And he is such a light and he blesses everybody who meets him. And I just would probably say if you feel in any way like comparison, like maybe, you know, there are things or reasons in your life that make you not such a wonderful candidate for God to use to change people's lives and bring the glory of God. I just want to encourage you that that is not true and that every single person, no matter what has happened in your life, God wants to use you to bring his glory to this earth.

in one way or another, and you are able to be used by Him. So make yourself available and watch them and amazing incredible things God can do because He really can do it and He will do it. Thank you so much, Bethany. So amazing. Thank you. my goodness. And if any of you listening have ever doubted that God is still in the miracle business, Bethany and Cas Angelina are so proof of this. So he's so faithful. He binds up the brokenhearted and he redeems everything that looks hopeless. All of their information will be in the show notes, so make sure you check them out.

What matters? M.M. Dot org. and follow Bethany and Castle Angelina on Instagram so that you can see everything that is going on there. And again, thank you, Bethany. I appreciate all the work you're doing.

Mateo's Miracle and Final Encouragement 35:48

God bless you and everyone else. God bless each and every one of you and I will see you in the next episode.