Joel’s Dream El Shaday, Chile
J “May I Tell You a Story?” BY DICK DUERKSEN
28
May 2019 AdventistWorld.org
oel Vasquez had a dream. He wasn’t much of a night dreamer, but this one woke him with such a start that he woke his wife, Trinidad, from a very sound sleep. “What’s wrong?” she asked after she found the light switch. “I had a dream,” Joel answered. “It was a loud dream—a voice shouted out to me.” “What did it say?” Trinidad really just wanted to go back to sleep, but now she was actually a little bit interested in Joel’s dream. “The man in my dream said that he’s going to build a church on the vacant lot across from our house. It’s going to be God’s true church!” “You’re crazy, Joel.” Trinidad said. “Go back to sleep.” *** And he did, almost forgetting the dream. Until six months later when he was attending a seminar in another city. During one of the meetings a man from Argentina stood up and asked if there was someone in the audience whose name was Joel Vasquez. Joel reluctantly stood and said, “That’s me, I think.” “I have a message for you,” the man said. “God has told me to tell you that He is going to build a church on the vacant lot across from your house. And it’s going to be God’s true church.”
Joel was so surprised that he could hardly wait to tell Trinidad. But when he told her that the man had said the same thing that he’d heard in the dream six months earlier, she was angry and called him “loco” (crazy). A whole year went by and Joel almost forgot the dream. Then the dream came again, but this time it was different. “Joel,” the voice said. “Save the vacant lot for Me. I need it so that I can build My true church there.” This time Joel didn’t awaken Trinidad to tell her the dream. In the morning he went to find out who owned the vacant lot across the street. When he found the owner, he told him the story of the two dreams and the man from Argentina. The landowner laughed, but finally allowed Joel to rent the land and build a fence around it to “save the vacant lot for God’s true church.” Joel put up a fence around the lot and waited to see what God would do. He waited almost a year, but no one would even talk to him about the vacant lot or the church. Then one evening a stranger knocked on his door. “Hello, my name is Nelson,” the visitor said. “I am the leader of a small group of Seventh-day Adventists in the community. We’ve outgrown the place where
