Imagine this:
You, your teammates, translators, host, and the other team you are living with this month pile onto/into two pickup trucks to visit a preschool in a village across the valley. You pull up to the preschool and it’s closed. Locked up. No kids. No teachers. Nothing.
Your host tells you sometimes the teachers just don’t show up because of the rain or sometimes because they flat out don’t want to come. So, a couple of you climb a little bit down the mountain to take some pictures and get a good view of the valley.
Eventually you hear news of kids arriving, so you climb back up and are sent out to find more kids in the village to bring to the school for the morning.
Then, your translators walk you through the village. You get to talking with one of the ladies and ask her if she’s ever heard of the story of Jesus. The answer is no.
Never.
A squad mate helps paint a beautiful picture of the gospel and you see her face lighting up – taking in all the information. She decides to make it her life – to accept this love and grace and mercy as hers.
You’re just beaming because wow you just got a new sister??!?!?
As the group makes their way to the second home, the opportunity to share with a couple comes your way. They’d never heard of Jesus either. You’re amazed the meet more people that seriously have NEVER even heard the name of Jesus. You freeze. All the words you’ve ever learned – gone. So you ask the Lord to give you words to say – words that will change their life and strike something down deep in their soul. And words just start coming out.
At the end of that conversation there wasn’t a big moment of surrender or a salvation. There wasn’t anything noticeably crazy that happened. But the Lord chose you to tell the greatest love story ever told to three people that day that had NEVER heard the name of Jesus.
How cool is that?? I got to be the first person ever to tell them. EVER.
The funny thing is, I really don’t like small children and that’s what was on the agenda that day. I’m so thankful for surprises and detours and translators that have a heart for people.
Xoxo,
Alexis
