My main ministry, for two months in a row now, has had absolutely nothing to do with church. I have been teaching Christian morals and values in public schools. It is an amazing opportunity to be outside of the church spreading the love of Jesus. Last month, in Guatemala, I taught with four other women from my squad whom I adore, every week. We would go to 1 or 2 different schools a day Monday through Friday and teach around 4 or 5 classes each day. We even got to take these beautiful drives up far into the mountains and teach to the indigenous children or the Mayans. I absolutely loved my month in Guatemala. It was an amazing feeling teaching such powerful topics to those kids, many of whom are in very high risk situations of gangs, drugs, alcohol, and abuse. It was also an amazing feeling realizing that I can teach.
At the beginning of our “womanistry” month in Guatemala (the month where all the women of Z Squad were together for ministry and all the men of Z Squad were together somewhere else in Guatemala for “manistry”), we had to rank our choices for where we individually wanted to serve for the month. My ranking went 1. Babies, 2. The elderly home, 3. Teaching. I did NOT consider myself a teacher and did NOT think that was something I had the capability of doing. But one thing this Race has been great at doing is bringing out things in me that I didn’t know were there and forcing me to walk them out. So, a teacher I became.
Not only has it been a learning experience for me to be able to realize and develop new skills, but it has also been a learning experience in the sense that I have had my eyes opened to so many cultural differences in schooling between North America and Central America. I could talk for hours about these differences. But bottom line is that we are extremely blessed in the United States. And the children here in Central America who are “at risk” are (from what I’ve heard from the professional teachers on my squad) significantly more well behaved than “at risk” children in North America. The children in Central America WANT to learn but they are not being challenged or poured into in a way that is conducive to that.
I have taught on topics of “what are principles and values?”, “identity”, “self-esteem”, and “drugs and alcohol” over the last 2 months. I have also had the opportunity each day to share about Jesus, His love for each and every one of those kids, and His incredible work in my own life. I have gotten to empower, educate, and share about Jesus to at least 600 youth between the ages of 8 and 18 just in the schools alone. So that is not including the additional places we’ve been this month such as prisons, soccer fields, colonies, juvenile detention centers and street corners where I have also gotten to bring testimonies, worship music, dramas and more, proclaiming the love of Jesus to the youth of Honduras. Through our street corner ministry, we even made it on the news with the tagline “Christians taking their faith out of the church and into the streets”, hopefully blessing and encouraging people all over Honduras.
Through the last 10 months I have probably spent the least amount of time in church, bible studies, and church functions than any other time over the last 4 years of my life of serving the Lord. I miss having a “home” church (heck even a home at all!), I miss worshipping in English, I miss praying in English, I miss being poured into in the way that attending a church and a Bible study does, but I can confidently say that I have never identified more with a disciple in my life than over this last year. They left their homes for long periods of time, they were received incredibly well some places and also faced great suffering and discouragement in other places, they relied on letters of encouragement from their “church” back home, they had nothing but the clothes on their back and the sandals on their feet, they were insanely in love with Jesus, and they were OUT of the church.
