After setting up our equipment early Sunday morning, we served hot dogs for a few hours before shutting down for an informal church service in front of our tent. We put up a cross and gathered in front of it. Throughout the weekend, we had been inviting people and had a fair number of people show up.
Up until this point, fishing had not been good for the whole beach. Standing out there with their huge dip-nets in the near-freezing water and bone-chilling wind, most people did not have a whole lot to show for all their time and energy. Some people had been there as long as nine days and not caught anything.
As a team, we had been intentional about praying for the fish to be plentiful and letting people know we were asking the Lord to bring them their catches. Things had been pretty slow up to this point in the morning, but as soon as our worship leader started and we all joined in singing praises to God, a frenzy started—not on the whole beach, but just in the section in front of where we were set up.
Our tent is about 50 yards from the shore, and only the area directly in front of our worship was catching fish. In the 25 minutes we were singing, someone estimated about 200 fish were caught where none had been before. The locals were calling to their friends and family up and down the beach to come and stand with them. Most people only catch one fish at a time in their nets, but some were catching five. It was so incredible to witness the Lord’s faithfulness.
As the day progressed, we told people who came by for hot dogs how we had been praying and how God answered our prayers. Several locals had even asked before if we were praying for the fish, and when they came back, we told them what happened. Some of them were standing in that area and caught their legal limit of fish in that one rush.
I loved seeing how God used something as simple as salmon to let the people around us know that he cares for them, including meeting their physical needs.
Meredith Fick is a campus missionary intern at the University of Houston Baptist Student Ministry, serving in Alaska with Go Now Missions.
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