I've never really considered the importance of our stories until now. Until our team became dependent on testimonies and learning songs in Spanish for ministry. It's weird to think how singing a song or telling a story can really affect someone's entire life and outlook. I mean, if we really do think about it, about all the ways we start to obtain new perspectives it is usually through hearing other people's experiences or by finally being able to relate to that song we didn't understand before.
My testimony, the story of my life and experiences, could easily take up a good 10 pages in trying to explain the surface of it. Every time I've told it there is a new emphasis…maybe because God is really listening to the heart of the audience and knows what they need or because I just really need to get that part of my life off of my chest. God was definitely listening to the audiences heart when I was translating my story the other day.
Our ministry hostess was helping us translate our testimonies into Spanish and as we were doing this we started drifting off into talking about what my family is like. I tried my best to explain in broken Spanish the complexity of my family to both our hostess and her friend. I wasn't really looking them in the eyes. I was too busy looking down trying to think of conjugations or in the dictionary for words. But when I looked up and was done they both had tears in their eyes. Our hostess looked at me and told me that my story was victorious and we continued to have a conversation about more struggles that they were going through or family members were going through. I got a chance to be vulnerable with these women and they saw it as an open door to being vulnerable with me. I felt honored.
Up until that point I had thought of my story as just being something that was. Something that I said in church or in evangelism to pass time. Not really something someone else could feel.
