As I walk down the cobblestone roads in Antigua, Guatemala, past all of the cafes and the vendors greeting me with “buenos dias”, I can’t help but think ‘how is this my life?’ Antigua has quickly become one of my favorite cities and I am so happy about living here this month. To top it off, my Mom is coming in 9 days for the Parent Vision Trip! I’m ecstatic that this is the city I get to show her. To say this girl needs a hug from her mama is an understatement!
I have now been on the World Race for 8.5 months and in a lot of ways this lifestyle has become normal to me. I was reminded of this as I was helping my Mom pack via Skype. It’s easy to forget that living out of a backpack is not the norm for everyone or packing only a few shirts and re-wearing the same unclean outfit is a very common occurrence. After 8.5 months, I am no longer surprised when we show up to a new location and there is no water for bathing, I don’t hesitate to enter the nasty ‘squatty potty’ bathrooms, and I am not taken aback when our host says you’re preaching tonight. I guess you could say I’ve gotten good at being a World Racer.
Entering into month 9 I wouldn’t have said it out loud, but I was starting to think I could handle most any ministry at this point. I’ve taught English in Asia, I’ve preached in Rwanda, I did ministry in Nepal with no host, and I worked at an orphanage in India. I was of the mindset that I could bring Kingdom wherever and however the Lord decided to use me.
Then came Guatemala.
This month, my team, Team One Home and Team Steadfast Pursuit are working with a ministry called Nueva Generación. All 13 of us are living in a house together. Each team has their own room of bunk beds and we share the family room and kitchen. It’s an extremely nice set up and we are finding that we all live really well together. We’ve been taking turns cooking dinner for all 13 of us and have had a blast getting to do life together as combined teams.
When we showed up to Nueva Generación, we were split up into three smaller teams for ministry based off of our skills. Four of the girls are teaching English, five of the girls are doing a fundraiser (you’ve maybe seen some of their posts on Facebook) and then four of us are teaching values and principles all in Spanish.
I am on the teaching values and principles in Spanish team. I was placed there because I was within the top 4 girls who spoke Spanish. Now, yes I was in the top 4, but that doesn’t exactly mean I was qualified to teach completely in Spanish. As some of you may know, I took Spanish my freshman year of college and also studied it for a month in Spain. So, I do know some and I get by when it comes to normal every day conversations, but being asked to teach classes on the prodigal son, envy, how to honor your father and mother, and so many other topics is not exactly in my Spanish repertoire.
Have you ever felt unprepared and unequipped for a task the Lord gives you?
That’s exactly how I am feeling in these Spanish classes. Luckily, I am not teaching on my own. I teach the classes with three other girls who speak Spanish very well compared to me. Therefore, the kids are still learning, but not from me. To make it even more difficult, we aren’t with the same kids all day every day, so I am not getting to build any relationships. We teach about 4-6 classes a day and each day we are at a new school.
I am being forced to take a back row seat. I literally just can’t say or teach a lot of what needs to be said and it stinks for me. I don’t like not contributing more and adding valuable points to the lessons. It’s not fun when you try to tell the kids to open up their books to page 13 and begin to read and they all begin to laugh because you didn’t speak properly.
Ministry is hard.
Until a couple days ago, I was remaining optimistic about it. I was determined that my Spanish was going to rapidly improve and that I would be teaching with no problem soon enough. That didn’t happen. The constant changing of lessons has not allowed me to perfect anything and instead there’s a new topic and learning curve every day. It was so frustrating!
Once I realized that I was just not going to be able to serve the way I wanted to, I hit a low point. I started to ask the Lord ‘how on earth are you using me to bring Kingdom this month’. I found myself wishing for the fist time on the World Race that I was back home doing the things I am good at. I just couldn’t see how I was making a difference as I sat back and said nothing during the classes and struggled to communicate with the kids when they asked for help on their assignments.
I asked the Lord what he thought of all of this and all He gave me was ‘trust me’. He continued to repeat, ‘trust me’, ‘Ashley, trust me’.
I still don’t know how I am bringing Kingdom or what difference I am making in these kids lives, but hearing my Father say ‘trust me’ repeatedly was exactly what I needed to hear. I took a deep breath and just felt an overwhelming peace that God is way bigger than a language barrier and me feeling incapable.
Around this time, my mom sent me a quote from a book called “Kingdom Journey’s”, which was written by Seth Barnes, the founder of the World Race. We as Racers read the book before we left and now the parents coming to PVT are reading it.
“Abandon, leaving everything behind makes people more alive. Simply surviving can be uncomfortable at times. When you lose your routine, you lose control. Abandoning your safe, little world makes you vulnerable. In this sense, you become like a child again. Everything seems new again. By leaving what we trust and know, we begin to trust and know new things. We learn to rely on a father who does not abandon his children, to really open ourselves up to his love. Ultimately, we learn to obey as we never have before. As part of the abandonment process, God asks us to give up control and remain open to new things. We leave as an act of obedience so we can learn to depend more on God, allowing him to increase our spiritual vision.”
In the past 8 months, I’ve walked through abandonment in a lot of different ways. I could have stayed home and brought Kingdom through my gifts and skills, but then I would not have seen what it looks like to rely on a Father who literally will never abandon me. Again, that is exactly what He is teaching me this month. God is asking me to give up total control and be open to new things, like teaching in Spanish or really not teaching at all. He is showing me daily to trust that He is doing work that I cannot see. For this, I am thankful that I have chosen a year of abandonment, because I know my life will never be the same again.
” Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” – Hebrews 11:1
