Before I begin, something has to be explained. There is a backstory to this blog. During our first week of ministry in Peru, we were up in the secluded mountains with not a lot of luxury. One night, Nathan’s tooth broke and was creating a lot of pain. Luckily for him, our hosts’ daughter, who just so happened to be in school for dentistry, was with us, and she was able to get the broken piece of tooth out with a piece of floss. Impressive right? But he still needed a crown, so when we got back in town he went to see a dentist that attended our local church in Cajamarca.
We found out that our next ministry was going to be evangelizing to truck drivers in the port of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Some were excited and some were nervous, so we decided we would practice evangelizing for team time. We broke up into groups and planned going out into town to see what God had for us.
Before we began, we prayed and as we prayed I saw a picture of blue and green lines. I brushed it off as creating my own imagine because it didn’t make sense to me, so I didn’t bring it up when I left with my teammate, Kayleigh.
We left the house and started walking the path we took when we walked to church. When we turned onto the dirt road, the dentist from the church was walking in our direction. We stopped and said hello and he asked us what we were doing. We told him that we were just out listening to God and doing whatever he told us to do. He just said ok and went on his way.
Before we went any further, we decided to step to the side of the road to pray and ask for guidance from the Lord. As we were praying, I looked around and realized that on the other side of the road was a blue metal door and right behind us was a green metal door. we were standing between the picture I saw before we left the house. Kayleigh got a picture of a boy in a blue shirt and the words “keep going”, so we continued forward in the same direction.
I had my eyes open for the boy in the blue shirt. I felt like we were headed exactly where God wanted us, but as we reached the four way stop, Kayleigh said she felt like we needed to go back. We didn’t know why, but we turned around and started back the way we came.
We got closer to the place where we stopped to pray and guess what we saw. Right where we were standing, between the blue and green doors, stood a little boy wearing a blue shirt with green pants. My only thought was that we had to follow that boy. But we noticed that the dentist was walking back towards us.
He came up to us and said that there was a girl who had questions about God and wanted to talk to us. This was what the Lord was directing us to. So he took us to his office and we sat down with him and a young girl who wanted some answers.
“Why are there rich and poor people?”
“why do bad things happen to people?”
“Did Satan try to stop Jesus from dying on the cross?”
“When Samuel died, Saul went to a woman and asked her to bring him back from the dead. If Samuel was a profit and went to heaven, how could that be possible?”
“Why do we obey God?”
We did our best to answer her questions, but we didn’t have all the answers. We couldn’t explain some of the things she wanted to known, and it felt a little like we were failing. It was about the time she asked us why we obey God that I started to get the feeling that she wasn’t in search of our answers. Nothing we were saying was what she needed and they weren’t going to change her mind. I started to feel like we were there for something else.
“Ask her about her relationship with her parents.” – God
Her parents are no longer together. Her dad left her and she doesn’t see him much. This. This was why we were there. We could try to answer any question she asked us, but it’s the love of the Heavenly Father that changes hearts. God created the opportunity for me to share the love of God with her-to tell her that God is excited to love her. Tears rolled down her face as I shared part of my testimony with her.
The relationship you have with your earthly father impacts the one you have with your Heavenly Father. Our earthly parents fail. They aren’t perfect. But Gods love for us is bigger than all of that. He never fails us and always has the desire to be with us. Although this girl’s father on earth left her, God will always be with her. He is a good, good father.
This is what I came on the race for. God called me to use my story to share His love, and He has been faithful to provide the opportunities to do that.
