By ALEC ETHEREDGE | Staff Reporter

A group of young people from Jemison recently traveled to Peru on a mission trip as part of Global Ventures with John Smithwick Ministries International.

“Our mission is to initiate and facilitate a global evangelism movement by raising up and mobilizing an army of frontline harvesters who effectively minister the gospel in power and miracles to the unreached masses, and as a result win a billion souls to Christ,” said John Smithwick on his website, johnsmithwick.com.

Lauren Price, Madison Smith and Christopher Robertson were all a part of this movement as they made their way to several different stops in Peru, including Cajamarca, Lima and Machu Picchu.

The trip lasted from June 23-July 6 and was highlighted by their visits to a prison and several local schools and markets.

“We went to a prison and got to talk to a group of 221 men at a maximum security facility,” said 21-year-old UAB student Lauren Price. “You could just look at them and tell that they were all attentive and taking it in.”

Price said that 217 of those men decided to take Jesus into their hearts that day and several of them felt the miracle of instant healing.

“This was just the most special part of the trip and left a lasting impression on me” Price said. “One man had a ringing in his ear for several months before we got there and asked to be prayed for. I placed my hand on his ear and prayed with him. He said that he immediately felt relief and that the ringing had gone away.”

The group did street ministry for an entire week around Cajamarca. Street ministry is a type of ministry that occurs when groups go around helping people that are struggling with some aspect of society by preaching the gospel to them.

Price said that they did pretty much the same presentation everywhere they visited, which included “prayer for salvation and prayer for healing.”

There were 65 total team members on the trip that estimated they had 30,430 people pray to accept Jesus Christ and 303 confirmed instantaneous healings.

Each group partnered up with local churches and preachers for translating purposes. They made sure that all of the people they impacted and prayed with were introduced to a local church so that this wasn’t just weeklong thing, but that it would have a lasting life long impact.