Bob & Amber's Excellent Adventure

Article 43 of 37 from the Ponder This - 2004 series

October 2004 - BOB & AMBER’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE by Ray Pritchard Some years ago Bob and Amber Leland stopped by to see me one final time before leaving the Chicago area to return to Irian Jaya for another term of missionary service. When we got together, Bob had something definite on his mind. He took out some sheets of paper and said he wanted to check on the answers to some prayer requests. There must have been almost 50 different items covering many different areas of our church life. Each one had been written down and the date noted. Some were labeled “Continual”� and others were for specific needs. We went over each request one by one. Bob asked me to tell him if the request had been answered or not. He would write down Yes, No, or Not Yet depending on what I said. Some of the requests were for things such as revival in the congregation and spiritual power in the preaching of God's Word. Others were very particular, such as additional workers for our children's ministries. On and on we went, covering the church, the staff, and also Oak Park Christian Academy. Some of the requests went back four or five years. A few years later they returned to the U.S. to help Amber's ailing mother””but they never stopped praying. I asked Bob when he and Amber started writing down prayer requests and noting the answers. He told me they started in 1971 because “we were bored with our prayer life. It seemed like we prayed and prayed, but never heard about any answers.”� So they began writing down specific requests. Whenever they agreed to pray for something or someone, they decided to go back later and find out how God had answered their prayers. And that's why they had come to my office for one final visit. They wanted to know what God had done through their prayers. Bob told me that after three decades of doing this, they have discovered that approximately 89% of their prayers are answered Yes, 2% are answered No, and about 9% are answered Not Yet. “It's hard to argue with that,”� he said with a smile. Bob is right. It is hard to argue with that. Bob and Amber were here as part of World Focus Week. A few days ago he gave me a sheet of paper and asked me to fill it out. When I looked at it, I discovered it was a list of prayer requests that I and others on the Calvary staff had mentioned a few years ago. They have been faithfully praying for those requests””and now they wanted to know how God has answered, and if they needed to continue praying those requests to the Lord. I am glad to have friends like that. For them, prayer is not a burden. It has become and continues to be an amazing adventure with God.