What. A. Month.
Panama has been both awesome and hard. It has been so challenging in about fifty different ways, but God has been faithful and good through it all – hallelujah! This blog is about what ministry has looked like and what we’ve been up to in the Kingdom. My next blog will be about what this month has been like for me personally and for my walk with Jesus.
Like I explained in my last blog, this month the Wild Fires are in Panama City, Panama. We have partnered with Shibu to reach the Indian community in Panama with the Good News of Jesus Christ. Here’s what that looked like!
Shibu started out the month giving us an orientation to Hinduism, because a majority of the Indians in Panama City (and in India) are Hindu. We learned that Hinduism is less of a creed and more of a culture; you are Hindu because your family is Hindu. And because Hinduism is very cultural, converting to Christianity is a big social/cultural no-no. Choosing to leave Hinduism to follow Christ means leaving family and community and culture behind. It’s a heavy and hard choice with very real, very challenging “consequences.” Shibu coached us on what ministering to this community looks like and gave us advice on how to share the Gospel effectively with Hindus. The next day, he took us to a Hindu temple. You can watch a video about our experience here. This was a really powerful experience for me personally because it was the first time in my life that I had felt my heart break for what breaks God’s heart. I sat and wept, heart breaking, for the people who came to the temple to offer prayers and offerings to idols who couldn’t listen or grant requests. I felt God’s jealous anger, His broken heart, His deep compassion, His unfailing love, and His burning desire to be known and loved. WOW it was powerful. It made me think of my story and how God has walked me through so many things that this community also struggles with: thinking I have to earn God’s love and approval, people-pleasing, perfectionism, etc. My story and my testimony of the hope I have in Jesus speaks directly into the hearts and struggles of the Hindu Indian community… for whom God has broken my heart like His heart breaks. I know this means something for my calling and my place in the Kingdom, but I’m not sure what it is yet.
Shibu gave us the opportunity to lead the Fellowship on Sundays. We sang songs in English (and learned some new songs in Hindi!), gave testimonies, led the congregation in prayer, and delivered the messages. Sharing our testimonies with strangers, leading worship, and giving sermons were new territory for us, and it was challenging, but cool to grow in!
We had the pleasure and honor of leading prayer meetings every Friday for Shibu, his family, and another Christian Indian family in the Fellowship. Our heart for these meetings was to be Spirit-led. We didn’t go in with plans or scripts or a program, just hearts in tune with what God was saying to us and a willingness to let the Spirit lead. This was harder than it sounds; the weight of perceived expectations from our ministry host and a desire to be in control compounded and tempted us to lose faith and not trust in God’s leadership through His Spirit. It was simply a gathering of believers for prayer, and I was tempted to try and control it and make it “perfect.” Ohhhh Jessica. Our first prayer meeting was on point though; it was completely Spirit-led and I felt no desire to control. During that meeting, I felt led to share about our team name, “Wild Fires.” I shared that we chose the name “Wild Fires” because what we are doing seems wild, but we bring with us the Holy Spirit, and the presence of the Holy Spirit – like fire – leaves nothing unchanged when touched by it. This message has been on Shibu’s heart and mind ever since I shared it at the first meeting, and it’s cool to see how following Holy Spirit’s leadership to share about our name has really uplifted and encouraged him and his ministry. He is a spark in Panama City that God is going to fan into a wildfire for the Indian community here, for the glory of His Kingdom. Hallelujah! That’s so good!
We did house visits in a similar way. We had the opportunity to visit four homes for fellowship, singing, eating, and sharing of testimonies and Scripture. Only three of those were intentional; the fourth TL and I went to just the two of us with the intention of spending quality time with a young woman from the fellowship, and Holy Spirit opened up the doors for us to share with her and her family stories and testimonies of how God has been good and faithful in our lives. I’m pumped for the seeds that were planted through that time! During the other three house visits, we had opportunities to encourage and uplift entire families through the sharing of our testimonies and Scripture God had placed on our hearts. It was awesome to see how God was using Scripture we were reading in our personal time to minister to strangers we were meeting for the first time.
We made friends! Through the house visits, we became friends with three young women in the fellowship. You’ll hear all about these women in another blog at the end of the month, but Aleena, Aneeta, and Bambi will be forever sister-friends to me and to my teammates. It’s incredible what quality time, intentionality, laughter, and Indian food will do for a friendship!
