Jennifer
It started out as a regular night, the girls of team Ahava sitting around chatting in the Kitchen when I was overcome with a feeling of best friend sickness. This sickness catches you off guard and usually comes about when your in new places with new people and all you want to do is talk to someone who knows you best. The girls of team Ahava have become like sisters to me but we are still learning each other. I did not know it then but these feelings of best friend sickness would cause something to happen, something big. When asked what my best friend would do for me when I was having a bad day or missing home I said order Pizza and watch a show and just sit together. So all at once they shouted we are going to get Pizza and dragged me out the door to a pizzeria we had walked by a few times. We ordered and sat down at a table outside and then it happened, we met Jennifer. Jennifer was our waitress that night and through google translate we found out she was 18 among other small talk we made. At the end of the night we asked when she worked and if we could come back to see her again which turned into us having lunch with her the next day. Knowing that the place we were going did not have internet so our google translate ways of communication would not be available. On our way to go and get Jennifer we prayed that we would be used in this time with our new friend and personally i prayed that God would give me the ability to speak Spanish fluently. I remember feeling so much pressure to be our translator during this time as i knew more spanish than the other girls on my team. As we walked with her I spoke what I knew but I found myself in dead end conversations and feeling helpless when i could not understand what she was saying. I kept praying, God give me a means of communication and He did. It wasn't in the way I was expecting but He gave English to her. She started writing on a piece of paper perfect English and so we sat there passing papers back and forth in silence eating out Empanadas. We gained a friend that day, we spent the afternoon shopping with her, eating ice cream and laughing. What a sweet spirit we found in Jennifer. God is such a good God, He works in unexpected ways and uses moments of weakness to turn them into something great. Our ministry this month was slow but it showed me that ministry is an all the time thing, something I knew but never fully grasped. God gave us Jennifer to reach out to and it was my favorite moment in ministry, just hanging out and showing love, not passing out tracks or preaching at her. I love Jennifer and she will always hold a special place in my heart because God used my moment of sadness and turned it into something beautiful. I was taught that He will use anything, and even when you dont understand or feel sad, His plan is greater still.
In willingness to let God use every moment,
Alyssa
