Well hello again everyone and welcome back to this public internet page where I share my life. I want to take a minute to share with everyone how great, tiring, and refreshing last week was and how this week is getting off to a quick start.
It’s really amazing how mysterious everything is in my house. Just like almost all of the other STEPpers, I never know when the others shower or when they eat. I know they shower daily as this tends to be a very clean culture in that aspect and obviously I know they eat, but I just never know when this is happening and like the other STEPpers, I eat alone or with one other person, never with a female or with the family. I guess I can begin to guess that with that kind of consistency, this is a cultural thing. What made me think of this is that last week when our water was shut off, I was given a key and told to go to the house up the hill behind our house to use the restroom. I never even knew this house existed and then came to find out that it was a one room house with a bathroom where Kenia, my older host sister sleeps. I didn’t know whether to find it mysterious or unobservant of me that I thought she slept in our house at night when she actually never did. This explains why I see her in the back way sometimes early in the morning. I guess I don’t feel too unobservant as this is not an uncommon type discovery among my group in respect to our various families. This does explain why I sometimes hear her coming in the back door early in the morning.
I said that last week was busy and refreshing at the same time and now I will hope to explain that. It was busy because Mike Holland came and had plenty for us to do and lots of work to be done, but it was relaxing because Mike came to share with us and revitalize us for the months ahead. Mike brought Andy’s pastor, Isaac Flag, and Isaac’s son, Liam, along for the trip. They came in Monday and we were able to enjoy the afternoon with them and catch them up on our experiences thus far. Tuesday morning we started classes on evangelism with Mike followed by a time of sharing from Isaac (this would be the morning schedule through Friday). Tuesday afternoon, just a day after our classes had started, we hit the streets in a section of town close to the church and tried to do door to door evangelism in this language we have yet to understand. Don’t worry like I did at first, Mike is incredibly experienced in this area and we didn’t go throwing Bible’s in peoples faces. We have a survey of ten questions over spiritual matters we asked to the people that responded to our knocks. The questions were over subjects like the effectiveness of prayer or the relativity of the Bible today and topics of that nature. We also asked if people had experienced or believe a miracle had occurred in there lives. I love this approach because it was a very subtle and non-abrasive way to get to questions nine and ten which we leaned on for the evangelistic aspect. Question nine was about whether they would like information on a small group for worship and prayer close to their house. We had a very positive (I would guess close to 70% yes) response on this questions. Question ten was if they had anything we could pray over for the person or their family. We had an excellent response to this as well and were invited into many people’s homes to pray with and over them. Over the next four days our team, which was split into four teams with some locals helping as well, went back to the good contacts with information and booklets trying to develop relationships and looking for opportunities to share the Gospel. The results are still coming in as we are still pursuing the contacts we have made, but the results from the first week were very encouraging. We had three people come to service at church on Wednesday, two guys come to a Thursday night church sports even we organized, one young boy came to a small group meeting on Saturday, three people come to church on Sunday, and two people accept Christ last week. That is just last weeks fruit and doesn’t include all the people that are thinking about this new plan for there lives and the six phone numbers that my group alone got. I am excited to continue developing relationships and I think we understand the importance of follow up. Mike compared people that preach Jesus, help others accept Him, then leave and not develop a relationship with that person to working through a pregnancy, going to the hospital, having a baby, and leaving it. It was great week, I learned a lot, and I am confident my group will be responsible for the most important part of these people walk in the Lord, those first few months.
I also learned another language this week; I learn the language of the streets. I have told Rachel I could help her with driving but wanted to practice in a little more tranquil traffic and without people since the van is very different (diesel stick shift) and the traffic here is crazy. Well, that's not exactly how it worked as I had Mike as my teacher – he just had me hop in and learn in the traffic with people along. I ended up driving almost exclusively this week. This included driving in rush hour, way up into the outskirts of town to a small village and a trip Sunday night down South to a city called Nacaome to visit a church plant with Mike and Isaac. This last trip was about three and half hour round trip which included the adventure of driving back through the mountains in the dark on roads where it’s non uncommon to find cars without lights – this wasn’t a problem as I grew up dodging Amish buggies. Nonetheless, after driving a full van for almost the entire week and making a trip through the mountains, my confidence has been boosted and I am glad to be in the role of driver if needed.
Driving back from Nacaome, I learned an important lesson. I generally only carry a copy of my passport around the city but take the actual thing when I leave the city. I wasn’t able to get it as we left on Sunday and we got stopped at a check stop on the way back into town. I had a copy which helped, but the border police held us up for about ten minutes. I am so glad we had Mike along to talk, though I really thought I was going to have to wait until Mike could get my passport and return (which only would have been about thirty minutes), but they ended up letting us pass. They tried to play the political lines that our country (
One last note, this is the first Superbowl I can remember missing (which is a shocker since I could have easily watched it here), but after much thought and stress, I just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to spend almost four hours in a van with two men of God that I trust very much. Especially at this point in my life, I can use all the advice I can get from God’s people as I seek out His plan for the next steps in my life.
As for this week, we are working with a dental brigade and after only one day of work, I can promise my next post will have some very interesting content. Thanks for reading this and for your continuous prayers.
No comments:
Post a Comment