We partnered with other ministries in Panama for children’s programs! We had two children’s ministry days. One, in Cerro Batea (about 45 minutes from Panama City), was an afternoon event during which we led songs and games alongside their regularly scheduled program, and at the end the kids performed a dance that they had put together just for us! You can watch a video of that experience here! For the other, we rented a car (#whoops – didn’t know that wasn’t allowed) and drove 3 hours to the far south of Panama to a town called Darién to lead the first ever children’s ministry day for an indigenous community (video here – a must see!). We led songs, games, performed two skits, and I shared a short Gospel message with the kids. What was special for me about this program is that we performed the Chair Skit, a drama that I performed every Thursday night two summers in a row at Camp Piankatank, where I was a camp counselor. For two years, I was always the person who got stuck to the chair at the very beginning of the skit, but this time, I was the “Jesus figure” who saved the people stuck to the chair and took their place in the chair. It was from the chair that I shared a message with the kids about how Jesus takes our place and saves us from our sin so that we can have a relationship with God, who loves us so so much. Crazy fact: that was the first time I had ever shared the Gospel with a group of people who didn’t have a relationship with Jesus. WOW. Double wow is that I woke up really sick that morning, and by our second song, my voice was completely gone and I couldn’t speak or sing louder than a whisper. Satan had his hand in that, for sure. But when it came time for me to share the Gospel message, my voice was loud and clear – all glory to God! He made a way!
We created a Christmas program from scratch in two days. This was our big ministry task for this month, and Shibu’s purpose for having a team here in December. Due to time restraints, we ended up having about 24-48 (frequently interrupted) hours to plan, practice, and execute a Christmas program. Side note: I now have massive amounts of understanding, respect, and appreciation for ministers who plan Christmas programs every year because Christmas was stressful. To say, “we were anxious” would be an understatement. I was beyond stressed out; I cried probably 80% of Christmas Eve and Day. But it all came together, despite the incredible amount of spiritual warfare we were experiencing. I had a moment of divine inspiration while cleaning dishes one morning and shared it with the team, TL wrote up our script, Ally created the order of programs, Melissa put the slides together, we all prepared messages and testimonies, and it all came together. On Christmas Day, we ran through the program twice, and that afternoon we performed it! It was one hour with Spanish translation included. The program told the Nativity story from Luke and Matthew, acted out as it was read aloud. Between “scenes,” we sang Christmas songs and shared testimonies. The program closed with a Gospel message and the song “In Christ Alone.”
We had spent the whole week prior to the program visiting Indian shops and restaurants to invite Indian families to the program, some of whom had never been to a Christmas program. That evening, there were 50+ people at the program! There were at least 10-15 people there who had never been to a Christmas program, some of whom had never even been to a Christian fellowship! We know that many of the people there were Hindu and didn’t have a personal, saving relationship with Jesus. Two girls I talked to after the program told me that they weren’t Christians, and this was their first experience with a Christian fellowship, and they could tell that we really love God – WOW! We had been praying all month for the program, so we know that all of the people who came were the exact people God wanted there and all the words we said were the exact words God wanted us to say. We prayed many times before the program for God to soften the hearts of those who would come, and for their souls to be fertile soil to receive the Word. Now all we can do is pray for God to send workers into the harvest to water and care for the blooms of faith that will sprout from the Gospel we shared, in Jesus’ Name!!
Ministry this month was relational and ministerial – two things I love a lot and might feel called to in the future. I have really loved being in Panama City, even though I’m not a “city girl” at all. And I’m still discerning what my heart breaking for God’s broken heart at the Hindu temple means for me and my calling.
Ministry this month was made up of really cool opportunities to build relationships, tangibly share the love of God, and share the Good News of Jesus Christ through messages and testimonies. Ministry this month was also a lot of flexibility, combating spiritual warfare in my life and in our team, and praying hard for this community to experience breakthrough and freedom from spiritual strongholds and captivity. It hasn’t been easy (at all), but praise the LORD! The victory over darkness is already won and we have victory through Jesus’ death and resurrection! Hallelujah! He is so good.
Until next time, Jess
P.S. Happy New Year! If you’re looking for a last minute tax deduction for this fiscal year, here are my sisters who are still in need of funding (asterisks = on my team!):
