A group of 35 Nazarene Missions International (NMI) leaders from the U.S., Canada and Trinidad and Tobago recently traveled to Sri Lanka and India to pray and partner with local Nazarenes. One stop on the tour was to attend a JESUS film showing on a tea estate in Sri Lanka.

The equipment was set up, with the screen attached between an electrical pole and large bamboo rod. The skies were gray and cloudy. The glow of lightning and sounds of thunder rolled over the central square as the film began. Many of the team prayed that rain would not dampen the evening and keep people from watching JESUS.

The group was ushered into seats the villagers had placed in the center of the square especially for the guests coming to watch JESUS with them.  As the film began, the speakers loudly proclaimed the story of JESUS in the Tamil language. The JESUS film team pointed as homes up on the side of a hill started turned on their lights and stepped outside their homes to see where the sound was coming from. They began watching JESUS that night.

About half way through the showing a light rain began. Several of the visiting team members went to prayer, asking God to stop the rain.

“The rain only increased and we sensed God saying that He had the situation covered and was doing something greater,” said Ann Baldwin, a member of the global NMI office team who was in the group.

Rob North, also from the global office team, said he remembered thinking, “Oh Lord, please stop the rain. We are all getting wet and very few have an umbrella; what if people leave to get out of the rain?”

“By the time Jesus was crucified, it was raining heavily, but few people left,” Baldwin added.

The visitors didn’t know that it had not rained in this area for three months. The priests and followers of the local traditional religion had been praying for many, many days and weeks, making sacrifices, wailing and crying out for rain to their many gods. In fact, earlier in the afternoon, some of the village’s women had been in that very square praying to their gods to send rain.

It was not until the scene in which Jesus was nailed on the cross that the heavens broke loose and rain began to pour down over the gathering.

“When the rain came during the crucifixion of Christ, they said they now knew that Jesus was the God who hears and answers prayers, that He is the God who brings the healing rains so needed by that village,” Baldwin said the group was told.

North had the opportunity to pray alongside a new believer named Reuben, who had brought his father and his best friend, James, to the front of the crowd to accept Jesus into their lives that night.

“I prayed as the rain poured over us that night, washing the dust and dirt off our earthly bodies, that the Blood of Christ would flow over these new believers, cleansing them from the inside out,” North said. “I prayed for their safety, imagining the challenges coming their way as they walk this new journey with Christ.”

Baldwin said that a young boy approached her and nodded when she asked if she could pray with him. However, knowing he wouldn’t understand her prayer in English, she didn’t feel she could pray the sinner’s prayer with him.

“God directed me to pray that what he had seen that evening in the JESUS film would be made known to him through the work of the Holy Spirit and that of the local film team who would follow up.”

North said he believes the fruited yielded that night will be strong because those who remained were captivated by Jesus and the rain solidified His life-transforming gift that He gave each of us by dying on the cross and conquering death three days later.