Meet Manuel.
This man right here walks in so much joy and love for the Lord. My team first had the opportunity to meet Manuel when we were going on house visits with the church we work with to pray for sick people in Parramos.
Manuel’s mom has Parkinson’s Disease and it has progressed to the point that she is barely able to drink anything to stay alive. We were praying over her when Manuel came into her room. He greeted us with the biggest smile ever and could not stop thanking us for coming to pray over his mom. He began to tell us about his life, and that he has diabetes which caused a severe infection in his leg and the doctors had no choice but to amputate it. He quickly moved past that and began to tell us about his love for music. Music has had such a big impact on my life, and it was so beautiful watching him talk about his passion for music. He shared that he plays trumpet, tuba, and many other brass instruments and also has a love for singing. We immediately asked him to play something for us, but he didn’t have any instruments with him, so he told us to come back another time to hear him. We settled on the following Wednesday, but because we kept begging him, he blessed us by singing a couple songs to us right then.
Manuel’s voice wasn’t anything super special, but the heart and the joy that he sang with blew me away. This man had every right to be mad at the world- his mom was about to pass away and he had recently lost his leg. But he never stopped smiling.
After hearing a couple songs, we had to leave for the day, but after lots of hugs we promised to see him next week. Fast forward to the following morning when my team and I were walking around the streets of Parramos praying for people. We were asking the Lord where He wanted us to go that day, and we could not get Manuel out of our minds. So we set off to go visit him, just praying that he would be home. Sure enough, we knocked on his door and were greeted with open arms and huge smiles. Manuel couldn’t believe that we wanted to hear him so bad that we came the day after, and he quickly pulled out his instruments and called his 2 children to play for us. Before we could believe it, there was a small band in front of us playing their hearts out.
We sat in amazement for 45 minutes as Manuel and his kids played us traditional Guatemalan song after song. I have never seen someone take so much joy in performing and sharing their love for music.
I learned such an important lesson from Manuel that day. Always choose joy. It is completely up to us to choose to be joyful each day, no matter what is going on in our lives. There is never a bad day in the Kingdom, and we can always live above our circumstances and share God’s love and joy to every person we encounter. Manuel so clearly walks this out every day, and is furthering the Kingdom one song at a time.
