During our Christmas Eve sermon Stephanie was preaching one of the boys I have spent a lot of time with just wanted to talk, so we started a little conversation. I talked to him about Jesus and asked if he believed in God, how you get to heaven and what happens if you are a good person but don't believe in Jesus. He told me he knew a little about Jesus and who He was but didn't have a relationship with Him, and I asked him why. It was awesome to ask this boy some challenging questions and make him really think about who Jesus is to him. Afterwards I got up, turned around, and looked into the eyes of an answered prayer.
Our second day working on the church I had a brief interaction with a 15 year old girl who I haven't been able to stop thinking about since. I had been looking for her every day for weeks and all of a sudden here she was standing in front of me. Well we ended up talking for a while about everything- her life, her family, her beliefs about God and how you get to heaven and the idea of grace. Then she and her sister invited me and one of the other World Race girls to meet her mom.
Well our ride was already there but we dashed through the pouring rain, past the drunks at the bar and into the girls' house. We introduce ourselves to the mother and took this once in a lifetime opportunity to, in less than five minutes, share the Gospel with this family who had no understanding of who God was or what grace meant. It was intense, intimidating and incredible.
We got back to the house and participated in some awesome Panamanian Christmas Eve traditions. We ate a quick snack of Tamales around 7pm and spent the next five hours hanging out, talking and drinking coffee and hot chocolate. Then at midnight we gathered for the Christmas feast of various kinds of breads, cakes, fruits and more tamales. Delicious. I love these Central American traditions- they all involve food! This morning we had a Christmas breakfast of fried bread and hot dogs and opened our stockings- chocolate, more chocolate, popcorn, notes from our contact from El Salvador and fake tattoos. Also, my teammate Shaun got a Christmas gift of $1,300 and $1,600 to put him at the $10,000 support goal he had to reach by New Years to continue on to Asia with us. Loooove it. This was a Christmas I'll always remember.
Showing of our sweet tattoos we got in our stockings- Thanks Julie.
